Media Watch
Video: Scientists turn human cells TRANSPARENT thanks to colour changing proteins from a squid
Daily Mail -
Human kidney cells have been turned invisible in a laboratory in a startling display of the power of modern science. Researchers from the University of California Irvine in the US injected proteins from a squid... Watch Now
Scientists turn human cells TRANSPARENT thanks to colour-changing proteins from a squid
Daily Mail -
Researchers from the University of California Irvine in the US harvested these colour-changing proteins and injected them into human kidney cells. This resulted in the human cells becoming partially transparent. Researchers say the technique could be used by other scientists to get a clearer view of the processes inside living cells and tissues. Read More
Genetically altered human cells can vary their transparency like squid
New Scientist -
Human cells genetically engineered to vary their transparency by making a squid protein could one day lead to see-through tissue. … “That’s the crazy, far-out idea,” says Alon Gorodetsky at the University of California, Irvine. “But when you see squid doing it, then you think it’s not so far-out after all.” Read More
Inspired By Female Squids, Scientists Genetically Engineered Human Cells To Become Translucent
Forbes -
For almost a decade, chemical engineers at the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, have been working on materials that are either derived or inspired by squids, octopus, and cuttlefish. After specifically working on reflectin proteins that play a critical role in how squids change color, they had a breakthrough that led to their study on how biotechnology can help in engineering human cells to become transparent … Read More
Transparent human cells turn a classic sci-fi story into reality
Inverse -
Alon Gorodetsky is the paper’s lead author and an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Irvine. He tells Inverse that his goal is to eventually use this technology to make HUMAN SKIN TRANSPARENT too, which could have implications for cosmetic surgery or cell imaging. But also just because it’s cool. … “Our engineered human cells work almost the same way, as far as we can tell, as the natural leucophore cells in squid skin,” he says. Read More
Engineer? Cancer expert? Physicist? They’re coronavirus researchers now
Los Angeles Times -
Sunny Jiang, a UC Irvine environmental engineer, usually studies wastewater recycling methods and monitors coastal contamination. Now she’s examining the extent to which the coronavirus can be transmitted through aerosols. ... “You need diverse minds to look at this problem,” she said. Stopping this pandemic, she said, will require solutions from all walks of science. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More
Launch GreenTech California
Orange County Business Journal -
GreenTech was co-founded by Chief Executive Steve Slingsby and Chief Technical Officer James Earthman, a UCI professor of materials science and biomedical engineering. It is part of the Wayfinder incubator program at UCI Beall Applied Innovation. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.] Read More
Unique 'home built' device provides fast disease analysis in kidneys affected by diabetes
Medical Xpress -
Suman Ranjit started to work on this clinical project using what he calls his "home built" device while a postdoctoral scholar at UC Irvine's Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics, but completed it at Georgetown. He now has applied for federal grants that will help him "shrink" this idea into a small handheld device that could be used in operating rooms, and to further improve automation and imaging speed. Read More
Water from a stone
Nature -
Water is necessary for life, yet life persists in even the most extreme arid environments. In the Atacama Desert of Chile, the driest non-polar region on Earth, colonies of endolithic microbes marble the rocks, impervious to the deadly low humidity levels. The only way for these endoliths to survive in the Atacama is to extract water from the rocks in which they live. Their mechanisms of water uptake, however, are poorly understood. David Kisailus from the University of California Irvine, USA, and colleagues, grew a cyanobacterium isolated from the Atacama Desert on gypsum. Read More
Climate change increases risk of ‘cascading’ natural disasters
The National Interest -
Amir AghaKouchak, UCI associate professor of civil & environmental engineering and Farshid Vahedifard write, “Multiple hazardous events are considered cascading when they act as a series of toppling dominoes, such as flooding and landslides that occur after rain over wildfires. Cascading events may begin in small areas but can intensify and spread to influence larger areas.” Read More