Condensed Matter Physics Inspires a New Model of Cellular Behavior

Model illustrating how cells exert pressure on one another, leading to extrusion.
Image Credit: Courtesy of S. Monfared

Cells are expert cooperators and collaborators. To maintain tissue health, cells talk to each other, exert pressure on each other, and kick out cells that are not contributing to the overall well-being of the collective. When it's time to get rid of a cell, the collective group initiates a process called cell extrusion. Cells can be extruded for a number of reasons—they could be cancerous, or old, or they simply could be overcrowding other cells. Extrusion is a necessary process for tissues to maintain health and integrity.

Biologists have long studied the biochemical cues and signals that underly cell extrusion, but the mechanical, physical forces involved are poorly understood.

Now, inspired by the mechanics of a phase of matter called liquid crystals, researchers have developed the first three-dimensional model of a layer of cells and the extrusion behavior that emerges from their physical interactions. From this new model, the team discovered that the more a cell is squeezed by its neighbors in a particular symmetric way, the more likely it is to get extruded from the group.

Mysterious underwater acoustic world of British ponds revealed in new study

Old Sneed Park
Photo Credit: Dr Jack Greenhalgh

The previously hidden and diverse underwater acoustic world in British ponds has been revealed by a team of researchers at the University of Bristol.

Ponds are magnets for life and a lot of that life is very noisy. Water beetles, bugs, fish, frogs, and even aquatic plants all produce sound creating a diverse underwater orchestra that scientists are only just starting to understand.

Acoustic monitoring has been shown to effectively survey birds and monkeys in rainforests, and marine mammals in the oceans. However, freshwater environments have remained largely unexplored despite their diverse soundscapes.

“Ponds are packed full of bizarre and mysterious sounds made by scratching aquatic insects, booming fish, and popping plants. It’s like an underwater disco!” explained lead author Dr Jack Greenhalgh from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences.

To better understand these mysterious soundscapes, the team collected 840 hours of underwater sound recordings from five ponds in the southwest of England using an underwater microphone (a hydrophone).

Genetically Modified Plants Grow Better in Arid and Saline Conditions

Tobacco is one of the most well-studied plants by scientists.
Photo Credit: Rodion Narudinov

Russian scientists have modified tobacco. They added the AtGSTF11 gene and improved the plant's resistance to adverse conditions. These adverse conditions include low temperatures, drought and salty soil. Model plants with the new gene used in the experiments showed increased vitality. The scientists have published a description of their experiments in the Russian Journal of Plant Physiology.

Plant stress (caused by a variety of factors - drought, temperature, contaminated soil, etc.) ends at the cellular level with oxidative stress: reactive oxygen species are formed in the cell. They destroy proteins, disrupt the structure of DNA and lead to cell death or interfere with vital functions, the scientists add. There are cellular mechanisms that prevent the development of oxidative stress - low-molecular antioxidant compounds, proteins (antioxidant enzymes), glutathione.

"Glutathione is a short sulfur-containing peptide that plays an important role in protecting plants from stress. It is formed, then cycled into oxidized and reduced forms, and so on. This is the glutathione cycle. In this process, reactive oxygen species are eliminated and plant cells do not die. A number of genes are involved in this cycle. We added another gene, glutathione S-transferase, and got a more viable plant," says Bulat Kuluev, Head of the Plant Genomics Laboratory at the Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics (Subdivision of the Ufa Federal Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences).

Highly sensitive Raman probe detects enzyme expression in heterogeneous tissues

Raman imaging offers a greater potential for detecting multiple enzyme activities than fluorescence imaging, demonstrate Tokyo Tech researchers by developing 9CN-rhodol-based activatable Raman probes using a novel mechanism for Raman signal activation. The strategy allows a synthesis of highly activatable Raman probes with high aggregation and multiplexing ability, making it a promising tool for extending the range of Raman probes for the detection of multiple enzyme activities in heterogeneous biological tissues.

The involvement of enzymes in a wide range of biological activities makes them ideal biomarkers for the detection of diseases. In fact, cancer-specific diagnostic technologies use fluorescence imaging for detecting upregulated cancer-associated enzymes in the affected cells. Moreover, since tumor tissues are heterogenous, detecting multiple enzyme activities simultaneously could allow precise cancer visualization and diagnosis. However, the inability to detect multiple enzyme activities can potentially limit the application of fluorescence imaging in heterogeneous tumor tissues and other complex biological phenomena.

