2020 conferences and meetings

Stem Cells News
- Human brain organoids respond to visual stimuli when transplanted into adult rats
  Researchers show that brain organoids -- clumps of lab-grown neurons -- can integrate with rat brains and respond to visual stimulation like flashing lights.
- Researcher takes another step toward discovering how a brain molecule could halt MS
  A researcher is one step closer to demonstrating the potential of a brain molecule called fractalkine to halt and even reverse the effects of multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. Researchers injected fractalkine into mice with chemically induced MS. They found the treatment increased the number of new oligodendrocytes -- vital brain and spinal cord […]
- Study reframes understanding of graft-versus-host disease
  New research challenges the prevailing hypothesis for how donor stem cell grafts cause graft-versus-host disease, or GVHD, and offers an alternative model that could guide development of novel therapies.
- Nanofiber-hydrogel loaded with stem cells shows success treating severe complication of Crohn's disease
  In a new study using a rat model of Crohn's disease, a biodegradable hydrogel composite loaded with stem cells has shown significant success in treating perianal fistulas (PAF) -- one of the many complications of Crohn's disease.
- How pancreatic cancer defies treatment
  Researchers describe how pancreatic cancer stem cells leverage a protein in a family of proteins that normally suppress tumors to instead do the opposite, boosting their resistance to conventional treatments and spurring growth.
- Endogenous molecule protects from life-threatening complications after stem-cell transplantation
  Researchers find that an antimicrobial molecule modifies T-cell-signalling and thus attenuates overshooting immune reactions.
- Scientists develop a cancer vaccine to simultaneously kill and prevent brain cancer
  Investigators have developed a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumors and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system so that it can prevent cancer from recurring. Dual-action cell therapy engineered to eliminate established tumors and train the immune system to eradicate primary tumor and prevent cancer's recurrence.
- A glimpse of a cell's sense of touch
  Scientists have now been able to unravel a mystery surrounding the question of how cells use their sense of touch to make vital decisions during embryogenesis.
- Stem cell transplants may delay disability longer than some MS medications
  In people with active secondary progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), hematopoietic stem cell transplants may delay disability longer than some other MS medications, according to a new study. The study involved autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplants, which use healthy blood stem cells from a person's own body to replace diseased cells.
- Characterizing rare, damaged cells that block functions of neighboring healthy cells
  Senescent cells, which emerge after tissue injury, create an aged-like inflamed microenvironment that is negative for stem cell function and tissue repair. The finding provides a basis for mitigating the loss of muscle regenerative capacity in elderly people and for improving muscle repair in young healthy people.
- Study identifies a signaling cascade behind retina regeneration in zebrafish
  Experts are investigating how cells called Muller glial cells, responsible for regenerating a damaged zebrafish retina, acquire stem cell properties with the hope of eventually developing techniques to encourage human retinas to regenerate.
- RXR, the cell protein that keeps blood stem cells young and fit
  Researchers have shown that the retinoid and unsaturated fatty acid sensor RXR is a key protein in the maintenance of a balanced production of the different types of blood cells.
- Scientists finds stem cell network in ancient fish
  An ancient fish called a 'living fossil' has helped researchers understand the basics of stem cells. This will further stem cell research and be a step in the direction of creating artificial organs.
- Epigenetic emergency switch improves defense against infections
  During infections, the hematopoietic system switches from normal to emergency mode. This improves the defense against the pathogens. Scientists have now found an epigenetic switch in blood stem cells and progenitor cells of mice that can trigger the switch from one mode to the other.
- Embryonic origins of adult pluripotent stem cells discovered
  Researchers have identified the cellular mechanism and molecular trajectory for the formation of adult pluripotent stem cells in the acoel worm, Hofstenia miamia.
- Scientists discover a new mechanism to generate cartilage cells
  Cartilage degeneration and injuries affect 350 million people worldwide. Patients with these conditions experience increased pain and discomfort over time. However, an exciting breakthrough in tissue regeneration research offers the promise of meaningful relief.
- Cancer stem cells are fueled through dialogue with their environments
  New findings suggest that many of the mutations in cancer may simply be setting in stone a path already forged by the tumor stem cell's aberrant dialogue with its surroundings.
- Using math to better treat cancer
  Researchers have identified a new method for scheduling radiation therapy that could be as much as 22 percent more effective at killing cancer cells than current standard radiation treatment regimens.
- Intestinal microorganisms influence white blood cell levels in blood
  Intestinal bacteria composition is crucial to driving the recovery of neutrophils counts in the blood of mice following treatments such as stem cell transplants or chemotherapy.
- Ancient disease has potential to regenerate livers
  Leprosy is one of the world's oldest and most persistent diseases but the bacteria that cause it may also have the surprising ability to grow and regenerate a vital organ. Scientists have discovered that parasites associated with leprosy can reprogram cells to increase the size of a liver in adult animals without causing damage, scarring […]

