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Bioprinted blood vessels could speed testing of treatments for cancer

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Engineers apply new tech to model deadly brain tumors Originally published by Michael Miller on September 25, 2024 Glioblastoma is a brain cancer with very poor survival outcomes . Most drugs can’t cross the blood-brain barrier, which means that unlike other cancers, there just aren’t that many therapies available for brain tumors . But a cutting-edge technology developed at the University of Cincinnati aims to change that. Researchers are using 3D bioprinting to create artificial blood vessels that can be used to test new custom-tailored drugs and study why glioblastoma is so resilient . “Our goal is to develop models that can be used to get new insights into the mechanism that promotes tumor regeneration and drug resistance enabling testing of new therapeutics,” said Riccardo Barrile, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering in UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science . The study was published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials . UC doctoral student
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New method developed to relocate misplaced proteins in cells

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Originally pyblished by Stanford University , on September 21, 2024 Cells before and after TRAMs were introduced. TRAMs link a shuttle protein (red), and a target protein (green). Without the TRAM, the target protein resides in the nucleus (left), and upon TRAM treatment, the target protein is pulled into the cytoplasm by the shuttle protein (right). Credit: Steven Banik and Christine Ng Cells are highly controlled spaces that rely on every protein being in the right place . Many diseases , including cancers and neurodegenerative disorders, are associated with misplaced proteins . In some cancers , for instance, a protein that normally stands watch over DNA replicating in the nucleus is sent far from the DNA it is meant to monitor, allowing cancers to grow. Steven Banik, assistant professor of chemistry in the School of Humanities and Sciences and institute scholar at Sarafan ChEM-H at Stanford University , and his lab have developed a new method to help force misplaced prote
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Convergent evolution study sheds light on how new genes arise

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Originally published by University of Arkansas on September 19, 2024   From left: Nathan Rives, Xuan Zhuang and Vinita Lamba. Credit: University of Arkansas Where do new genes come from? That's the question a team of biological sciences researchers from the U of A set out to answer in a new study. They did so by examining the evolution of antifreeze proteins in fish —an essential adaptation that allows fish to survive in freezing waters by preventing ice formation through the binding of their antifreeze proteins to ice crystals . The team investigated these proteins in three unrelated fish lineages and uncovered surprising results. While t he proteins in each lineage are functionally and structurally similar , they evolved independently from different genetic sources . This phenomenon, known as convergent evolution , represents a rare case of protein sequence convergence . It demonstrates how the same adaptive traits —and even nearly identical protein sequences— can
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Hallucinations from flickering lights: What happens in our brain?

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Originally published by Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience - KNAW   on September 10, 2024    Credit: Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.091 A new study from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience shows how flickering light can cause hallucinations in our brain : it produces " standing waves " of brain activity. The work is published in the journal Current Biology. You're sitting on the bus or train and close your eyes. Sunlight flickering through the trees suddenly fills your mind with kaleidoscopic hallucinatory patterns . This is what Brion Gysin experienced during his trip to Marseille in the late 1960s. The fact that flashing lights can cause hallucinations was not surprising to scientists . Stroboscopic light, familiar to many from dance floors, has been used in neuroscience research for 200 years. In 1819, neuroscientist Jan Purkinje discovered that bright full-field light flashes can make our brain spontaneously perceive geometr
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How context-specific factors control gene activity

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Originally published by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne on September 9, 2024 Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Every cell in our body contains the same DNA , yet liver cells are different from brain cells , and skin cells differ from muscle cells . What determines these differences? It all comes down to gene regulation ; essentially how and when genes are turned on and off to meet the cell's demands. But gene regulation is quite complex , especially because it is itself regulated by other parts of DNA . There are t wo important components that control gene regulation : the first are enhancers , which are short bits of DNA that increase the likelihood that a gene will be activated—even if that gene is far away from the enhancer on the genome. The second are specialized proteins , generally referred to as " transcription factors " ( TFs ), which bind to enhancers and, put crudely, control gene expression by "flipping" the genes' on/off swit
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Scientists discover stable intermediate of serotonin receptor

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Originally published by Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine on September 4, 2024 Researchers have i dentified an intermediate form of the 5-HT3A serotonin receptor (blue). In its final form, a fifth subunit is added (green). The intermediate form presents a potential new drug target.. Credit: Max Delbrück Center A new study published in The EMBO Journal points to new potential strategies to treat psychiatric and gastrointestinal disorders that are not well addressed by current medications. Dr. Bianca Introini and her colleagues in the In Situ Structural Biology lab of Professor Misha Kudryashev have identified a stable intermediate form of the pentameric serotonin-gated 5-HT3A receptor — a cellular membrane protein . The researchers' ability to identify such a structure is exceptional, says Kudryashev, because intermediates of assembling membrane proteins are notoriously difficult to purify . The intermediate form could serve as a new drug target . Serotonin is
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