Biosingularity

Mouse researchers conducting stress hormone experiments have stumbled onto a surprising new discovery — a potential treatment for hair loss. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Veterans Administration were working with genetically altered mice that typically develop head-to-tail baldness as a result of overproducing a stress hormone.   via In Surprise [...]

Some fish in New York’s Hudson River have become resistant to several of the waterway’s more toxic pollutants. Instead of getting sick from dioxins and related compounds including some polychlorinated biphenyls, Atlantic tomcod harmlessly store these poisons in fat, a new study finds. But what’s good for this bottom-dwelling species could be bad for those [...]

Gut microbes acquired early in life can impact brain development in mice and subsequent behavior, such as decreasing physical activity and increasing anxiety, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This paper opens the door to new studies in at least two directions,” Yale University microbiologist [...]

Retinal implants can already restore sight to people who have lost it owing to degenerative eye diseases like macular degeneration or retinitis pigmentosa. Now new research suggests a way to make higher-quality, more biocompatible retinal implants by integrating living neural cells with a soft organic polymer semiconductor. A retinal implant restores vision by sending a [...]

This tiny, near-microscopic water flea has more genes than you. In fact, this freshwater zooplankton is the first crustacean to have its genome sequenced, and its 31,000 genes crowns it the animal with the most genes so far. For those keeping count at home, the average human has about 20,000 to 25,000 genes. The translucent [...]

Synthetic blood vessels that can be made in advance and stored until surgery could help patients undergoing heart surgery, hemodialysis—cleansing of the blood in cases of kidney failure—and other procedures. Laura Niklason, an anesthesiologist and biomedical engineer at Yale University, and her collaborators have grown blood vessels using human cells and tested them in baboons, [...]

The human retina — the part of the eye that converts incoming light into electrochemical signals — has about 100 million light-sensitive cells. So retinal images contain a huge amount of data. High-level visual-processing tasks — like object recognition, gauging size and distance, or calculating the trajectory of a moving object — couldn’t possibly preserve [...]