Study unlocks potential breakthrough in Type 1 diabetes treatment

Omid Veiseh and Boram Kim. Kim is holding a medical-grade catheter similar to ones used in the study experiments.
Photo Credit: Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University

For the over 8 million people around the globe living with Type 1 diabetes, getting a host immune system to tolerate the presence of implanted insulin-secreting cells could be life-changing.

Rice University bioengineer Omid Veiseh and collaborators identified new biomaterial formulations that could help turn the page on Type 1 diabetes treatment, opening the door to a more sustainable, long-term, self-regulating way to handle the disease.

To do so, they developed a new screening technique that involves tagging each biomaterial formulation in a library of hundreds with a unique “barcode” before implanting them in live subjects.

According to the study in Nature Biomedical Engineering, using one of the alginate formulations to encapsulate human insulin-secreting islet cells provided long-term blood sugar level control in diabetic mice. Catheters coated with two other high-performing materials did not clog up.

“This work was motivated by a major unmet need,” said Veiseh, a Rice assistant professor of bioengineering and Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas scholar. “In Type 1 diabetes patients, the body’s immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. As those cells are killed off, the patient loses the ability to regulate their blood glucose.”

The world’s first wood transistor

Isak Engquist, senior associate professor and Van Chinh Tran, PhD student at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Linköping University.
Photo Credit: Thor Balkhed

Researchers at Linköping University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed the world’s first transistor made of wood. Their study, published in the journal PNAS, paves the way for further development of wood-based electronics and control of electronic plants.

Transistors, invented almost one hundred years ago, are considered by some to be an invention just as important to humanity as the telephone, the light bulb or the bicycle. Today, they are a crucial component in modern electronic devices, and are manufactured at nanoscale. A transistor regulates the current that passes through it and can also function as a power switch.

Researchers at Linköping University, together with colleagues from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, have now developed the world’s first electrical transistor made of wood.

“We’ve come up with an unprecedented principle. Yes, the wood transistor is slow and bulky, but it does work, and has huge development potential,” says Isak Engquist, senior associate professor at the Laboratory for Organic Electronics at Linköping University.

Perovskite solar cells' instability must be addressed for global adoption

Photo Credit: Chelsea

Mass adoption of perovskite solar cells will never be commercially viable unless the technology overcomes several key challenges, according to researchers from the University of Surrey. 

Perovskite-based cells are widely believed to be the next evolution of solar energy and meet the growing demand for clean energy. However, they are not as stable as traditional solar-based cells.  

The Surrey team found that stabilizing the perovskite "photoactive phases" – the specific part of the material that is responsible for converting light energy into electrical energy – is the key step to extending the lifespan of perovskite solar cells.  

The stability of the photoactive phase is important because if it degrades or breaks down over time, the solar cell will not be able to generate electricity efficiently. Therefore, stabilizing the photoactive phase is a critical step in improving the longevity and effectiveness of perovskite solar cells. 

‘Spectacular’ new find: Roman military camps in desert found by Oxford archaeologists using Google Earth

An aerial view of the western camp
Photo Credit: APAAME

Three new Roman fortified camps have been identified across northern Arabia by a remote sensing survey by the University of Oxford’s School of Archaeology.  Their paper, published today in the journal Antiquity, reports the discovery may be evidence of a probable undocumented military campaign across south east Jordan into Saudi Arabia.

The camps were identified using satellite images. According to the research team, they may have been part of a previously undiscovered Roman military campaign linked to the Roman takeover of the Nabataean Kingdom in AD 106 CE, a civilization centered on the world-famous city of Petra, located in Jordan.

"These camps are a spectacular new find and an important new insight into Roman campaigning in Arabia."

Dr Mike Bishop

Dr Michael Fradley, who led the research and first identified the camps on Google Earth, suggests there is little doubt about the date of the camps. He says, ‘We are almost certain they were built by the Roman army, given the typical playing card shape of the enclosures with opposing entrances along each side. The only notable difference between them is that the westernmost camp is significantly larger than the two camps to the east.’

Researchers get the drop on new frog species

The Litoria naispela juvenile mimics bird droppings.
Photo Credit: Steve Richards

Five new species of frogs, including one with camouflage that makes it look like bird droppings, have been described by Australian scientists.

Scientists from Griffith University, Queensland Museum and South Australian Museum recently described the five species of treefrogs from Papua New Guinea.

Griffith University scientist Dr Paul Oliver, a joint appointee with Queensland Museum, said the new species highlighted the remarkable and poorly understood diversity of New Guinea frogs.

“These small tree frogs lay their eggs out of the water, typically on leaves, quite different to your typical treefrog, which lay their eggs directly into water,” Dr Oliver said.

