News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Case Western Reserve University researchers have converted the CRISPR 'recognition induced enzymatic signal' to an electrical signal, which was then used to detect the biomarkers for viruses such as HPV or parvo. They hope the end result could be a new 'universal biosensing' point-of-care medical device -- similar to the existing commercial blood-glucose sensor -- that rapidly and accurately detects those viruses and more.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have shown how the brain's circadian rhythm in rats is, among other things, controlled by the stress hormone corticosterone -- in humans called cortisol. This has been shown by means of a completely new method in the form of implanted micropumps.

An unexpected finding from the Scripps Research laboratory of Xiang-Lei Yang, PhD, has illuminated a potential strategy for treating the inherited neurological disease Charcot-Marie-Tooth, for which there is no approved medicine today.

How does the brain translate information from the outside world into something we remember? An international team of researchers working in the Human Brain Project have zoomed in on the neuronal circuits in the striatum, a brain structure involved in memory, behavior and reward learning. The findings, published in the PLOS Computational Biology Journal, increase our knowledge of the basic functioning of the nervous system and its ability to learn and adapt to changing conditions.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a new phenomenon in the brain that could explain the development of early stages of neurodegeneration that is seen in diseases such as ALS, which affects voluntary muscle movement such as walking and talking.  The discovery was so novel, the scientists needed to coin a new term to describe it: mitoautophagy, a collection of self-destructive mitochondria in diseased upper motor neurons of the brain that begin to disintegrate from within at a very early age.

Professor Juan Lerma's group, from the UMH-CSIC Institute of Neurosciences, in Alicante (Spain), has identified the gene called GRIK1, fundamental in the balance between excitation and inhibition in the brain, as one of the causes for people with Down syndrome having spatial orientation problems.

Researchers at the University of Dundee have discovered a new enzyme that inhibits the LRRK2 pathway. Mutations of the LRRK2 gene are the most common cause of genetic Parkinson's disease. The enzyme they found - called PPM1H - has been shown to possess remarkable properties to reverse the biology triggered by LRRK2.

Slow oscillating neural activity during non-REM sleep triggers waves of cerebrospinal fluid that flow in and out of the sleeping brain, washing it of harmful metabolic waste products, researchers find.