Earliest animal likely used chemical signaling to evolve into multicellular organism

J.P. Gerdt is an assistant professor of chemistry in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences.
 Photo Credit: Courtesy of J.P. Gerdt

The earliest animal likely used chemical signaling to evolve from a single cell to a multicellular organism, according to a study led by an Indiana University Bloomington scientist. The findings provide new information about how one of the biggest transitions in the history of life on earth likely occurred.

J.P. Gerdt, assistant professor of chemistry in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences, led the study, along with Núria Ros-Rocher of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. Their findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The general view is that animals evolved from a unicellular organism, and this research helps explain how that may have happened and how those cells chose whether to be together or on their own,” Gerdt said. “Our results help us understand more about the first animals and their ancestors.”

Mudskippers Could Be Key to Understanding Evolution of Blinking

Indian mudskipper P. septemradiatus
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology

Blinking is crucial for the eye. It’s how animals clean their eyes, protect them, and even communicate. But how and why did blinking originate? Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Seton Hill University, and Pennsylvania State University studied the mudskipper, an amphibious fish that spends most of its day on land, to better understand why blinking is a fundamental behavior for life on land.

Although mudskippers are distantly related to tetrapods, the group that includes humans and other four-limbed vertebrates, researchers believed studying the fish could unlock how blinking evolved as these animals began to move on land. 

The research team, which included several undergraduates, published their findings in the paper, “The Origin of Blinking in Both Mudskippers and Tetrapods Is Linked to Life on Land,” in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

“By comparing the anatomy and behavior of mudskippers to the fossil record of early tetrapods, we argue that blinking emerged in both groups as an adaptation to life on land,” said Tom Stewart, an assistant professor at Penn State and an author of the paper. “These results help us understand our own biology and raise a whole set of new questions about the variety of blinking behaviors we see in living species.”

Vaccine printer could help vaccines reach more people

MIT researchers have designed a mobile vaccine printer that could be scaled up to produce hundreds of vaccine doses in a day. This kind of printer, which can fit on a tabletop, could be deployed anywhere vaccines are needed. Pictured is an artist’s interpretation of the printer.
Illustration Credit: Ryan Allen from Second Bay Studios
(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Getting vaccines to people who need them isn’t always easy. Many vaccines require cold storage, making it difficult to ship them to remote areas that don’t have the necessary infrastructure.

MIT researchers have come up with a possible solution to this problem: a mobile vaccine printer that could be scaled up to produce hundreds of vaccine doses in a day. This kind of printer, which can fit on a tabletop, could be deployed anywhere vaccines are needed, the researchers say.

“We could someday have on-demand vaccine production,” says Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “If, for example, there was an Ebola outbreak in a particular region, one could ship a few of these printers there and vaccinate the people in that location.”

The printer produces patches with hundreds of microneedles containing vaccine. The patch can be attached to the skin, allowing the vaccine to dissolve without the need for a traditional injection. Once printed, the vaccine patches can be stored for months at room temperature.

Rare variants of an inflammation 'brake' gene may help reveal outcomes of kidney disease

Paradoxically, a gene variant that increases inflammation also has a protective effect on the kidneys. Seen here, kidney cells nuclei (blue) and an influx of immune regulatory cells (pink) that prevent damage in an injured kidney.
Photo Credit: Garvan Institute of Medical Research

A gene that controls inflammation could pave the way for more precise disease diagnostics and personalized treatments for kidney disease. 

The discovery of variants of an inflammation ‘brake’ gene brings scientists a step closer to personalized treatment for people at risk of kidney disease and kidney failure. 

Researchers at UNSW Sydney, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, and Westmead Hospital, found that common genetic variants of TNFAIP3, which increase inflammation in the body, can paradoxically protect the kidneys from damage in the short term.  

“We wanted to investigate whether inherited differences in how people regulate inflammation could lead to better or worse kidney health outcomes,” says Professor Shane Grey, senior author of the paper and Head of the School of Biotechnology and Biological Sciences (BABS) at UNSW. 

