WIKIMEDIA, ERNEST FNewborns have infamously weak immune systems, which make them susceptible to various infections. According to a new mouse study, though, having a dampened immune response can be a good thing—it helps let beneficial bacteria colonize. Researchers from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center showed in Nature this week that CD71+ cells actively suppress immune responses in newborn mice.
“This more intricate regulation of immune responses makes more sense than immaturity, because it allows a protective response to be mounted if needed,” study coauthor Sing Sing Way told The Scientist.
ADAM HIGGINS AND JENS KARLSSONCompared with single cells, tissue samples are notoriously difficult to freeze. Researchers from Villanova University in Pennsylvania and the University of Oregon this week showed that tight junctions between cells are to blame for intracellular ice formation (IIF), which can severely damage frozen tissues.
John Bischof, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist that this finding “has important implications in explaining ice formation and the ensuing injury in tissues, a poorly understood phenomenon in cryobiology and regenerative medicine research.”
FLICKR, ZEISS MICROSCOPYInvestigators from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, have found that silencing a single gene can cause profound secondary mutations in the yeast genome. Their observations were published in Molecular Cell this week.
