Scientists Grow First Functioning Human Lungs. February 18, 2014 - Lungs are a notoriously delicate organ. That makes useable donor lungs hard to come by—in 2010, just 1,800 lung transplants took place in the United States. However, researchers are getting closer to addressing the shortage by growing lungs, for the first time, in the lab. Although these lungs haven’t been actually transplanted, the technology could someday help shorten the list of people waiting for donors. Scientists at the University of Texas used damaged lungs from two children who died in car accidents.
The lung is a very complex organ, and that complexity is one reason why the tissue engineering of lungs is lagging behind that of other, less complex organs. Harmonizing a Broken Heart: Stem Cells Keep Cardiac Beat in Synchrony. First Posted: Sep 04, 2013 03:00 PM EDT Stem cell therapy used to regenerate injured tissue in the heart also restores synchronous pumping, new research shows, and could thus be used to make pacing devices redundant. Like Us on Facebook The team behind the study proposes a novel strategy of “biological resynchronization” in which stem cells repair heart muscle damage to reestablish correct cardiac motion, replacing pacing devices, Heart attacks limit local oxygen, which can kill areas of cardiac tissue — called ‘infarcted’ areas — and also leave scarring.
This damage leads to a lack of synchrony in the heart beat motion. Current therapies use pacing devices, but these require healthy tissue for optimal outcome, meaning a third of patients do not respond well to this treatment. Professor Andre Terzic, who led the study, explains the importance of this potential new therapy: “Heart chambers must beat in synchrony to ensure proper pumping performance. Reference: Obesity FTO Gene Discovered, Higher Levels of 'Hunger Hormone' Ghrelin in Blood.
First Posted: Jul 15, 2013 02:39 PM EDT Red blood cells (Photo : Flickr/Andrew Mason) Health experts believe they may have targeted a gene that causes obesity. Like Us on Facebook Known as the FTO gene, researchers believe that this affects one in six of the population, making those carrying the genetic tendencies 70 percent more likely to become obese. A series of tests showed that people with the variation not only had higher levels of the "hunger hormone" ghrelin in their blood, but they also had an increased sensitivity to the chemical in their brains, according to the study.
"It's a double hit," said Rachel Batterham from University College London, who led the study, via Reuters. The study shows that following meals, researchers looked at blood samples to analyze functional magnetic resonance imaging of the volunteers' brains. Batterham said the work provided new insights and possible new leads for treatment regarding experimental drugs that are known to suppress appetite. A New Programming Language That Can Shape Our DNA. Scientists have studied the behavior of complex biological molecules such as DNA for decades. Now they are moving to being able to control that behavior in test tubes and inside cells.
Last month, a team led at the University of Washington announced they had devised and successfully tested a programming language that can guide the assembly of synthetic DNA molecules into a circuit that can perform a task, just as a software developer would write code to send commands to a computer. Chemists have always used mathematical models to study how molecules behave in mixtures.
“Instead of thinking of this as a descriptive language that allows you to understand the chemistry, we said, we’re going to create a prescriptive language that allows you to program something,” says Georg Seelig, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the school. A lot of work remains, but the broader field of synthetic biology is growing.
Computers Made Out of DNA, Slime and Other Strange Stuff | Wired Science. Everybody knows a computer is a machine made of metal and plastic, with microchip cores turning streams of electrons into digital reality. A century from now, though, computers could look quite different. They might be made from neurons and chemical baths, from bacterial colonies and pure light, unrecognizable to our old-fashioned 21st century eyes. Far-fetched? A little bit. But a computer is just a tool for manipulating information. Images: 1) CERN 2) Martinez et al.