But what exactly is bird flu? Why is it important? Does it affect humans? What can we do about it? Matt Koci is a virologist and immunologist whose work focuses on host-microbe interactions in birds. Here, Koci, a professor in North Carolina State University’s poultry science department, explains what you should know about bird flu: Q...
Month: <span>February 2022</span>
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The downside of machine learning in health care
Assistant Professor Marzyeh Ghassemi explores how hidden biases in medical data could compromise artificial intelligence approaches. While working toward her dissertation in computer science at MIT, Marzyeh Ghassemi wrote several papers on how machine-learning techniques from artificial intelligence could be applied to clinical data in order to predict patient outcomes. “It wasn’t until the end of my PhD work...
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What Do Memories Look Like?
One of the greatest mysteries in neuroscience is how groups of brain cells work together to form and maintain memories. Now a team of Columbia neuroscientists led by Attila Losonczy of the Zuckerman Institute has achieved a breakthrough in this area, capturing how brain cells in mice perform computations as the animals navigate the world. The researchers accomplished...
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Researchers find key blood stem cell regulator
A protein that masterminds the way DNA is wrapped within chromosomes has a major role in the healthy functioning of blood stem cells, which produce all blood cells in the body, according to a new study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The protein, known as histone H3.3, organizes the spool-like structures around which DNA is...
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Mosquitoes are seeing red: These new findings about their vision could help you hide from these disease vectors
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON IMAGE: NEW RESEARCH SHOWS THAT AEDES AEGYPTI MOSQUITOES ARE ATTRACTED TO SPECIFIC COLORS, INCLUDING RED. CREDIT: KILEY RIFFELL Beating the bite of mosquitoes this spring and summer could hinge on your attire and your skin. New research led by scientists at the University of Washington indicates that a common mosquito species —...
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Exhaustive study looks at relationships between diet, gut bacteria, and metabolites
by Children’s Hospital Boston This schematic illustrates the growth or “fitness” of various Bacteroides species exposed to different sugars, alone and with the bacterial metabolite butyrate. The strains in green on the right are the most fit and best able to tolerate butyrate, while those shown in red die off. The fitness profiles vary from...
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People with less memory loss in old age gain more knowledge
by Max Planck Society Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Do cognitive abilities change together, or do they change independently of each other? An international research team from the USA, Sweden, and Germany involving the Max Planck Institute for Human Development has presented new findings now published in Science Advances. At the age of 20, people usually find...
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Structure of central inflammation switch elucidated
by University of Bonn Looking at the CRID3 binding site in the NLRP3 protein. Credit: Johann F. Saba/UKB Researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Regensburg have elucidated the structure of a central cellular inflammatory switch. Their work shows which site of the giant protein called NLRP3 inhibitors can bind to. This opens the way...
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New anti-HIV antibody function discovered: Tethering of viral particles at the surface of cells
by Pasteur Institute HIV particles (in yellow) accumulating on the surface of an infected cell (in purple). Colorized scanning electron microscopy image. Credit: Stéphane Fremont, Jérémy Dufloo, Arnaud Echard, Timothée Bruel, Olivier Schwartz, Jean-Marc Panaud, Institut Pasteur Teams at the Institut Pasteur, CNRS, Vaccine Research Institute (VRI) and Université de Paris have discovered a new...
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Scientists use CRISPR activation method to reveal ‘Rosetta Stone’ of immune cell function
by Gladstone Institutes Zachary Steinhart (left) and Ralf Schmidt (right), scientists at the Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology led by Alex Marson, engineered a new CRISPR-based pipeline to test every gene in the genome and rapidly discover genes that can be “turned on” in immune cells to enhance their functions. Credit: Michael Short/Gladstone Institutes CRISPR...