Science
12/29/16: Designer scaffolds to direct cell behavior. This is a series of publication (3DiPSC, 3D niche array) from the Lutolf lab on engineering stem cell niche to direct pluripotent stem cell behavior.
10/17/16: A number of cardiac tissue engineering approaches couldn't reach adult and mature cardiomyocyte functionality and phenotype. The Bursac group reported that 3D cylindrical tissues (cardiobundles) made from neonatal rat ventricular myocytes (NRVMs) reached ca. 60 mN/mm2 (similar to adult cardiomyocyte contractile force). This is 3D dynamic culture without electrical stimulation or mechanical stretch.
10/16/16: Synthetic biomaterials can modulate stem cell differentiation both in 2D and 3D. Ulijn and Dalby et al, identified that lipid-associated metabolites (GP18:0 and cholesterol sulphate) also can guide chondrogenic and osteogenic differentiation. Those were identified to be significantly depleted over 4 weeks of cultures. Growth factors are largely replaced by small molecules (chemicals) for cardiomyocyte differentiation and metabolites are another possibility to attain defined stem cell differentiation protocols.
5/3/16: Transdifferentiation of somatic cells were attempted in vivo with Gata4, Mef2c, and Tbx5 in 2010. A recent paper from the Ding lab at Gladstone Institutes reported a direct reprogramming of human fibroblasts into cardiomyocyte-like cells using nine chemicals (9C) by attaining open-chromatin conformations at cardiac development genes. Chemical reprogramming has already applied to transdifferentation of mouse fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes and to reprogramming of somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells.
4/20/16: Caiazzo et al. reported that 3D synthetic microenvironments were identified using high-throughput screening approach to optimize stiffness, degradation and extracellular matrix (ECM) compositions for iPSC reprogramming. This research showed that modulating 3D microenvironments can accelerate mesenchymal-to-epithelial (MET) transition and promote chromatin remodeling to initiate iPSC generation.
3/31/16: Microelectronic cardiac patch combined electrical stimulation for synchronizing cell contraction and controlled release of drugs to regulate tissue functions. The cardiomyocyte functions are remotely interfered, if necessary, to activate non-contracting cardiomyocytes or non-synchronous beating cells. This bionic device employed electroactive biopolymers to control the release of SDF-1 and dexamathasone on demand. Stretchable and robust devices are desirable for longer patency.
2/28/16: Electrical training of iPSCs can augment better differentiation to cardiomyocytes. This platform promoted cardiomyocyte maturation, altered automaticity and enhanced connexin (of multiple types) expression. This "training" impacts surrounding cells and sustains over a period of time. This could be one of the robust maturation of cardiomyocytes for in vivo or clinical application.
2/24/16: Functional differentiation and maturation of hepatocytes from hiPSCs require well-deifiend 3D microenvironments. 3D bio-printing (scaffolds and cells) is an excellent candidate tool to achieve this goal. Two step digital light processing (DLP)-based 3D printing provided scalability for the fabrication of complex hepatic microenvironments and functional improvements of hiPSC-derived hepatic progenitor cells.
2/24/16: A 3D bio-printing system (termed an integrated tissue-organ printer (ITOP)) was applied to produce a bony defect, an ear cartilage and skeletal muscle structures. Two platforms were employed to modulate stiffness and porosity of printed structures. Solid organ fabrication needs to augment more steps, but this report showed that modular tissue construction is feasible at multiple scales.
2/8/16: A new mechanism of differentiating cardiac progenitor cells by the ECM (elastin) and mechanotransduction (YAP). In the evolution of teleosts (exploiting their single circulatory system), the elastin gene was duplicated by whole-genome duplication (elna and elnb) and subfunctionalization (restricted to bulbus arterioles) and neofunctionalization (acquisition of a new function of elnb) determined the fate of progenitor cells to smooth muscle cells.
12/11/15: 3D microenvironment is an important regulator of cardiomyocyte contractility. A recent approach using a higher concentration of Matrigel enhanced maturation of hiPSC-derived cardiomyocyte. This is a bit similar to the matrix sandwich method and both aimed to increase maturity of differentiating or differentiated hiPSCs by providing better 3D microenvironments.
12/11/15: Tissue ECM arrays identified tissues-specific responses on stem cell differentiation, cancer cell proliferation and macrophage polarization. Accompanying systems biology analysis identified a group of proteins related to cell function.
