Human Stem Cells Converted to Functional Lung Cells. NEW YORK, NY — For the first time, scientists have succeeded in transforming human stem cells into functional lung and airway cells. The advance, reported by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, has significant potential for modeling lung disease, screening drugs, studying human lung development, and, ultimately, generating lung tissue for transplantation. The study was published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology. Human embryonic stem cells differentiated into type II alveolar lung epithelial cells (green). A large portion of these transformed cells express surfactant protein B (red), which indicates that they are functional type II cells. Image credit: Sarah Xuelian Huang, PhD at the Columbia Center for Translational Immunology at CUMC. The research builds on Dr.
In the current study, Dr. “In the longer term, we hope to use this technology to make an autologous lung graft,” Dr. The other contributors are Sarah X.L. Genetics: Junking the idea of junk. Frederick Sanger: The father of genomics. Mammoths can be cloned from stem cells, says creator of Dolly the sheep. Science - The debate over whether, how, and why to clone extinct animals is louder than ever as scientists inch toward reviving long-extinct species. Ian Wilmut, a professor at the University of Edinburgh's Center for Regenerative Medicine outlined on July 31 a way to clone a wooly mammoth, 2 months after researchers in Russia unearthed a piece of mammoth containing liquid blood.
Wilmut is responsible for cloning Dolly the sheep in the 1990s. Related Storyline On Circa One of the challenges of cloning extinct species is that DNA breaks down over time. Some scientists have ruled out the possibility of cloning dinosaurs due to this fact. "That's not making a mammoth. Cloning a mammoth would require retrieving tissue cells and converting them to stem cells. Woolly mammoths thrived in North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene period, which ended about 11,700 years ago, and are thought to have been hunted into extinction by humans of that era. Related Storylines On Circa.
Giant toothed platypus roamed Australia › News in Science (ABC Science) News in Science Tuesday, 5 November 2013 Anna SallehABC Mega monotreme A giant platypus with powerful teeth roamed the rivers of northern Australia between 5 and 15 million years ago, researchers say. Dubbed 'Platypus Godzilla', the creature was twice the size of a modern platypus and had teeth to chew crayfish, frogs and small turtles. Palaentologists say the fossil is forcing a re-think about the evolution of the species, and warn it could indicate the smaller modern platypus is on track to extinction. "It looks like a modern platypus on steroids ... "It definitely had good teeth and was a very robust animal with a big brutish-looking snout," says Archer. The one-metre species, which is about twice the size of the modern platypus is called Obdurodon tharalkooschild.
The giant platypus was identified from a fossilised molar tooth discovered at Australia's famous Riversleigh World Heritage area. "It's an extremely distinctive tooth," says Archer. Teeth and diet Extinction risk. Scientists discover DNA body clock. A US scientist has discovered an internal body clock based on DNA that measures the biological age of our tissues and organs. The clock shows that while many healthy tissues age at the same rate as the body as a whole, some of them age much faster or slower. The age of diseased organs varied hugely, with some many tens of years "older" than healthy tissue in the same person, according to the clock.
Researchers say that unravelling the mechanisms behind the clock will help them understand the ageing process and hopefully lead to drugs and other interventions that slow it down. Therapies that counteract natural ageing are attracting huge interest from scientists because they target the single most important risk factor for scores of incurable diseases that strike in old age. Horvath looked at the DNA of nearly 8,000 samples of 51 different healthy and cancerous cells and tissues. Specifically, he looked at how methylation, a natural process that chemically modifies DNA, varied with age. What’s That Smell? Exotic Scents Made From Re-engineered Yeast.
Lucky Field Researcher Witnesses Birth of Sloth! Happy International Day of the Sloth! | PsiVid. As I share this with you, it is the International Day of the Sloth, 2013. Jojo and mom Madonna up in a tree in Costa Rica Back on October 5, 2013, my twitter feed was already quite busy, full of well wishes for my birthday, (which I share, coincidentally, with astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson and cosmologist, Sean M.
Carroll–let’s chalk this up to it being the day most people are born on because our parents “celebrated” New Year’s Eve!) , when a tweet comes through, telling me about field biologist Becky Cliffe witnessing the birth of a three-toed sloth in the wild! Sloth researcher Rebecca “Becky” Cliffe, a PhD candidate hailing from the UK but doing field work in Costa Rica, was out following up on one of her tagged research sloths, when a female named Madonna, who had been raised in the Sloth Sanctuary of Costa Rica and released into the wild, climbed down lower in a tree and gave birth to a baby right in front of her eyes!
A brand new baby sloth just after birth. Books and apps make animal-spotting easier than ever - life - 01 October 2013. Le calamar géant. Depuis dix ans, la chaîne japonaise NHK, en collaboration avec le Musée scientifique national japonais, cherchait un moyen de filmer le mystérieux calamar géant. À part quelques photos prises en 1996, il n’existait aucune preuve de son existence. Une expédition a été enfin menée l’été dernier par le Dr Tsunemi Kubodera, zoologiste marin et spécialiste du calamar, à bord d’un submersible spécialement conçu pour l’occasion. À environ 15 kilomètres à l’est de l’île de Chichi, dans le Pacifique nord, l’équipe de Kubodera a réussi, après une centaine de plongées et environ quatre cents heures passées sous l’eau, à rencontrer le mythique calamar géant à une profondeur de 630 mètres et à le suivre jusqu’à une profondeur de 900 mètres.
Les scientifiques ont estimé son envergure totale à huit mètres en l’absence de ses deux principaux appendices. S’il avait encore eu ses deux gigantesques "bras" caractéristiques de son espèce, il aurait probablement pu mesurer plus de seize mètres. Myrmecology: Can ants sense death.