Cells

Aging comes for us all – but perhaps the unpleasant symptoms don’t have to. In a new study, scientists have found a kind of anti-aging immunotherapy, reinvigorating immune cells to better clear out defunct cells that contribute to the aging process.

The skin is the body’s first line of defense against infection, and new research has brought us closer to understanding how it works. Researchers at Yale have identified how immune cells spread themselves out to maintain the most effective patrol.

A new study is offering novel insights into the effects of too much salt on certain immune cells. The research reveals how salt can dampen mitochondrial functions, disrupting normal immune cell activity and potentially promoting inflammation.

A new study has delved into the kind of damage microplastics can cause to human lungs, with researchers observing changes to the shape of lung cells and a slowdown in their metabolism and growth when exposed to these tiny plastic particles.

In a breakthrough new study, scientists have created human-monkey chimera embryos for the first time. They make for more accurate models of human biology and disease - but of course they also raise some complicated ethical concerns.

Organ transplants save lives, but rejection is a serious issue. That risk can be reduced by stripping donor cells out of the donor organ and replacing them with the recipient’s own, and now scientists have made that process safer with a protein bath.

Scientists have created a synthetic single-celled organism that can divide and grow like a regular living cell. This breakthrough could lead to designer cells that can produce useful chemicals on demand or treat disease from inside the body.

An advanced microscopy technique has snapped “super-resolution” 3D images inside the brains of living mice. The method is so precise it imaged the tiny twigs on the branches of neurons, and could watch how they changed over the course of a few days.

Scientists have leveraged cellular reprogramming technology to repair damaged tissue in mice with stroke-affected brains, a technique they hope could one day help restore speech and motor function in human victims of the injury.

Researchers have very limited opportunities to study the earliest stages of human development, but a groundbreaking discovery will now provide them with a new model to investigate the science behind matters like infertility and congenital disease.

By taking their microscopes to the skeletal structures of the human body, scientists have unearthed an entirely new type of bone cell, one they believe may play an important role in the development of osteoporosis and other bone diseases.

Scientists have combined a technique known as direct cell reprogramming with a new type of scaffold to ensure transplanted cells thrive in their new environment, demonstrating the potential of the technique by treating severe muscle loss in mice.