The findings, published today in the journal Kidney International, could be used to help determine how well people will recover from kidney injury.  

“Our discovery that some genetic variants can be protective against inflammation could lead to a simple genetic test that helps predict the risk of kidney disease for patients,” says Prof. Grey.   

Study Finds Significant Variation in Anatomy of Human Guts

Photo Credit: Lauren Nichols.

New research finds there is significant variation in the anatomy of the human digestive system, with pronounced differences possible between healthy individuals. The finding has implications for understanding the role that the digestive tracts anatomy can play in affecting human health, as well as providing potential insights into medical diagnoses and the microbial ecosystem of the gut.

“There was research more than a century ago that found variability in the relative lengths of human intestines, but this area has largely been ignored since then,” says Amanda Hale, co-first author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University. “When we began exploring this issue, we were astonished at the extent of the variability we found.”

“If you’re talking to four different people, odds are good that all of them have different guts, in terms of the relative sizes of the organs that make up that system,” says Erin McKenney, corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of applied ecology at NC State. “For example, the cecum is an organ that’s found at the nexus of the large and small intestine. One person may have a cecum that is only a few centimeters long, while another may have a cecum the size of a coin purse. And we found similar variability for many digestive organs.”

Algae in Swedish lakes provide insights to how complex life on Earth developed

Lönsboda, Sweden
Photo Credit: Johanna Nilsson

By studying green algae in Swedish lakes, a research team, led by Lund University in Sweden, has succeeded in identifying which environmental conditions promote multicellularity. The results give us new clues to the amazing paths of evolution.

The evolution of multicellular life has played a pivotal role in shaping biological diversity. However, we have up until now known surprisingly little about the natural environmental conditions that favor the formation of multicellular groups.

The cooperation between cells within multicellular organisms has enabled eyes, wings and leaves to evolve. The predominant explanation for why multicellularity evolves is that being in a group enables species to better cope with environmental challenges – where being in a large group can, for instance, protect cells against being eaten.

"Our results challenge this idea, showing that multicellular groups form, not because they are inherently beneficial, but rather as a by-product of single-celled strategies to reduce environmental stress. In particular, cells produce a range of substances to protect themselves from the environment and these substances appear to prevent daughter cells from dispersing away from their mother cell", says Charlie Cornwallis, biology researcher at Lund University.

UC Irvine biologists discover bees to be brew masters of the insect world

The UCI study found that the cellophane bee (pictured) ‘brew’ a liquid food for their offspring.
Photo Credit: Tobin Hammer

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have made a remarkable discovery about cellophane bees – their microbiomes are some of the most fermentative known from the insect world. These bees, which are named for their use of cellophane-like materials to line their subterranean nests, are known for their fascinating behaviors and their important ecological roles as pollinators. Now, researchers have uncovered another aspect of their biology that makes them even more intriguing.

According to a study published in Frontiers in Microbiology, cellophane bees “brew” a liquid food for their offspring, held in chambers called brood cells. The microbiome of these brood cells is dominated by lactobacilli bacteria, which are known for their role in fermenting foods like yogurt, sauerkraut and sourdough bread. The researchers found that these bacteria are highly active in the food provisions of cellophane bees, where they likely play an important role as a source of nutrients for developing larvae.

Fungal genetics could help develop novel biotechnologies

Photo Credit: Heidi-Ann Fourkiller / Scientific Frontine

An essential pillar of Earth’s ecological system, fungi have long been used to better the lives of humans. While these organisms are still vastly understudied, a new review paper suggests that their unique genomes could be used to make progress in the biotech industry. 

“The wonderful thing about fungi is they fulfill so many niches,” said Mitchell Roth, lead author of the review and an assistant professor of plant pathology at The Ohio State University. “They can be found everywhere, and a lot of times you’ll find fungi that have already adapted to survive in unlikely environments.”

Recently, scientists have made incredible breakthroughs in the field, and thanks to the popular HBO adaptation The Last of Us, fungi may finally be getting the recognition they deserve, said Roth. “There’s so much potential in fungal biotechnology that we haven’t tapped into,” he said. “We’ve only just scraped the surface of fungal biotechnology, so this paper is a little bit of a call to action.”