advanced bioscience
- LRRC15 mediates an accessory interaction with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
 by Jarrod Shilts, Thomas W. M. Crozier, Ana Teixeira-Silva, Ildar Gabaev, Pehuén Pereyra Gerber, Edward J. D. Greenwood, Samuel James Watson, Brian M. Ortmann, Christian M. Gawden-Bone, Tekle Pauzaite, Markus Hoffmann, James A. Nathan, Stefan Pöhlmann, Nicholas J. Matheson, Paul J. Lehner, Gavin J. Wright The interactions between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) […]
- Multisite imaging of neural activity using a genetically encoded calcium sensor in the honey bee
 by Julie Carcaud, Marianne Otte, Bernd Grünewald, Albrecht Haase, Jean-Christophe Sandoz, Martin Beye Understanding of the neural bases for complex behaviors in Hymenoptera insect species has been limited by a lack of tools that allow measuring neuronal activity simultaneously in different brain regions. Here, we developed the first pan-neuronal genetic driver in a Hymenopteran model […]
- A worldwide perspective on large carnivore attacks on humans
 by Giulia Bombieri, Vincenzo Penteriani, Kamran Almasieh, Hüseyin Ambarlı, Mohammad Reza Ashrafzadeh, Chandan Surabhi Das, Nishith Dharaiya, Rafael Hoogesteijn, Almira Hoogesteijn, Dennis Ikanda, Włodzimierz Jędrzejewski, Mohammad Kaboli, Anastasia Kirilyuk, Ashish Kumar Jangid, Ravi Kumar Sharma, Hadas Kushnir, Babu Ram Lamichhane, Alireza Mohammadi, Octavio Monroy-Vilchis, Joseph M. Mukeka, Igor Nikolaev, Omar Ohrens, Craig Packer, Paolo Pedrini, […]
- Transcranial electrical stimulation: How can a simple conductor orchestrate complex brain activity?
 by Matthew R. Krause, Pedro G. Vieira, Christopher C. Pack Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) is one of the oldest and yet least understood forms of brain stimulation. The idea that a weak electrical stimulus, applied outside the head, can meaningfully affect neural activity is often regarded as mysterious. Here, we argue that the direct effects […]
- Early transcriptional and epigenetic divergence of CD8+ T cells responding to acute versus chronic infection
 by Lauren K. Quezada, Wenhao Jin, Yi Chia Liu, Eleanor S. Kim, Zhaoren He, Cynthia S. Indralingam, Tiffani Tysl, Lara Labarta-Bajo, Ellen J. Wehrens, Yeara Jo, Katelynn R. Kazane, Christopher Hattori, Elina I. Zuniga, Gene W. Yeo, John T. Chang During a microbial infection, responding CD8+ T cells give rise to effector cells that provide […]
- Neural responses in macaque prefrontal cortex are linked to strategic exploration
 by Caroline I. Jahn, Jan Grohn, Steven Cuell, Andrew Emberton, Sebastien Bouret, Mark E. Walton, Nils Kolling, Jérôme Sallet Humans have been shown to strategically explore. They can identify situations in which gathering information about distant and uncertain options is beneficial for the future. Because primates rely on scarce resources when they forage, they are […]
- Competence remodels the pneumococcal cell wall exposing key surface virulence factors that mediate increased host adherence
 by Vikrant Minhas, Arnau Domenech, Dimitra Synefiaridou, Daniel Straume, Max Brendel, Gonzalo Cebrero, Xue Liu, Charlotte Costa, Mara Baldry, Jean-Claude Sirard, Camilo Perez, Nicolas Gisch, Sven Hammerschmidt, Leiv Sigve Håvarstein, Jan-Willem Veening Competence development in the human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae controls several features such as genetic transformation, biofilm formation, and virulence. Competent bacteria produce so-called […]
- PLOS Biology at 20: Ain’t no mountain high enough
 by Nonia Pariente, on behalf of the PLOS Biology staff editors PLOS began publishing influential open access science in 2003. As PLOS Biology enters its third decade, we reflect on our mission, what has changed, what remains to be done and our wishes for the future. As PLOS Biology enters its third decade, we reflect […]
- Viral infection in the ocean—A journey across scales
 by Flora Vincent, Assaf Vardi Viruses are the most abundant biological entity in the ocean and infect a wide range of microbial life across bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes. In this essay, we take a journey across several orders of magnitude in the scales of biological organization, time, and space of host–virus interactions in the ocean, […]
- FMRP activity and control of Csw/SHP2 translation regulate MAPK-dependent synaptic transmission
 by Shannon N. Leahy, Chunzhu Song, Dominic J. Vita, Kendal Broadie Noonan syndrome (NS) and NS with multiple lentigines (NSML) cognitive dysfunction are linked to SH2 domain-containing protein tyrosine phosphatase-2 (SHP2) gain-of-function (GoF) and loss-of-function (LoF), respectively. In Drosophila disease models, we find both SHP2 mutations from human patients and corkscrew (csw) homolog LoF/GoF elevate […]
- Tandem repeats in giant archaeal Borg elements undergo rapid evolution and create new intrinsically disordered regions in proteins
