Blocking the Brakes: Helping Your Immune System Battle Cancer
There’s been a lot of buzz recently about cancer immunotherapy, including its selection as Science Magazine’s 2013 Breakthrough of the Year. Immunotherapy has introduced a new class of drugs that harness your immune system’s ability to fight off cancer cells. While traditional cancer drugs act by directly attacking cancer cells, immunotherapies instead stimulate your immune cells to kill the cancer themselves. Immunotherapy has been gaining … Continue reading Blocking the Brakes: Helping Your Immune System Battle Cancer
Young Blood Rejuvenation – Groundbreaking Science or Old News?
“… several groups have previously demonstrated that circulating factors found in young mouse blood are capable of rejuvenating various organs in aged mice.” Continue reading Young Blood Rejuvenation – Groundbreaking Science or Old News?
In the Loop with Poop: Intestinal microbes in health and immunity
Presented by Chris Garris Did you know that the average human gut is home to over 100 trillion microorganisms? These numbers are not from a diseased state, but rather are representative of a normal, healthy human gut. Clearly, this suggests that the vast majority of microorganisms living within us are not pathogenic. Animal studies of germ-free or selective gut colonization by microbes provide growing evidence … Continue reading In the Loop with Poop: Intestinal microbes in health and immunity
Increasingly Acidic Oceans Are Dissolving Snail Shells
From Snails Are Dissolving in Pacific Ocean (original article here) Image courtesy of Arctic Exploration 2002, Russ Hopcroft, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, NOAA/OER Recent findings show that CO2 emissions are increasingly acidifying oceans, causing snail shells in the Pacific Ocean to dissolve! This may have far reaching impacts on ocean life, affecting a variety of organisms, especially those within the same food chain. The world’s … Continue reading Increasingly Acidic Oceans Are Dissolving Snail Shells
Origins of Eukaryotes: Who are our closest relatives?
Where do we come from? How did all the diversity of life originate? These are some of the most intriguing biological questions we still struggle to answer. In order to understand the processes that produce the diversity of life on Earth, evolutionary biologists study the historical relationships of organisms, their phylogeny. There are only three major kinds of cellular organisms that form the Tree of … Continue reading Origins of Eukaryotes: Who are our closest relatives?
‘Pop up’ wetlands pop up to aid in bird migration
meshing agricultural landscapes with the needs of wildlife is having your cake and eating it too Continue reading ‘Pop up’ wetlands pop up to aid in bird migration
Diatoms: Nature’s nanotechnologists
Microscopy images above show two model diatom species: Thalassiosira pseudonana (left) and Phaeodactylum tricornutum (right). If you live in Boston, nanofactories of sophistication well beyond anything the human race has come up with are just a Charles River away. Diatoms (seen in the images above) are unicellular photosynthetic microalgae that can be found in freshwater and marine environments worldwide. These tiny creatures have plastids with … Continue reading Diatoms: Nature’s nanotechnologists
Fingerprinting cancer with blood: blood-based biopsies bring new ease and precision to cancer screening
Imagine if, instead of painful and invasive tissue biopsies of solid tumors, all that a physician needed was a 10 mL blood sample (about a tablespoon’s worth) to diagnose cancer, inform treatment decisions, or monitor the response of a tumor to treatment. Often, when a tumor is identified, doctors will surgically remove a piece of the tumor—that is, perform a biopsy—and subject the removed tumor … Continue reading Fingerprinting cancer with blood: blood-based biopsies bring new ease and precision to cancer screening
A distant galaxy acts as a giant magnifying glass
From “Detection of the Gravitational Lens Magnifying a Type Ia Supernova“ The supernova of PS1-10afx was seen in 2010 and extremely bright for its class and location ~9 billion light years away. New research suggests that a galaxy in front of it, invisible in the bright light, had acted as a giant magnifying lens for the light on its way to Earth. This finding, when … Continue reading A distant galaxy acts as a giant magnifying glass
Stem cells: The key to longevity?
Scientists recently analyzed the blood of a woman who lived a healthy life up to the age of 115. They were surprised to discover that 64% of her blood cells were descended from only two different blood stem cells. Is this the key to longevity? There’s reason to be cautious with these conclusions: 36% of this patient’s blood came from a much larger, diverse group … Continue reading Stem cells: The key to longevity?