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11 stories tagged ‘Cell’
Peter Turnbaugh and co-authors Corinne Ferrier Maurice and Henry Joseph Haiser show that as drugs are administered, the activity of human gut microbes can change dramatically. Understanding how those changes affect drug chemistry could help researchers to design drugs that work more effectively and antibiotics that more specifically target pathogens.
Scientists at Harvard have pioneered a breakthrough technique that can reproduce an individual’s entire genome from a single cell. The development could revolutionize everything from cancer treatment, by allowing doctors to obtain a genetic fingerprint of a person’s cancer early in treatment, to prenatal testing.
A new study reports that the superabundance of microbial life lining our GI tracts has co-evolved with us. These bacteria, which are essential for a healthy immune system, are ultimately our evolutionary partners.
An opening against Alzheimer’s
Findings by a team at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggest a new strategy for diagnosing and treating Alzheimer’s disease.
‘A timeout from your regular life’
Scientist Benny Shilo left his developmental biology lab to spend a year as a fellow at Radcliffe, where he explores the intersection of art and science to foster greater public understanding.
New way to explore how life, disease work
Researchers have built a map that shows how thousands of proteins in a fruit fly cell communicate with each other. This is the largest and most detailed protein interaction map of a multicellular organism, demonstrating how approximately one-third of the proteins cooperate to keep life going.
Breathing easier with lung regeneration
Harvard researchers have cloned stem cells from the airways of the human lung and have shown that these cells can form into the lung’s alveoli air sac tissue. Mouse models suggest that these same stem cells are deployed to regenerate lung tissue during acute infection, such as during influenza.
Scientists at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have successfully disrupted the function of a cancer gene involved in the formation of most human tumors by tampering with the gene’s “on” switch and growth signals, rather than targeting the gene itself.
After decades of failed efforts, researchers have discovered, through a combination of digital database mining and laboratory assays, the linchpin protein that drives mitochondria’s calcium machinery.
Emre Basar seeks to understand how small interfering RNA (siRNA) can be harnessed and integrated into cells with the goal of silencing the expression of certain proteins that allow diseases like breast cancer and HIV to proliferate inside the body.
Author and Harvard doctor Atul Gawande explored the practice of solitary confinement in a lecture at Harvard Law School.
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