 by Marie Charlotte Schoelmerich, Rohan Sachdeva, Jacob West-Roberts, Lucas Waldburger, Jillian F. Banfield Borgs are huge, linear extrachromosomal elements associated with anaerobic methane-oxidizing archaea. Striking features of Borg genomes are pervasive tandem direct repeat (TR) regions. Here, we present six new Borg genomes and investigate the characteristics of TRs in all ten complete Borg genomes. […]
- A rising tide of parasite transcriptomics propels pathogen biology
 by Manoj T. Duraisingh, Marc-Jan Gubbels, Kourosh Zarringhalam Twenty years ago, the first transcriptome of the intraerythrocytic developmental cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum was published in PLOS Biology. Since then, transcriptomics studies have transformed the study of parasite biology. Twenty years ago, the first transcriptome of the intraerythrocytic developmental cycle of the malaria […]
- The dawn of relaxed phylogenetics
 by Jacob L. Steenwyk, Antonis Rokas Tracing the history of evolution across time is a primary goal of evolutionary biology. The 2006 publication of a landmark study on relaxed phylogenetics in PLOS Biology enabled biologists to shed light on evolution’s tempo and shaped the future of evolutionary studies. In 2006, a landmark study on relaxed […]
- Towards a great ape dictionary: Inexperienced humans understand common nonhuman ape gestures
 by Kirsty E. Graham, Catherine Hobaiter In the comparative study of human and nonhuman communication, ape gesturing provided the first demonstrations of flexible, intentional communication outside human language. Rich repertoires of these gestures have been described in all ape species, bar one: us. Given that the majority of great ape gestural signals are shared, and […]
- Community consensus on core open science practices to monitor in biomedicine
 by Kelly D. Cobey, Stefanie Haustein, Jamie Brehaut, Ulrich Dirnagl, Delwen L. Franzen, Lars G. Hemkens, Justin Presseau, Nico Riedel, Daniel Strech, Juan Pablo Alperin, Rodrigo Costas, Emily S. Sena, Thed van Leeuwen, Clare L. Ardern, Isabel O. L. Bacellar, Nancy Camack, Marcos Britto Correa, Roberto Buccione, Maximiliano Sergio Cenci, Dean A. Fergusson, Cassandra Gould […]
- Twelve-hour rhythms in transcript expression within the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are altered in schizophrenia
 by Madeline R. Scott, Wei Zong, Kyle D. Ketchesin, Marianne L. Seney, George C. Tseng, Bokai Zhu, Colleen A. McClung Twelve-hour (12 h) ultradian rhythms are a well-known phenomenon in coastal marine organisms. While 12 h cycles are observed in human behavior and physiology, no study has measured 12 h rhythms in the human brain. […]
- People with more extreme attitudes towards science have self-confidence in their understanding of science, even if this is not justified
 by Cristina Fonseca, Jonathan Pettitt, Alison Woollard, Adam Rutherford, Wendy Bickmore, Anne Ferguson-Smith, Laurence D. Hurst People differ greatly in their attitudes towards well-evidenced science. What characterises this variation? Here, we consider this issue in the context of genetics and allied sciences. While most prior research has focused on the relationship between attitude to science […]
- The enterovirus genome can be translated in an IRES-independent manner that requires the initiation factors eIF2A/eIF2D
 by Hyejeong Kim, David Aponte-Diaz, Mohamad S. Sotoudegan, Djoshkun Shengjuler, Jamie J. Arnold, Craig E. Cameron RNA recombination in positive-strand RNA viruses is a molecular-genetic process, which permits the greatest evolution of the genome and may be essential to stabilizing the genome from the deleterious consequences of accumulated mutations. Enteroviruses represent a useful system to […]
- Genotype–environment interactions determine microbiota plasticity in the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis
 by Laura Baldassarre, Adam M. Reitzel, Sebastian Fraune Most multicellular organisms harbor microbial colonizers that provide various benefits to their hosts. Although these microbial communities may be host species- or even genotype-specific, the associated bacterial communities can respond plastically to environmental changes. In this study, we estimated the relative contribution of environment and host genotype […]
- Yeast derlin Dfm1 employs a chaperone-like function to resolve misfolded membrane protein stress
 by Rachel Kandel, Jasmine Jung, Della Syau, Tiffany Kuo, Livia Songster, Casey Horn, Claire Chapman, Analine Aguayo, Sascha Duttke, Christopher Benner, Sonya E. Neal Protein aggregates are a common feature of diseased and aged cells. Membrane proteins comprise a quarter of the proteome, and yet, it is not well understood how aggregation of membrane proteins […]

Research news

Tooth Loss and High Blood Pressure Irish Famine Victims' Smoking: Dental Decay Loss of First Baby Tooth Positive for Most Kids Poor Oral Health Linked to Higher Blood Pressure Periodontal Disease Bacteria: Alzheimer's Role? Smoking Weakens Immune Systems Antibiotics Worsen Oral Infection Stem Cells from Baby Teeth to Regrow Living ... Biomaterial Keeps Tooth Alive After Root Canal Nanoparticle Approach Detects, Treats Oral ..

2020 conferences and meetings

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories