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IMAGE: Associate Professor of Immunology Xin Luo and doctoral candidate Brianna Swartwout in Luo s lab. Photo by Andrew Mann, Virginia Tech. view more
Credit: Andrew Mann, Virginia Tech.
A healthy system of gut bacteria, or microbiota, is crucial to health: Gut bacteria not only aid with digestion, but also play an important role in the body s immune response. Infants, however, are not born with full-fledged gut microbiota, which makes it difficult for them to fight off intestinal infections.
Although little is known about how the immune system develops during infancy, new research from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine s Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology sheds significant new light on the subject.
In a new paper published by Nature Communications, The Lundquist Institute (TLI) Investigator Wei Yan, MD, PhD, and his research colleagues spell out an innovative strategy that has led to the discovery of a natural compound as a safe, effective and reversible male contraceptive agent in pre-clinical animal models. Despite tremendous efforts over the past decades, the progress in developing non-hormonal male contraceptives has been very limited.
Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) can make all the tissues including gametes such as sperm and eggs. Researchers from the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan report a robust method for the generation of gametes from PSCs using the body of rats that cannot make gametes. Notably, they successfully generated mouse PSC-derived functional spermatids in rats. This approach will become a useful system for the generation of PSC-derived germ cells in the future.
New research has found that shrimp like creatures on the South Coast of England have 70 per cent less sperm than less polluted locations elsewhere in the world. The research also discovered that individuals living in the survey area are six times less numerous per square metre than those living in cleaner waters.
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IMAGE: Immunofluorescence analysis of a group of proliferating stem cells associated with a muscle fiber (grey). The stem cells produce Dll1 (red) and MyoD (green). Two of the cells produces MyoG. view more
Credit: Birchmeier Lab, MDC
When a muscle grows, because its owner is still growing too or has started exercising regularly, some of the stem cells in this muscle develop into new muscle cells. The same thing happens when an injured muscle starts to heal. At the same time, however, the muscle stem cells must produce further stem cells - i.e., renew themselves - as their supply would otherwise be depleted very quickly. This requires that the cells involved in muscle growth communicate with each other.