A gift of medical books from an unlikely source spurred Chrystal Starbird’s scientific career. She talks about what motivates her research on cell surface receptors and the obstacles she has faced as a Black woman in academia.
Death rates among blood cancer patients who contract COVID-19 are higher than for those with other cancers, pointing to impaired immunity that makes it hard to overcome the virus.
Using CRISPR to swap an archaic variant of the NOVA1 gene into human stem cells, researchers create organoids with neurodevelopmental differences from those carrying modern DNA.
Alejandra Manjarrez, PhD | Feb 8, 2021 | 4 min read
While studying a degenerative eye disease, researchers find the first evidence that cells produce endogenous DNA in the cytoplasm. Drugs that block this activity are linked with reduced risk of atrophic age-related macular degeneration.
The newly discovered microbe seems to be responsible for a mysterious neurological disease that has killed dozens of critically endangered Western chimpanzees.
This year has started out in a fashion that is sadly similar to the way 2020 unspooled. But the steady pace of scientific discovery helps maintain our sense of hope.
The scientific community bid farewell to researchers who furthered the fields of molecular biology, virology, sleep science, and immunology, among others.
This year’s most captivating illustrations tell stories from the micro scale—such as newborn neurons in the adult brain and bacteria in the infant gut—to the scale of entire ecosystems, including reintroduced predators and rising seas.
Researchers repaired what is otherwise irreversible damage in the animals’ ocular neurons, by activating transcription factors ordinarily used to generate induced pluripotent stem cells.