Search

Glycogen Storage Disease 1a (Gsd1a) is an inherited disorder caused by glucose 6-phosphatase (G6Pase-α) deficiency and characterized by hypoglycaemia and high risk of liver cancer. Here the authors develop a mRNA-based G6Pase-α delivery therapy that is efficacious and safe in a mouse model of GSD1a.

Experiments in mouse and hamster models show that monoclonal antibody combinations, using antibodies that correspond to products in clinical development, largely retain their efficacy in protecting against currently prevailing variant strains of SARS-CoV-2.

The past year has seen a beleaguered Food and Drug Administration publicly denounced as unable to protect the US public. As the political pressure mounts, Meredith Wadman joins the agency's hunt for a remedy to its ills.

Trap-assisted recombination caused by localised sub-gap states is one of the factors limiting power-conversion efficiency in solar cells, yet the presence and relevance is still under debate in organic solar cells. Here, the authors reveal that this recombination loss is universally present under operational conditions in these devices.

Rational design was used to develop a suite of red-shifted, bioconjugatable heptamethine cyanine dyes for multiplexed in vivo imaging in the shortwave-infrared/near-infrared-II region.

Here, using diagnostic tools in a longitudinal cohort of ZIKV-infected pregnant women of the French Guiana Western Hospital Center (CHOG) and their infants, the authors investigate the long term neuropathological effects of congenital infection, finding that a laboratory confirmed congenital ZIKV infection at birth is associated with higher risks of adverse neurological outcomes up to three years of life.

washington

The US House of Representatives has unanimously approved a 60-day moratorium on visits to US nuclear weapons laboratories from nationals of ‘sensitive countries’.

Washington

The US company General Motors last week became the third major automobile manufacturer to withdraw from a lobbying group that has been leading opposition to the 1997 Kyoto accord designed to reduce global warming.

washington

The future of the office responsible for ensuring that human subjects are protected in US biomedical research is likely to be determined soon.

washington

A conservative Republican has introduced a bill banning federal payments to any organization that “engages in human cloning or human cloning techniques”

A study that tracked mammal populations before, during and after a severe storm in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park finds that behavioural responses and survival are linked to body size, with increased mortality of small species owing to limited mobility and changes in food availability.

BK potassium channels have been previously shown to mediate SCN circadian firing, although the precise mechanisms are unclear. Here, using knockout and rescue approaches, the authors find that the ß2 ‘ball-and-chain’ confers BK channel inactivation during the day, promoting SCN electrical upstate.

The APOBEC mutational signature is prevalent in different tumour types. Here, using HPV16- positive cervical samples, the authors show that the signature is more prevalent in the viral genome of benign or clearing HPV16 infections compared to the viral genomes of the more advanced precancerous lesions or cervical cancer.

The IGH@ proto-oncogene translocation is a known genomic driver in several blood cancers. Here, the authors show that IGH-DUX4 translocation occurs on the silenced IGH allele avoiding toxic high-level expression of DUX4 in B-ALL.

Plans by a Chicago embryologist to clone a human being have renewed pressure for swift action to ban the practice in the United States. But scientists warn that an ill-drafted law could stifle genuine research.

De novo mutations in MSL3 cause an X-linked syndrome affecting both males and females. MSL3 mutations reduce H4K16ac levels and lead to misregulation of cellular pathways involved in morphogenesis, cellular shape, and cell migration.

Deregulation of the RAS GTPase cycle due to mutations in RAS genes is commonly associated with cancer development. Here authors use NMR and mass spectrometry to shows that KRAS phosphorylation via Src alters the conformation of switch I and II regions and thereby impacts the GTPase cycle.

Passively administered neutralizing antibodies have been shown to protect macaques against challenge by the HIV/SIV chimeric SHIV. The antiviral effects of the monoclonal antibody b12 are crucially dependent on antibody effector mechanisms.

New delivery platforms are needed to allow broader application of biotherapeutics for CNS diseases. Here, the authors show enhanced CNS delivery with a transport vehicle engineered to bind CD98hc, a highly expressed target at the blood-brain barrier.

Scientists and politicians in New Jersey thought that they had a chance to make their state a stem-cell player. Voters thought otherwise. As proponents prepare for a second attempt, Meredith Wadman investigates what went wrong in the Garden State.

Risk for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is higher when there are first-degree family members with the disease. Here, Scelo and colleagues perform a genome-wide association meta-analysis and new genome-wide scan to identify seven new loci with significant RCC association.

Prostate cancer often does not progress to invasive disease and thus markers predicting the course of the disease progression are critical for optimal treatment choices. Here the authors show that variants at two genetic loci correlate with the aggressiveness of prostate cancer.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia is a highly inheritable cancer. Here the authors conduct a metaanalysis of four genome-wide association studies and identify three novel loci located near EOMES, SERPINB6 and LPPassociated with risk of this disease.

Interactions that generate directed movement in response to a chemical stimulus occur in nature but have been difficult to realize in synthetic systems. Now, it has been shown that asymmetric micelle-mediated exchange of haloalkanes can be used to create tunable chasing interactions between chemically distinct microdroplets. Collective interactions lead to the formation of droplet assemblies with emergent self-organization and collective behaviours.

Dopaminergic neurons heavily rely on Ca²⁺ channels to maintain their rhythmic activity, and this reliance increases with age. But adult neurons can be tempted to revert to using the Na⁺/HCN channels, as younger neurons do, by treatment with a commonly used drug.

The stability of expression of the transcription factor Foxp3 in vivo has not been thoroughly assessed. Bluestone and colleagues find that Foxp3 expression can be unstable and that cells that lose Foxp3 expression can assume a proinflammatory autoaggressive phenotype.

Critics say that antibody therapy is too expensive for its African target population.

Dozens of chimpanzees retired from research may have to continue to live in lab-like conditions.

Analysis of atmospheric data on two enantiomerically separated forms of monoterpene from a controlled drought and rewetting experiment in an enclosed tropical rainforest ecosystem showed distinct diel emission peaks, regulated by different production pathways.

The effect of increasing surface melt on annual discharge is unknown for the Greenland Ice Sheet. Here, the authors find that Greenland’s largest single-glacier contributor to sea-level rise accommodates basal floods following supraglacial lake-drainage events with limited impact on ice flow.

Scientists already feeling the bite of US budget sequester.

A computational approach to generate reference-free protein families from the sequence space in metagenomes reveals an enormously diverse functional space.

But ‘fiscal cliff’ threatens science and climate goals.

Dimethyl fumarate (DMF) is an anti-inflammatory drug proposed as a treatment for COVID19. Here the results are reported from a randomised trial testing DMF treatment in 713 patients hospitalised with COVID-19. DMF was not associated with any improvement in day 5 outcomes.

The sub-gap absorption coefficient in organic semiconductors is often characterized by Urbach energies, which quantify both structural and dynamic disorders, yet the fundamental is not well-understood. Here, the authors provide a strategy to determine excitonic disorder energy, and reveal that absorption at energies well below the gap is universally dominated by thermal broadening.