Borrowing from microfabrication techniques used in the semiconductor industry, MIT and Harvard Medical School (HMS) engineers have developed a simple and inexpensive way to create three-dimensional brain tissues in a lab dish.
The new technique yields tissue constructs that closely mimic the cellular composition of those in the living brain, allowing scientists to study how neurons form connections and to predict how cells from individual patients might respond to different drugs. The work also paves the way for developing bioengineered implants to replace damaged tissue for organ systems, according to the researchers.
“We think that by bringing this kind of control and manipulation into neurobiology, we can investigate many different directions,” says Utkan Demirci, an assistant professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST).
Demirci and Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT’s Media Lab and McGovern Institute, are senior authors of a paper describing the new technique, which appears in the Nov. 27 online edition of the journal Advanced Materials. The paper’s lead author is Umut Gurkan, a postdoc at HST, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Researchers at UTHealth have demonstrated in rats that transplanting genetically modified adult stem cells into an injured spinal cord can help restore the electrical pathways associated with movement. The results are published in today’s issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
In spinal cord injury, demyelination, or the destruction of the myelin sheath in the central nervous system, occurs. The myelin sheath, produced by cells called oligodendrocytes, wraps around the axons of nerves and helps speed activity and insulate electrical conduction. Without it, the nerves cannot send messages to make muscles move.
Read more: UTHealth Research Shows Modified Adult Stem Cells May Be Helpful in Spinal Cord Injury
by Susan Brown
Biologists have developed an efficient way to genetically modify human embryonic stem cells. Their approach, which uses bacterial artificial chromosomes to swap in defective copies of genes, will make possible the rapid development of stem cell lines that can both serve as models for human genetic diseases and as testbeds on which to screen potential treatments.
“This will help to open up the whole human embryonic stem cell field. Otherwise, there’s really few efficient ways you can study genetics with them,” said Yang Xu, professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego who directed the research, which was funded by California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state’s stem cell research agency, established after the passage of Proposition 71.
Read more: Biologist Develop Efficient Genetic Modification of Human Embryonic Stem Cells
A researcher at Iowa State University has discovered how a group of proteins from plant pathogenic bacteria interact with DNA in the plant cell, opening up the possibility for what the scientist calls a "cascade of advances."
Adam Bogdanove, associate professor in plant pathology, was researching the molecular basis of bacterial diseases of rice when he and Matthew Moscou, a student in the bioinformatics and computation biology graduate program, discovered that the so-called TAL effector proteins injected into plant cells by strains of the bacterium Xanthomonas attach at specific locations to host DNA molecules.
Read more: Iowa State University Researcher Discovers Key to Vital DNA, Protein Interaction
In a finding with potentially major implications for identifying a viral cause of prostate cancer, a type of virus known to cause leukemia and sarcomas in animals has been found for the first time in malignant human prostate cancer cells.
In a finding with potentially major implications for identifying a viral cause of prostate cancer, researchers at the University of Utah and Columbia University medical schools have reported that a type of virus known to cause leukemia and sarcomas in animals has been found for the first time in malignant human prostate cancer cells.
Read more: First Evidence of Virus in Cancerous Prostate Cells
Interfering with communication among bacteria can prevent them from mounting a unified and perhaps deadly assault on their host organism, research by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators shows. The finding suggests a different kind of medicine that could be less likely than traditional antibiotic to promote the development of drug-resistant bacteria.
The new research, published July 30, 2009, in Molecular Cell, targeted a bacterial communication process known as quorum sensing, which triggers bacteria to act collectively only once they reach sufficient numbers to make their common activity worthwhile. In the case of disease-causing bacteria, that collective action is often the release of toxins.
Read more: Interrupting Bacterial Chatter to Thwart Infection
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