Discovering Hidden Order in Disordered Crystals New Material Analysis Method Combining Resonant X-Ray Diffraction and Solid-State NMR

Researchers at Tokyo Tech have discovered hidden chemical order of the Mo and Nb atoms in disordered Ba7Nb4MoO20, by combining state-of-the-art techniques, including resonant X-ray diffraction and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. This study provides valuable insights into how a material's properties, such as ionic conduction, can be heavily influenced by its hidden chemical order. These results would stimulate significant advances in materials science and engineering.

Determining the precise structure of a crystalline solid is a challenging endeavor. Materials properties such as ion conduction and chemical stability, are heavily influenced by the chemical (occupational) order and disorder. However, the techniques that scientists typically use to elucidate unknown crystal structures suffer from serious limitations.

For instance, X-ray and neutron diffraction methods are powerful techniques to reveal the atomic positions and arrangement in the crystal lattice. However, they may not be adequate for distinguishing different atomic species with similar X-ray scattering factors and similar neutron scattering lengths.

Twilight zone at risk from climate change

Photo Credit: PublicDomainPictures

Life in the ocean’s “twilight zone” could decline dramatically due to climate change, new research suggests.

The twilight zone (200m to 1,000m deep) gets very little light but is home to a wide variety of organisms and billions of tons of organic matter.

The new study warns that climate change could cause a 20-40% reduction in twilight zone life by the end of the century.

And in a high-emissions future, life in the twilight zone could be severely depleted within 150 years, with no recovery for thousands of years.

“We still know relatively little about the ocean twilight zone, but using evidence from the past we can understand what may happen in the future,” said Dr Katherine Crichton, from the University of Exeter, and lead author of the study.

The research team, made up of paleontologists and ocean modelers, looked at how abundant life was in the twilight zone in past warm climates, using records from preserved microscopic shells in ocean sediments.

How wiggly spaghetti guard the genome

The image shows an artistic impression of the rocky scaffold structure of the nuclear pore complex filled with intrinsically disordered nucleoporins in the central channel depicted as seaweeds. In this work, the viewer dives into the dark hole of the nuclear pore complex to shine light on the disordered nucleoporins.
Illustration Credit: ©: Sara Mingu

Tiny pores in the cell nucleus play an essential role for healthy aging by protecting and preserving the genetic material. A team from the Department of Theoretical Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main and the Synthetic Biophysics of Protein Disorder group at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has literally filled a hole in the understanding of the structure and function of these nuclear pores. The scientists found out how intrinsically disordered proteins in the center of the pore can form a spaghetti-like mobile barrier that is permeable for important cellular factors but blocks viruses or other pathogens.

Human cells shield their genetic material inside the cell nucleus, protected by the nuclear membrane. As the control center of the cell, the nucleus must be able to exchange important messenger molecules, metabolites or proteins with the rest of the cell. About 2,000 pores are therefore built into the nuclear membrane, each consisting of about 1,000 proteins.

Drug for rare form of ALS approved by FDA

A new drug has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a rare, inherited form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Called tofersen, the drug — developed by Biogen Inc. and based in part on research conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — slows the progression of the deadly, paralyzing disease. 

Video Credit: Huy Mach and Tamara Bhandari

A new drug has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a rare, inherited form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a paralyzing neurological disease. Known as tofersen, the drug has been shown to slow progression of the deadly disease. International clinical trials of tofersen, developed by the global biotechnology company Biogen Inc., were led by a neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Tofersen, also known by the brand name Qalsody, is designed for ALS patients whose disease is caused by mutations in the gene SOD1. In the phase 3 clinical trial, the drug reduced molecular signs of disease and curbed neurodegeneration in the first six months of use. Over longer time frames, some participants experienced a stabilization of muscle strength and control.

The drug is approved under the accelerated approval pathway, under which FDA may approve drugs for serious conditions where there is an unmet medical need and a drug is shown to have an effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients.

Membrane proteins of cyanobacteria and higher organisms are structurally highly similar

SynDLP, the dynamin-like protein of the cyanobacterium Synechocystis, forms highly ordered oligomeric structures that bind to membranes.
Illustration Credit: ©: Lucas Gewehr, Dirk Schneider

The cells of living organisms are equipped with proteins that are involved in the shaping and remodeling of cellular membranes, thereby performing important tasks. The cell membrane encloses the cell interior, but is constantly remodeled, for example, due to membrane budding, invagination, or fusion processes. This also involves various proteins that were long assumed to be present exclusively or predominantly in higher organisms. In the past 10 to 20 years, however, proteins have been identified or predicted to be present also in simple organisms that do not possess a nucleus. In a research collaboration, a protein involved in membrane remodeling in cyanobacteria has now been described for the first time. The existence of such a bacterial protein was suspected, but proof was still pending. The studied protein is likely a bacterial representative of a similar protein found in higher organisms such as animals and plants.