✔️ The A&P Professor Science & Education Updates - Issue #130

Life Science

A joint research team at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) and the University of Florida describes the first non-invasive and near real-time visualization of the human brain’s waste-clearance system in Nature Communications. The brain is densely organized, and visualizing the structures dedicated to waste removal, also known as lymphatic structures, had been a limitation in the field.

Scientists linked hamsters in a pet shop to 50 cases of the Delta variant in Hong Kong in what appears to be the second documented occurrence of animals infecting people with SARS-CoV-2.

There was hope that pre-existing immunity to the common cold could protect against COVID, but new evidence suggests that sometimes the opposite can happen.

Animals that underwent treatment resembled their younger counterparts.

Adult cells in our body can only give rise to the same cell type. For example, a skin cell cannot give rise to a muscle cell but to skin cells only. This limits the potential use of adult cells for therapy. During early development, however, the cells in the embryo have the capacity to generate all cell types of our body, including stem cells. This capacity, which is called totipotency, has served as an inspiration for researchers to find new ways to recapitulate totipotency through cellular reprogramming in the lab.

A researcher has made a discovery that alters our understanding of how the body's DNA repair process works and may lead to new chemotherapy treatments for cancer and other disorders. Researchers discovered that base excision repair has a built-in mechanism to increase its effectiveness -- it just needs to be captured at a very precise point in the cell life cycle.

Detecting the activity of CRISPR gene editing tools in organisms with the naked eye and an ultraviolet flashlight is now possible using technology developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

Vocal expression of emotions has been observed across species and could provide a non-invasive and reliable means to assess animal emotions. They investigated if pig vocal indicators of emotions revealed in previous studies are valid across call types and contexts, and could potentially be used to develop an automated emotion monitoring tool.

Results suggest that an automated recognition system can be developed to monitor pig welfare on-farm.

Teaching & Learning

Interest grows in specifications grading, an approach to assessing students that could offer more transparency and consistency

TAPP News & Notes

Collection of resources to help faculty move from on-campus to remote teaching. Book, podcasts, seminars, and more!