UC Science Today

Kidney stones are a calcification that forms inside the kidney and are usually accompanied by severe pain and a trip to the emergency room. To better understand how they form, Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says they modeled kidney stones using fruit flies, which have regulatory organs similar to a human kidney.

"And after a couple of different experiments, where we tried to expose flies to different things, it turns out that zinc seems to be a very important factor for the formation of stones. And probably, it just doesn't stretch to one type of kidney stone, but potentially all types of kidney stones."

Zinc is important for the body’s health, so Chi says they are not encouraging people to cut back, but the study could lead to new treatments in the future.

"It might be a new way to think about how to develop new drugs or new surgical treatments or new therapies, to try to prevent kidney stones for patients in the future."

Kidney stones are a calcification that forms inside the kidney and are usually accompanied by severe pain and a trip to the emergency room. To better understand how they form, Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says they modeled kidney stones using fruit flies, which have regulatory organs similar to a human kidney.

"And after a couple of different experiments, where we tried to expose flies to different things, it turns out that zinc seems to be a very important factor for the formation of stones. And probably, it just doesn't stretch to one type of kidney stone, but potentially all types of kidney stones."

Zinc is important for the body’s health, so Chi says they are not encouraging people to cut back, but the study could lead to new treatments in the future.

"It might be a new way to think about how to develop new drugs or new surgical treatments or new therapies, to try to prevent kidney stones for patients in the future."

Kidney stones are a calcification that forms inside the kidney and are usually accompanied by severe pain and a trip to the emergency room. To better understand how they form, Dr. Thomas Chi of the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Urology says they modeled kidney stones using fruit flies, which have regulatory organs similar to a human kidney.

"And after a couple of different experiments, where we tried to expose flies to different things, it turns out that zinc seems to be a very important factor for the formation of stones. And probably, it just doesn't stretch to one type of kidney stone, but potentially all types of kidney stones."

Zinc is important for the body’s health, so Chi says they are not encouraging people to cut back, but the study could lead to new treatments in the future.

"It might be a new way to think about how to develop new drugs or new surgical treatments or new therapies, to try to prevent kidney stones for patients in the future."

Let’s say you give a hungry mouse some food – as it eats, you figure it would come satiated and scientists would assume the neurons in its brain would slowly change activity to dampen down the ‘hunger circuit’. Well, that’s not what a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found. In fact, study leader Zachary Knight says no one would have predicted their findings.

"It was entirely, what we would call ‘anticipatory’, meaning that the mouse essentially looks at the food and then predicts the nutritional value of that food. We found that the response of these neurons to the sight and smell of food depends on how palatable the food is."

So, give a mouse “chow”, or ordinary rodent food, and there’s a strong response; but give a mouse chocolate or peanut butter, which they happen to really love, and there’s a very strong response.

"So it's clearly, these neurons are sensing something about what we would call the ‘hedonic’ value of the food, how rewarding it is to eat the food."

These unexpected findings have implications for anti-obesity therapies in humans.

Let’s say you give a hungry mouse some food – as it eats, you figure it would come satiated and scientists would assume the neurons in its brain would slowly change activity to dampen down the ‘hunger circuit’. Well, that’s not what a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found. In fact, study leader Zachary Knight says no one would have predicted their findings.

"It was entirely, what we would call ‘anticipatory’, meaning that the mouse essentially looks at the food and then predicts the nutritional value of that food. We found that the response of these neurons to the sight and smell of food depends on how palatable the food is."

So, give a mouse “chow”, or ordinary rodent food, and there’s a strong response; but give a mouse chocolate or peanut butter, which they happen to really love, and there’s a very strong response.

"So it's clearly, these neurons are sensing something about what we would call the ‘hedonic’ value of the food, how rewarding it is to eat the food."

These unexpected findings have implications for anti-obesity therapies in humans.

