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Originally published by University of Maryland , on October 4, 2024   A tokay gecko. Credit: Duncan Leitch University of Maryland biologists have identified a hidden sensory talent in geckos that's shaking up what we thought we knew about animal hearing . In a study published in Current Biology on October 4, 2024, the researchers revealed that geckos use the saccule —a part of their inner ear traditionally associated with maintaining balance and body positioning—t o detect low-frequency vibrations . The paper is titled " Auditory pathway for detection of vibration in the tokay gecko ." According to the researchers, this special "sixth sense" also plays a complementary role to the geckos' normal hearing and the way they sense the world around them . The team believes that this previously unrecognized hearing mechanism may be present in other reptilian species as well , challenging existing ideas about how animal sensory systems evolved and

Originally published by UK Research and Innovation on October 2, 2024   3D rendering of all ~140k neurons in the fruit fly brain. Credit: Data source: FlyWire.ai; Rendering by Philipp Schlegel (University of Cambridge/MRC LMB). The first wiring diagram of every neuron in an adult brain and the 50 million connections between them has been produced for a fruit fly . This landmark achievement has been conducted by a large international collaboration of scientists , called the FlyWire Consortium , including researchers from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology ( in Cambridge, UK ), Princeton University, the University of Vermont and the University of Cambridge . It is published in a pair of papers in Nature . The diagram of all 139,255 neurons in the adult fly brain is the first of an entire brain for an animal that can walk and see . Previous efforts have completed the whole brain diagrams for much smaller brains , for example, for that of a fruit fly larva, which h

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

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

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

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