Research has examined how ultraprocessed foods can contribute to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and mood disorders. A healthier diet is one way to use food as medicine.
Mitochondria help ensure our cells have the energy they need to function.
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Mitochondria, which are found in every cell in the body, play an important role in brain function.
Illustration of an autophagosome (light blue double-membrane to the right) engulfing cellular material.
David S. Goodsell and Daniel Klionsky/RCSB PDB-101
Cells degrade and recycle damaged parts of themselves through a process called autophagy. When this “self-devouring” goes awry, it may promote cancer and neurodegenerative disease.
Red mitochondria in airway cells become coated with green SARS-COV-2 proteins after viral infection: Researchers discovered that the virus that causes COVID-19 damages lungs by attacking mitochondria.
(Stephen Archer)
COVID-19 causes lung injury and lowers oxygen levels in patients because the SARS-CoV-2 virus attacks cells’ mitochondria. This attack is a throwback to a primitive war between viruses and bacteria.
A new theory of Alzheimer’s disease reassesses the role of beta-amyloid in the brain.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Alzheimer’s may not be primarily a disease of the brain. It may be a disorder of the immune system within the brain. Beta-amyloid may not be an abnormal protein, but part of the brain’s immune system.
Sea otters are born with a supercharged metabolism.
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New research finds that ‘leaky mitochondria’ help keep sea otters warm.
A computer illustration of a cross-section of a mitochondrion and its internal structure with DNA (gray), ribosomes (light green), granules (yellow) and ATP synthase particles (light blue).
TUMEGGY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images
The nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett has implications for how assisted reproductive technologies, which can prevent the transmission of disease from parents to child, are regulated.
Fluorescent human cells seen through a microscope.
Our cells may be small, but they are mighty. And they are made of lots of amazing stuff, from the DNA that tells your body how to grow, to mini skeletons that let cells move around.
Turkeys do a lot of standing and milling around, not a lot of flying.
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Sit down to Thanksgiving dinner ready to amaze your companions with physiological facts about why different cuts of the turkey have different characteristics.
Australians can now have their say on the issues around mitochondrial donation.
From shutterstock.com
Should Australia allow the creation of babies with DNA from more than two people? This reproductive technology could prevent babies being born with mitochondrial disease, so the simple answer is yes.
A study claims the first humans lived in a wetland around what is now northern Botswana.
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A ban on clinical trials involving gene editing rules out the controversial procedure done in China. But it also prevents procedures that could offer couples a chance for healthy children without genetic disorders.
The genes in our cells’ mitochondria are passed on in a different way than the vast majority of our DNA. New studies shed light on how the unique process isn’t derailed by mutations.
Rey (Daisy Ridley), in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, ponders the light and dark sides of the Force.
(Handout)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi leaves many questions about the saga in a galaxy far, far away unanswered. Fortunately, biology may offer a insights on the Force, midi-chlorians, clones, and Rey’s lineage.
Is this how we got the sperm and the egg?
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To explain why we have a mitochondria, we have to go back about two billion years to a time when none of the complexity of life as we see it today existed.