Effective pain relief without the debilitating side effects of traditional opioids is closer to becoming a reality thanks to a study by an all-RIKEN team into the structure and dynamics of a drug-bound opioid receptor.
Biotechnology
Jul 18, 2024
0
99
Opioid medications offer people relief from debilitating pain, but these drugs come with dangers: the risk for addiction, miserable withdrawal symptoms and the potential for fatal overdose. In a study appearing in ACS Central ...
Biochemistry
Jul 17, 2024
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44
Researchers have found that nerve cells in the hippocampus region of the brain encode complex information on numerous characteristics of other individuals in the same social group.
Plants & Animals
Jun 27, 2024
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2
A question left unanswered in a biologist's lab notebook for 40 years has finally been explained, thanks to a little fish that couldn't wriggle its tail.
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 26, 2024
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1
The brain is a particularly complex organ, not only in humans. Even the brain of a fly contains more than 100,000 neurons connected by millions of synapses. For the first time, an international community of researchers has ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 3, 2024
0
37
Hummingbirds seem like a marvel of nature and engineering: a living creature that can hover near a flower with surgical precision. How do they do this?
Plants & Animals
May 29, 2024
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43
Figuring out a better way to connect nerve cells to bioelectronics will be the next technological leap in health care, and the Neurobiological Interfaces Lab at Binghamton University is at the forefront of research on the ...
Polymers
May 21, 2024
0
69
Lysosomes are surrounded by a lipid bilayer that separates the acidic environment and the digestive enzymes of the organelle from the cytoplasm. Damage to this layer—lysosomal membrane permeabilization, or LMP for short—can ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 8, 2024
0
17
Due to their simple body structure with a limited number of cell types, freshwater polyps (Hydra) can be used to study many fundamental processes of life. In recent years, Hydra has also experienced a renaissance as a model ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 5, 2024
0
65
After two decades in the United States, Martin Hetzer returned home to Austria in 2023 to become the 2nd President of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA). A year into his new role, the molecular biologist ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 4, 2024
0
47
A neuron (pronounced /ˈnjʊərɒn/ N(Y)OOR-on, also known as a neurone or nerve cell) is an excitable cell in the nervous system that processes and transmits information by electrochemical signalling. Neurons are the core components of the brain, the vertebrate spinal cord, the invertebrate ventral nerve cord, and the peripheral nerves. A number of specialized types of neurons exist: sensory neurons respond to touch, sound, light and numerous other stimuli affecting cells of the sensory organs that then send signals to the spinal cord and brain. Motor neurons receive signals from the brain and spinal cord and cause muscle contractions and affect glands. Interneurons connect neurons to other neurons within the same region of the brain or spinal cord. Neurons respond to stimuli, and communicate the presence of stimuli to the central nervous system, which processes that information and sends responses to other parts of the body for action. Neurons do not go through mitosis, and usually cannot be replaced after being destroyed, although astrocytes have been observed to turn into neurons as they are sometimes pluripotent.
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