Discovery identifies those likely to experience life-threatening dengue fever

(L-R) Co-first author and PhD student Stephanie Studniberg with senior researcher, Monash BDI’s Professor Diana Hansen.
Photo Credit: WEHI

Scientists have discovered cell populations in blood which clearly indicate whether a person infected with dengue fever is likely to progress to life-threatening severe disease or not.

About half of the world’s population is at risk of dengue fever, with almost 400 million annual cases. More will be at risk as global warming enables the spread of mosquito strains that carry the virus.

Until now, there has been no accurate way to predict which patients will progress to severe dengue fever. The new finding uses immune cells to grade potential severity, paving the way for improved patient management, health system savings, and the development of a biomarker test.

Published in the Journal of Biomedical Science, the international research team, led by Professor Diana Hansen at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, included WEHI in Melbourne, and Dr Tedjo Sasmono at the Eijkman Centre in Jakarta, Indonesia.

How bee-friendly is the forest?

A honeybee (Apis mellifera) collects honeydew on a fir tree. The study shows that the beech-dominated Steigerwald provides insufficient food resources for honeybees.
Photo Credit: Ingo Arndt

What role do forests play as a feeding habitat for honeybees? A team led by Würzburg biologist Dr. Benjamin Rutschmann investigated this question. For this purpose, the researchers used observation hives inside the Steigerwald.

Bees are generally associated with flowering meadows rather than with dense forests. Woodland, however, is considered the original habitat of the western honeybee (Apis mellifera), as it offers nesting sites in the form of tree cavities. Researchers at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) have now investigated the extent to which contemporary deciduous forests are suitable as foraging habitats for the busy insects.

For this purpose, Benjamin Rutschmann and Patrick Kohl installed twelve normally-sized honeybee colonies in observation hives across the Steigerwald – the respective proportion of forest in the surroundings varied for each bee colony. The two scientists conduct research at JMU in the Chair of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology (Zoology III), which is headed by Professor Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter. The latter was also involved in the study, which has now appeared in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

The wound dressing that can reveal infection

The wound dressing is made of tight mesh nanocellulose, preventing bacteria and other microbes from getting in. At the same time, the material lets gases and liquid through.
Photo Credit: Olof Planthaber

A nanocellulose wound dressing that can reveal early signs of infection without interfering with the healing process has been developed by researchers at Linköping University. Their study, published in Materials Today Bio, is one further step on the road to a new type of wound care.

The skin is the largest organ of the human body. A wound disrupts the normal function of the skin and can take a long time to heal, be very painful for the patient and may, in a worst-case scenario, lead to death if not treated correctly. Also, hard-to-heal wounds pose a great burden on society, representing about half of all costs in out-patient care.

In traditional wound care, dressings are changed regularly, about every two days. To check whether the wound is infected, care staff have to lift the dressing and make an assessment based on appearance and tests. This is a painful procedure that disturbs wound healing as the scab breaks repeatedly. The risk of infection also increases every time the wound is exposed.

How does a millipede get its legs?

These microscopic images of the outside and inside of a millipede show the unexpected transparent protrusions, containing bundles of legs, present before the millipede molts. After the molt, while the millipede recovers, the legs are fully formed and become functional.
Photo Credit: © 2023 Soma Chiyoda

Millipede legs grow in an unexpected way, according to new research. Previously, it was thought that when a millipede molts (sheds its exoskeleton), it grows new segments on the end of its body without legs. Then after the next molt, the previously new segments re-emerge with fully formed legs attached. However, a team at the University of Tokyo has found that new segments actually contain tiny bundles of legs, which appear as transparent protrusions before molting and then become fully formed afterwards. This discovery could help us understand how not only millipedes, but also other arthropods (invertebrates with jointed legs) grow.

If you’ve recently been for a picnic in the park, you’ll probably have had to contend with a few creepy-crawlies. One that you might come across trundling under a shady tree is the harmless millipede. Famous for its multitude of legs (though the first to have more than 1,000 was actually only discovered in 2021), it is thought to have been one of the first creatures to walk on land and breathe air about 420 million years ago. Their lifestyle of burrowing in the dirt and digesting decomposing plant matter means that they play a very important role in our ecosystems, but there is still a lot we don’t know about them, including exactly how they get all those famous legs.

