Thursday April 10, 2014 University of Edinburgh researchers have accomplished something that has not been done before. They have successfully regenerated a living organ: the thymus. The thymus is a small glandular organ that produces specific immune cells called lymphocytes. The thymus normally deteriorates and shrinks with age. In the study, the researchers were able to reactivate the thymus in mice by increasing the levels of a specific protein. The protein, FOXN1, induced certain cells to rebuild the thymus. According to researcher Dr. Rob Buckle, "This interesting study suggests that organ regeneration in a mammal can be directed by manipulation of a single protein, which is likely to have broad implications for other areas of regenerative biology." The researchers are hopeful that information gained from this study could be used to develop new treatments for individuals with dysfunctional immune systems. Learn more about this study, see: Monday April 7, 2014 George Washington University researchers have invented a new organ that aids in blood circulation. This organ functions as a 'mini heart' by helping blood to flow in veins with non-functioning valves. The 'mini heart' is a cuff of cardiac muscle cells that is able to contract to help pump blood … Continue reading →

See Inside Biology is making it harder for scientists to reproduce one another's experiments Science works by iteration.' Scientists repeat their peers' work and build on their findings. The literature of peer-reviewed scientific papers is the record of this step-by-step process. In recent years, however, prominent reports have suggested that many scientists are not able to replicate others' published results. Is scientific progress going wrong on an unprecedented scale? Before we jump to that conclusion, it would help to consider the changing nature of science itselfparticularly biology. Basic biomedical research and its translation into therapeutic interventions to cure diseases are at the center of this issue. In an ideal world, academic scientists identify targets for drugstypically proteins involved in diseaseand industry scientists look for agents that interfere with those targets' function. In reality, more often than not, industry scientists find that they cannot replicate the effects seen by academics in a sufficiently robust way to justify drug development. Worse, many promising drug candidates fail in phase II clinical trials when their efficacy is put to the test. The world seemed simpler in the 1970s, when molecular biology brought us concepts such as gene A leads to protein B, which leads … Continue reading →

Published: Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 11:00 p.m. Last Modified: Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 11:31 p.m. Stillman College has been selected to participate in NNEDLearn 2014, a professional development opportunity offered by the National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health. Stillman participants are Charlotte Carter, vice president for enrollment management and retention; Jacqueline W. Currie (team leader), director student development center; Artha P. James, coordinator, Stillman management institute; Joseph Scrivner, assistant professor of religion and director of the Center on Religion and Society; and James Taggart, chief of Stillman College Police. Stillman recognized 237 students for their academic achievements during its annual Honors Convocation on April 3 in Birthright Alumni Hall. The highest-ranking member of the senior class and student body with a 4.0 cumulative GPA: Asia S. Hart, a biology major from Dothan. The highest-ranking member of the junior class with a 4.0 cumulative GPA: Tamba Mondeh, a history major from Tuscaloosa. The highest-ranking member of the sophomore class with a 4.0 cumulative GPA: Franchesca J. Jefferson, a biology major from Corona, Calif. The highest ranking members of the freshman class (all with 4.0 GPAs): Kaylee D. Alexander, a biology major from West Blocton; Eric C. Berry … Continue reading →

The complexity of biology can befuddle even the most sophisticated light microscopes. Biological samples bend light in unpredictable ways, returning difficult-to-interpret information to the microscope and distorting the resulting image. New imaging technology developed at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus rapidly corrects for these distortions and sharpens high-resolution images over large volumes of tissue. The approach, a form of adaptive optics, works in tissues that do not scatter light, making it well suited to imaging the transparent bodies of zebrafish and the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, important model organisms in biological research. Janelia group leader Eric Betzig says his team developed the new technology by combining adaptive optics strategies that astronomers and ophthalmologists use to cancel out similar distortions in their images. In a report published online on April 13, 2014, in the journal Nature Methods, Betzig, postdoctoral fellow Kai Wang, and their colleagues show how the technique brings into focus the fine, branching structures and subcellular organelles of nerve cells deep in the living brain of a zebrafish. These structures remain blurry and indistinct under the same microscope without adaptive optics. "The results are pretty eye-popping," Betzig says. "This really takes the application of adaptive optics … Continue reading →