Let’s say you give a hungry mouse some food – as it eats, you figure it would come satiated and scientists would assume the neurons in its brain would slowly change activity to dampen down the ‘hunger circuit’. Well, that’s not what a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found. In fact, study leader Zachary Knight says no one would have predicted their findings.

"It was entirely, what we would call ‘anticipatory’, meaning that the mouse essentially looks at the food and then predicts the nutritional value of that food. We found that the response of these neurons to the sight and smell of food depends on how palatable the food is."

So, give a mouse “chow”, or ordinary rodent food, and there’s a strong response; but give a mouse chocolate or peanut butter, which they happen to really love, and there’s a very strong response.

"So it's clearly, these neurons are sensing something about what we would call the ‘hedonic’ value of the food, how rewarding it is to eat the food."

These unexpected findings have implications for anti-obesity therapies in humans.

Let’s say you give a hungry mouse some food – as it eats, you figure it would come satiated and scientists would assume the neurons in its brain would slowly change activity to dampen down the ‘hunger circuit’. Well, that’s not what a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found. In fact, study leader Zachary Knight says no one would have predicted their findings.

"It was entirely, what we would call ‘anticipatory’, meaning that the mouse essentially looks at the food and then predicts the nutritional value of that food. We found that the response of these neurons to the sight and smell of food depends on how palatable the food is."

So, give a mouse “chow”, or ordinary rodent food, and there’s a strong response; but give a mouse chocolate or peanut butter, which they happen to really love, and there’s a very strong response.

"So it's clearly, these neurons are sensing something about what we would call the ‘hedonic’ value of the food, how rewarding it is to eat the food."

These unexpected findings have implications for anti-obesity therapies in humans.

Let’s say you give a hungry mouse some food – as it eats, you figure it would come satiated and scientists would assume the neurons in its brain would slowly change activity to dampen down the ‘hunger circuit’. Well, that’s not what a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco found. In fact, study leader Zachary Knight says no one would have predicted their findings.

"It was entirely, what we would call ‘anticipatory’, meaning that the mouse essentially looks at the food and then predicts the nutritional value of that food. We found that the response of these neurons to the sight and smell of food depends on how palatable the food is."

So, give a mouse “chow”, or ordinary rodent food, and there’s a strong response; but give a mouse chocolate or peanut butter, which they happen to really love, and there’s a very strong response.

"So it's clearly, these neurons are sensing something about what we would call the ‘hedonic’ value of the food, how rewarding it is to eat the food."

These unexpected findings have implications for anti-obesity therapies in humans.

What exactly are scientists looking for by using the world’s largest particle accelerator? As it turns out, they’re looking for anything. Marjorie Shapiro is a collaborator at the Large Hadron Collider and physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She says that aside from the high profile experiments like the Higgs boson and dark matter, there’s a lot of other physics going on as well.

"In some sense, it’s like a telescope. You build a telescope and then you decide what are you going to point it at and you can do lots of different science depending on what you point it at. We collect a lot of data from these proton collisions, and we can look at the data in different ways in order to understand different things about physics."

Shapiro explains that the protons are smashed together in order to create particles that existed in the early universe. But she also says that you never know what you might find.

"I hope that in a couple of years, we’ll be able to come back and say, we found something that none of us expected to see."

What exactly are scientists looking for by using the world’s largest particle accelerator? As it turns out, they’re looking for anything. Marjorie Shapiro is a collaborator at the Large Hadron Collider and physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. She says that aside from the high profile experiments like the Higgs boson and dark matter, there’s a lot of other physics going on as well.

"In some sense, it’s like a telescope. You build a telescope and then you decide what are you going to point it at and you can do lots of different science depending on what you point it at. We collect a lot of data from these proton collisions, and we can look at the data in different ways in order to understand different things about physics."

Shapiro explains that the protons are smashed together in order to create particles that existed in the early universe. But she also says that you never know what you might find.

"I hope that in a couple of years, we’ll be able to come back and say, we found something that none of us expected to see."