Bird feeding helps small birds fight infection

Photo Credit: Lidia Stawinska

Seeds and fat balls do more than just fill small birds’ stomachs. New research from Lund University in Sweden shows that feeding during the wintertime causes birds to be healthier, since they do not have to expend as much energy fighting infections.

A small change in body temperature can be fatal for humans. Small birds, meanwhile, lower their body temperature at night by several degrees during the winter. Just like us, the birds attempt to save energy when it is cold. If they are exposed to infection, the body’s first reaction is to raise its temperature, which clashes with the bird’s simultaneous need to save energy by lowering body temperature.               

“We investigated how access to food during winter affected the balancing act between maintaining a low body temperature in order to save energy, and the possibility of raising body temperature in order to fight infection,” says Hannah Watson, biologist Lund University.

Researchers discover how some brain cells transfer material to neurons in mice

Neuronal accumulation of ribosomal reporter (green) in the brain of adult mice.
Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Photo Credit Olga Chechneva

Researchers at UC Davis are the first to report how a specific type of brain cells, known as oligodendrocyte-lineage cells, transfer cell material to neurons in the mouse brain. Their work provides evidence of a coordinated nuclear interaction between these cells and neurons. The study was published today in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

“This novel concept of material transfer to neurons opens new possibilities for understanding brain maturation and finding treatments for neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease,” said corresponding author Olga Chechneva. Chechneva is an assistant project scientist at UC Davis Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine and independent principal investigator in the Institute for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine at Shriners Children's Northern California.

Our knowledge about this mechanism is extremely new, and it opens many questions for understanding how neurons work and their biological relevance in many neurological disorders. This is very exciting.”—Olga Chechneva

Leaps in artificial blood research aim to improve product safety, efficacy

Artificial blood has been used in a variety of clinical trials, but no safe alternative has yet made it to market.
Image Credit: Narupon Promvichai

Researchers have made huge strides in ensuring that red blood cell substitutes – or artificial blood – are able to work safely and effectively when transfused into the bloodstream.  

The key is to make the artificial blood molecules big enough so they don’t leak from blood vessels into tissue and cause dangerous cardiovascular side effects, notes a new study led by researchers from The Ohio State University. 

Although blood loss is typically treated by transfusing units of donated blood, in cases where transfusions aren’t readily available or time is too limited to screen for patient blood type compatibility (such as in certain rural areas or on the battlefield), artificial blood products offer medical professionals more flexibility for treatment. In clinical trials, previous generations of these blood substitutes often resulted in several poor health outcomes, as individuals experienced symptoms ranging from narrowing of blood vessels and high blood pressure to tissue injury.   

In this study, researchers found that a certain sized fraction of red blood cell substitute can provide a range of health benefits, and can decrease the risk of cardiovascular side effects – if its components are the right size. 

New genetic target for male contraception identified

Photo Credit: Filipe Almeida

Discovery of a gene in multiple mammalian species could pave the way for a highly effective, reversible and non-hormonal male contraceptive for humans and animals.

Washington State University researchers identified expression of the gene, Arrdc5, in the testicular tissue of mice, pigs, cattle and humans. When they knocked out the gene in mice, it created infertility only in the males, impacting their sperm count, movement and shape. The researchers detailed their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

“The study identifies this gene for the first time as being expressed only in testicular tissue, nowhere else in the body, and it’s expressed by multiple mammalian species,” said Jon Oatley, senior author and professor in WSU’s School of Molecular Biosciences. “When this gene is inactivated or inhibited in males, they make sperm that cannot fertilize an egg, and that’s a prime target for male contraceptive development.”

While other molecular targets have been identified for potential male contraceptive development, the Arrdc5 gene is specific to the male testes and found in multiple species. Importantly, lack of the gene also causes significant infertility creating a condition called oligoasthenoteratospermia or OAT. This condition, the most common diagnosis for human male infertility, shows a decrease in the amount of sperm produced, slowed mobility and distorted shape so that the sperm are unable to fuse with an egg.