Aggregator
This common amino acid helped mice survive deadly inflammation
A Salk Institute study found that a simple dietary amino acid, methionine, dramatically improved survival in mice facing severe infections and inflammatory conditions. Rather than directly targeting the immune system, methionine boosted kidney filtration, helping the body flush out excess inflammatory molecules that can cause tissue damage, brain dysfunction, wasting, and death.
This drug delayed rheumatoid arthritis for years after treatment ended
A promising new study suggests rheumatoid arthritis may not be as inevitable as once thought for people at high risk. Researchers found that just one year of treatment with the immune-targeting drug abatacept delayed the onset of rheumatoid arthritis by up to four years, with benefits lasting long after treatment ended.
The forgotten organ that could predict how long you live
A long-overlooked organ may hold surprising clues to healthy aging and cancer survival. Researchers at Mass General Brigham used AI to analyze CT scans from tens of thousands of adults and found that people with healthier thymuses—a small immune-system organ once thought to become largely irrelevant after childhood—lived longer and had substantially lower risks of heart disease, cancer, and death.
Interplay between cohesin and TORC1 links chromosome segregation and gene expression to environmental changes
Cohesin is a DNA tethering complex essential for chromosome structure and function. In fission yeast, defects in the cohesin loader Mis4 result in chromosome segregation defects and dysregulated expression of genes near chromosome ends. A genetic screen for suppressors of the thermosensitive growth defect of mis4-G1487D identified several hypomorphic mutants of the Target of Rapamycin Complex 1 (TORC1), a conserved kinase that integrates cellular signals to regulate growth and metabolism through...
Feynmann's solved ‘restaurant dilemma’ 50 years ago — now a study confirms his mathematics
Smartphone camera takes users’ pulse passively during device use
Passive heart-rate monitoring during smartphone use in everyday life
Enantioselective hydrogen atom relay via non-covalent catalyst assembly
Obesity doesn’t equate to ill health: why the ‘disease’ label doesn’t always fit
Poor supervision is pushing young researchers out of academia
Robust projections of risks to the Amazon rainforest
Why it’s time to bin recommendation letters in science job applications
Science fiction: nine lab-life novels for your holiday reading
How long can humans live? We simply don’t know
Can Polymarket predict the progress of science, or are subject-experts better?
Scientists found the hidden switch fueling alzheimer’s brain inflammation
Scientists at Scripps Research have uncovered a molecular “switch” that appears to fuel the damaging brain inflammation seen in Alzheimer’s disease. They found that a protein called STING becomes chemically altered in a way that keeps the brain’s immune system stuck in overdrive, harming the connections between nerve cells.
Why cancer spreads more in middle age than in old age
Melanoma may not become steadily more dangerous with age as scientists once assumed. In a surprising discovery, researchers found that cancer spread was lowest in young mice, surged in middle-aged mice, and then dropped again in very old mice. The key appears to be a special type of immune cell that helps keep cancer dormant and prevents it from spreading.
Multimorbidity as a predictor of mortality in companion dogs
Multimorbidity, the presence of two or more conditions, is associated with a higher risk of death as individuals age. However, modeling multimorbidity in laboratory animals is difficult, if not impossible, because specific conditions are seldom individually diagnosed and treated in these settings. Because of their shared environment, physiology, and genetic diversity, and because they are medically managed as individuals, companion dogs have potential to serve as a translational multimorbidity...
AI-Driven discovery of brain-penetrant mTOR-independent autophagy enhancers for Alzheimer's disease
Current Alzheimer's disease therapies offer limited efficacy and are often accompanied by significant side effects, underscoring the urgent need for new treatment strategies. Enhancing autophagy represents a promising therapeutic approach, yet most known autophagy inducers act through the mTOR-dependent pathway, which broadly affects cellular metabolism and proliferation, and their clinical potential is further limited by poor blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration. To address these twin...
Liver Aging Index: A Noninvasive Score for Liver Biological Aging and Liver-Related Outcomes in Multicohorts
Biological aging is a key determinant of liver disease and mortality, but there is little evidence on noninvasive index for assessment of liver biological aging. We developed the Liver Aging Index (LAI) in the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB, N = 21,629) using Cox-Gompertz proportional hazards model. The LAI incorporated three clinical factors (body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure), eight plasma biomarkers (glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high- and low-density...