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George Freeman opens new bioscience hub
this a special time. We can harness our understanding of the body’s own systems: we can turn cells into factories, use our immune system to combat disease, and use the extraordinary power of bioscience, especially where food, medicine and energy meet,...
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I, Superorganism: Learning to Love our Inner Ecosystem
play a role in digestion and the provision of some nutrients, but there is increasing evidence of their involvement in the immune response and the development of allergies, cardiovascular disease and cancer. We tamper with it at our peril: we should...
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Focus on: Gene editing
the system to genetically modify human embryos. The technology uses the natural efficiency of the Streptococcus pyogenes immune system to cut genomes in precise locations. Developed around three years ago, the method is now the go-to technique for...
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The Life of Poo
diversity of bacteria that thrive in them, and the functions of internal bacteria in maintaining a healthy bowel and our immune response. The complexity of the relationship with our gut bacteria may even be involved in obesity. The Christensenellaceae...
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Redefining Life
mimiviruses can enter and replicate in human macrophages and in certain blood cells, where they interfere with the innate immune system[8]. There is evidence that they infect humans (such as the detection of mimiviruses and anti-mimivirus antibodies in...
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Coming of Phage
to phages, bacterial strain coverage, pharmacokinetics and how to dose a self-replicating agent, as well as the patient immune responses, which may target the phage when administered into the body. These challenges are already being addressed to some...
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Thousands ‘ask a biologist’ at New Scientist Live
the bugs that live in and on us have changed, we don’t necessarily get exposed to the right things when we’re young and our immune system doesn’t get trained, or it could be that we miss exposure to parasitic worms, which we don't have anymore." The...
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Body by Darwin: How Evolution Transforms Our Health and Shapes Medicine
of gestation? As Body by Darwin explains, some apparent body malfunctions are actually vital adaptations. The aggressive immune response needed to clear a worm infection would do more damage to the body than the worms do, and the body must screen...
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The Power of Poison
have been shown to affect secretory processes related to diabetes and respiratory disorders, and processes mediating immune and inflammatory disorders. In the next 40 years, who knows what other treatments might be on offer? David R Feld CBiol MRSB is a...
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Crazy horses
upregulation of genes involved in, for example, tissue remodelling, bacterial suppression, lipid and ion transport, and immune regulation. Apolipoprotein A, a lipid transport protein, and transferrin/transferrin receptor were especially significant in...
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Biology Week 2018: Jobs will not be replaced by AI and the world will not be overrun by robots, state experts at this year's Biology Week debate
in the tumour microenvironment, which can give you an idea of what the state of the battle is between the cancer and the immune system ‘on the ground’. "Once you have the ability to recognise different cells you can look at higher order signatures of...
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A killer cure
pathogens inside the living zebrafish. After about four hours, the pathogen numbers drop ridiculously low and it gives the immune system a chance to finish off those that remain. What do pathogens do to repel an attack by BvB? Could they become...
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Plaque celebrating Dame Honor Fell unveiled in Oxford
of stem cell research today. She applied her methods in particular to studying bone and cartilage, and the role of the immune system in rheumatoid arthritis. “She was director of Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge, for more than 40 years,...
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The Disease Detective
combined. There is as yet no proven treatment available. A range of potential treatments including blood products, immune therapies and drugs are being evaluated. At the time of going to press there had been nearly 22,000 cases and 8,600 deaths in West...
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Infection and Immunity
A level and beyond will find it valuable. The authors have divided the book into three sections: infectious organisms; the immune system and the host-pathogen balance. Each section is rounded off with suggested tutorial questions and a further reading...
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Top 10 poll: vote for biologists who have changed the world
who created several mycological illustrations Bridget Ogilvie Australian and British scientist who studied the immune responses to nematodes and was director of the Wellcome Trust CB Williams English entomologist and ecologist Charles Darwin English...
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Herbal Remedy
the receptors. The CB1 receptors are primarily associated with central nervous system tissue, and CB2 receptors with the immune system. On binding to the cannabinoid receptors, both phyto- and endocannabinoids inhibit the release of the...
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Medicine
will be investigating ways to control the mosquito population. Immunologists will be looking at how the body’s immune system defends itself against the parasite and trying to find a way to help it fight the parasite more effectively or to develop a...
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The Silk Route
silks are largely non-toxic to human cells and have relatively low immunogenicity (the likelihood that it will provoke an immune response). The idea of using spider silk instead of traditional silkworm silk was explored during the last century, but...
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Book Awards Shortlist 2014
Rachel Green, Carol Greider, Gisela Storz, Cynthia Wolberger and Orna Cohen-Fix Oxford University Press Primer to the Immune Response Tak W Mak, Mary Saunders and Bradley Jett Elsevier Vertebrate Endocrinology, 5th edition David Norris and James Carr...
