Tag: Nature Methods

  • Nation & World

    COPD, asthma now can be studied outside the body

    A multicomponent, microfluidic small airway-on-a-chip model provides new opportunities to study human lung inflammatory disorders such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma, and to test preclinical drug candidates outside the human body.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Measuring life’s tugs and nudges

    Harvard scientists have devised the first method to measure the push and pull of cells as embryonic tissue develops. The cells’ tiny forces are measured in 3-D tissues and living embryos.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Brainbow,’ version 2.0

    Led by Joshua Sanes and Jeff Lichtman, a group of Harvard researchers has made a host of technical improvements in the “Brainbow” imaging technique.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mapping microbes in people

    New studies involving Harvard School of Public Health researchers have helped to identify and analyze the vast human “microbiome,” the more than 5 million microbial genes in the body.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Guiding lights

    In a scientific first that could shed light on how signals travel in the brain and how learning alters neural pathways, scientists at Harvard have created genetically altered neurons that light up as they fire. The work may also lead to speedier drug development.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Imaging instruction

    Harvard researchers have developed a “primer” to identify some of the most useful probes for super-resolution imaging. As described recently on Nature Methods’ website, the work also identified the key characteristics that are important for imaging, giving researchers a framework for evaluating other probes, or even designing custom-made molecules to use in imaging.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Light touch

    Physicists and bioengineers have developed an optical instrument allowing them to control the behavior of a worm just by shining a tightly focused beam of light at individual neurons inside the organism.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Light maps neurons’ effects

    Scientists come up with method to track neurons as they interact with each other.

    3 minutes