Biology

News articles classified as Biology

Moonshot effort aims to bioprint a human heart and implant it in a pig

Advances in the 3D printing of living tissue – a field known as bioprinting – puts within reach the possibility of fabricating whole organs from scratch and implanting them in living beings. A multidisciplinary team from Stanford received a federal contract to do just that.

Stanford Engineering —

Team microbiome

Microbiologist KC Huang on our relationship with the trillions of bacteria inhabiting our gut. “We’re kind of both cautiously engaging with them as allies, but also realizing that we could be at war at any point.”

Human-driven mass extinction is eliminating entire genera

A new analysis of mass extinction at the genus level, from researchers at Stanford and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, finds a “mutilation of the tree of life” with massive potential harms to human society.

Bioengineered tool unmasks cancer cells

Sugar-coated proteins called mucins are implicated in many diseases, including cancer. A Stanford-led team has bioengineered an enzyme-based scissors that selectively cuts mucins off cancer cells, removing their “cloak of protection” from the body’s immune system.

Distant wounds help planarians heal

In certain organisms, injuries on one part of the body can induce a healing response in another. New evidence suggests this whole-body response isn’t a side effect: it’s the main feature.

Watch loggerhead sea turtles cross the Pacific Ocean

Scientists are tracking the epic migration of 100 endangered North Pacific loggerhead turtles from Japan to test a hypothesis that warm water events like El Niño unlock a corridor allowing some turtles to ride ocean currents all the way to North America.

New insight into how plant cells divide

Plant and animal stem cells both rely on the cytoskeleton to divide properly, but a new Stanford study finds that they use them in opposite ways – while animal cells pull on the cytoskeleton, plant cells push it away. Harnessing that action could help scientists engineer more resilient plants.