News by Subject Biology

A new WCS paper published in the journal BioScience finds that the enormous trends toward population stabilization, poverty alleviation, and urbanization are rewriting the future of biodiversity conservation in the 21st century, offering new hope for the world's wildlife and wild places.

Scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have generated an atlas of the human genome that illuminates the roles our genes play in health and disease. The gene atlas, created using a state-of-the-art gene editing technology and human embryonic stem cells, enables a new functional view on how we study the human genome, and provides a tool that will change how we study and treat cancer and genetic disorders.

From energy materials to disease diagnostics, new microscopy techniques can provide more nuanced insight. Researchers first need to understand the effects of radiation on samples, which is possible with a new device developed for holding tightly sealed liquid cell samples for transmission electron microscopy.

When endangered killer whales swim through the sheltered waters of Puget Sound, they leave behind traces of 'environmental DNA' that researchers can detect as much as two hours later has found.

Using new technologies to track how vision guides foot placement, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin come one step closer in determining what is going on in the brain while we walk, paving the way for better treatment for mobility impairments -- strokes, aging and Parkinson's -- and technology development -- prosthetics and robots.

A team led by Columbia University Biomedical Engineering Professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic has designed a creative new approach to help injured hearts regenerate by applying extracellular vesicles secreted by cardiomyocytes rather than implanting the cells. The study shows that the cardiomyocytes derived from human pluripotent stem cells (derived in turn from a small sample of blood) could be a powerful, untapped source of therapeutic microvesicles that could lead to safe and effective treatments of damaged hearts.