Guest:

Stem cell researcher Dr. Kateri Moore from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai discusses her work and latest paper in Developmental Cell. Her paper covers hematopoietic reprogramming in mice.

Resources and Links

Zika Definitely Causes Severe Birth Defects, CDC Says – A causal relationship exists between prenatal Zika virus infection and microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies.

Neural Prosthesis Lets Quadriplegic Man Wiggle Fingers, Flex Wrist, Grasp Items – This article shows that intracortically recorded signals can be linked in real-time to muscle activation to restore movement in a paralyzed human.

Bees May Need a Protein Supplement! – This article indicates that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide can reduce protein content of a floral pollen source widely used by North American bees.

Some People Are Resistant to Genetic Disease – Researchers describe a complementary approach that seeks to identify healthy individuals resilient to highly penetrant forms of genetic childhood disorders, like Mendelian diseases.

73 Percent of Teens Own or Have Access to a Smartphone – Distractions from engaging in mobile devices in class lead to bad study habits and vehicle crashes when texting or talking while driving.

Using Love Handles to Cure Diabetes? – Martin Fussenegger, Professor of Biotechnology and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich's Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel, performed a feat that many specialists had until now held to be impossible: his team extracted stem cells from a 50-year-old test subject's fatty tissue and applied genetic reprogramming to make them mature into functional beta cells.

3D Printing Biopen Lets Surgeons Draw with Stem Cells - This article reveals that orthopedic surgeons may soon simply draw new cartilage inside your knee, using a 3D printing, stem-cell-extruding device called the “BioPen”.

Retinal Organoids from Pluripotent Stem Cells Efficiently Recapitulate Retinogenesis – Researchers developed a protocol for the efficient generation of large, 3D-stratified retinal organoids that does not require evagination of optic-vesicle-like structures, which so far limited the organoid yield.

Naive Pluripotent Stem Cells Derived Directly from Isolated Cells of the Human Inner Cell Mass – In resetting culture conditions of selective kinase inhibition, individual inner cell mass cells grow into colonies that may then be expanded over multiple passages while retaining a diploid karyotype and naive properties.

Expression Analysis Highlights AXL as a Candidate Zika Virus Entry Receptor in Neural Stem Cells – Researchers found that the candidate viral entry receptor AXL is highly expressed by human radial glial cells, astrocytes, endothelial cells, and microglia in developing human cortex and by progenitor cells in developing retina.

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Dr. Kateri Moore

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