News by Subject Biology

Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, Inserm, the CNRS, Collège de France, University Pierre et Marie Curie, and University Clermont Auvergne, have recently restored hearing and balance in a mouse model of Usher syndrome type 1G characterized by profound congenital deafness and vestibular disorders caused by severe dysmorphogenesis of the mechanoelectrical transduction apparatus of the inner ear's sensory cells. These findings open up new possibilities for the development of gene therapy treatments for hereditary forms of deafness.

Jumping genes, transposons, are part of the genome of most organisms, aggregated into families and can damage the genome by jumping. How hosts suppress the jumping is well investigated. Why they still can jump has hardly been understood so far. Researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna investigated for the first time in all transposons of the host organism, which properties and host environments facilitate jumping. They showed that family affiliation is more important than position.

Charged particles may be small, but they matter to astronauts. NASA's Human Research Program (HRP) is investigating these particles to solve one of its biggest challenges for a human journey to Mars: space radiation and its effects on the human body.

Chronic tissue inflammation resulting from obesity is an underlying cause of insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. But the mechanism by which this occurs has remained cloaked, until now. In a paper, published in the journal Cell, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers identified exosomes -- extremely small vesicles or sacs secreted from most cell types -- as the missing link.

Checkpoint inhibitor-based immunotherapy has been shown to be very effective in recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer but only in a minority of patients. University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers may have found a way to double down on immunotherapy's effectiveness.

McGill University researchers have discovered a mechanism through which mitochondria, the energy factory of our body's cells, play a role in preventing cells from dying when the cells are deprived of nutrients - a finding that points to a potential target for next-generation cancer drugs.