Lifeboat Foundation

Two insect-like robots, a mini-bug and a water strider, developed at Washington State University, are the smallest, lightest and fastest fully functional micro-robots ever known to be created.

Such miniature robots could someday be used for work in areas such as artificial pollination, search and rescue, environmental monitoring, micro-fabrication or robotic-assisted surgery. Reporting on their work in the proceedings of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, the mini-bug weighs in at eight milligrams while the water strider weighs 55 milligrams. Both can move at about six millimeters a second.

“That is fast compared to other micro-robots at this scale, although it still lags behind their biological relatives,” said Conor Trygstad, a Ph.D. student in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and lead author on the work. An ant typically weighs up to five milligrams and can move at almost a meter per second.

Jeff Desjardins, Editor-in-Chief of Visual Capitalist, joins OPTO Sessions to discuss the profound and far-reaching potential of CRISPR and gene editing technology, which he believes could impact fields as diverse as oncology, agriculture and materials science.

On 8 December, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two cell-based gene therapies for the treatment of sickle cell disease. The decision marked a watershed moment in the history of healthcare, being the first time that gene therapies have won FDA approval.

One of the treatments, Casgevy, is the result of a collaboration between CRISPR Therapeutics [CRSP] and Vertex Pharmaceuticals [VRTX]. The other, Lyfgenia, was developed by bluebird bio [BLUE].

Complex computations carried out by self-assembling DNA tiles.

A genome-wide association study in 293,723 individuals identifies 74 genetic variants associated with educational attainment, which, although only explaining a small proportion of the variation in educational attainment, highlights candidate genes and pathways for further study.

Novel GHz-class NMR systems are enabling unprecedented life science and materials research in functional structural biology, drug discovery, metabolomics, and cleantech research.

Rice University materials scientists developed a fast, low-cost, scalable method to make covalent organic frameworks (COFs). Credit: Photo by Gustavo Raskosky/Rice University.

Materials scientists at Rice University have created an efficient, affordable, and scalable technique for producing covalent organic frameworks (COFs). These crystalline polymers are notable for their adjustable molecular structure, extensive surface area, and porosity, making them potentially valuable in areas like energy applications, semiconductor devices, sensors, filtration systems, and drug delivery.

“What makes these structures so special is that they are polymers but they arrange themselves in an ordered, repeating structure that makes it a crystal,” said Jeremy Daum, a Rice doctoral student and lead author of a study published in ACS Nano. “These structures look a bit like chicken wire ⎯ they’re hexagonal lattices that repeat themselves on a two-dimensional plane, and then they stack on top of themselves, and that’s how you get a layered 2D material.”

A new Northwestern Medicine study shows that RNA interference may play a key role in Alzheimer’s. For the first time, scientists have identified short strands of toxic RNAs that contribute to brain cell death and DNA damage in Alzheimer’s and aged brains. Short strands of protective RNAs are decreased during aging, the scientists report, which may allow Alzheimer’s to develop.

The study also found that older individuals with a superior memory capacity (known as SuperAgers) have higher amounts of protective short RNA strands in their brain cells. SuperAgers are individuals aged 80 and older with a memory capacity of individuals 20 to 30 years younger.

“Nobody has ever connected the activities of RNAs to Alzheimer’s,” said corresponding study author Marcus Peter, the Tom D. Spies Professor of Cancer Metabolism at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We found that in aging brain cells, the balance between toxic and protective sRNAs shifts toward toxic ones.”

Mesolithic Scandinavians likely faced oral health issues, with studies on ancient birch tar revealing signs of gum disease, tooth decay, and diverse dietary habits.

Members of a hunter-gatherer group that lived in south-western Scandinavia during the Mesolithic era — approximately 10,000 years ago — may have been affected by tooth decay and gum disease, according to a study published today (January 18) in Scientific Reports.

DNA Analysis of Birch Tar.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have used DNA origami, the art of folding DNA into desired structures, to show how an important cell receptor can be activated in a previously unknown way. The result opens new avenues for understanding how the Notch signaling pathway works and how it is involved in several serious diseases. The study is published in Nature Communications.

Notch is a cell receptor that is of great importance to a wide range of organisms and plays a crucial role in many different processes, including early embryonic development in both flies and humans. Notch regulates the development of stem cells into different cell types in the body. Defects in this signaling pathway can result in serious diseases, including cancer.

The prevailing view of the receptor’s function has so far been that it is activated purely mechanically, by a neighboring cell pulling on it, meaning that signaling only occurs as a result of direct communication between cells.