11/13/15: Decellularized human hearts were repopulated with non-transgenic (RNA-iPSC) cardiomyocytes utilizing a bioreactor. This approach was already established in 2008 by Doris Taylor and a similar approach was further tested in murine hearts with hiPSC-derived cardiac progenitor cells. The current study showed that organ engineering is one step closer to attain functional tissue/organ regeneration. Further challenges are still remained in complete pump function, more in-depth immune responses and better endothelialization.
9/17/15: Immunogenicity of iPSC-derived cells has not been well understood. Certain lineages showed tolerance by expressing immunosuppressive markers (Wu lab at Stanford, iPSC-derived endothelial cells) or immunogenic even in syngeneic recipient (Xu lab at UCSD, miPSC-derived cardiomyocytes). This differential immunogenicity was tested in a humanized mouse model, as evidenced by rejection of iPSC-derived smooth muscle cells and tolerance to iPSC-derived retinal pigmented epithelium.
9/3/15: A new platform technology allows to extend and stack synthetic tissues. A biological scaffold was created to mimic hook and loop structure of Velcro (termed Tissue Velcro). This scaffold can be disassembled and reassembled without significantly sacrificing cell health in scaffolds
7/3/15: 3D printing mostly focuses on building and stacking 2D materials. This is a major hurdle to increase productivity with conventional 3D printing. Instead, Carbon 3D company displayed stereolithography (also published in Science (cover article) "Continuous liquid interface production of 3D objects) early this year. Developing a chemistry for biomacromolecules, this will be a great tool to create platforms and scaffolds with unprecedented details.
6/25/15: Scientists confirmed that the number of cardiomyocytes is not significantly altered over a lifetime using 14C dating and mathematical modeling. Although more than 65% of cardiomyocytes are not exchanged from birth, endothelial and mesenchymal cells are highly proliferative. The heart is an organ with cytokinesis failure, generating polyploid. This study may suggest that new therapeutic strategies develop endogenous regeneration of cardiac cells for treating cardiovascular disease.
5/25/15: Recent papers on Neuregulin-1 (Nrg1) showed that we can target for a therapeutic regeneration of cardiomyocytes via a signaling pathway involving Nrg1's receptor protein ERBB2. Three different studies (in Tzahor lab, Poss lab and Kuhn lab) were performed in mouse, zebrafish and infant heart tissue. Nrg1 is currently in clinical trials to treat chronic heart failure.
5/5/15: hiPSC medium formulations were optimized using DOE approaches.
3/30/15: iPS cell technology for neurodegenerative disease modeling in NOVA Next: Stem cells finally deliver, but not on their original promise.
3/20/15: Statistics for biologists!
3/9/15: 3D Bioprinting has evolved over a decade. An exact copy of our organ or tissue by 3D bioprinting will be very challenging, but we can try them as a provisional surrogate. The engineer is a cell and we are just help them do their job.
2/5/15: Chemically defined peptide substrates identified from the Kiessling lab (GBP and cyclic RGD) facilitate hiPSC differentiation to an ectodermal (motor neuron) or mesendodermal (cardiomyocyte) fates. They identified the balance between Akt/ILK and Smad pathways as being the downstream determinant of cell fate.
1/27/15: Aging is an issue that we can not neglect easily. Parabiosis is an old surgical technique that can exchange the blood between two living animals. Amy Wagner and Rich Lee identified GDF-11 that help repair damaged tissues and activate muscle stem cells. Recently, this idea of exchanging blood for treating a disease is emerging and already on clinical trials.
12/16/14: The year 2014 started with STAP cell papers published in Nature and now it is wrapped up with five manuscripts in Nature and Nature Communications on Project Grandiose. The team wanted to identify details of reprogramming to pluripotent stem cells and eventually established another cell line called "F-class cells: fuzzy colony forming cells". The F-class cells did not use viral vectors like iPS cell technology. Instead they utilized transposons to deliver reprogramming genes and this system is inducible upon adding doxycycline in the culture. Although the F-class cells could not contribute to tissues in the resulting chimera when injected to mouse embryos, the F-class cells can form teratomas.
11/20/14: DOE approaches were utilized to optimize hiPS-NPC differentiation from a recent paper from the Segura Lab at UCLA. The HA was functionalized with RGD, IKVAV, and YIGSR to optimize iPS-NPC survival, but was validated for earlier and later markers of differentiation.
10/27/14: ACT reported their clinical trials with human ESC-derived RPE (retinal pigment epithelium) in the Lancet. They initiated this Phase 1 clinical trials about 2 years ago and now tested whether hESC-derived cells show any adverse effect, rather than focusing on functional improvements.
12/13/14: More updates on AMD were reported in Nature Biotech including on-going clinical trials. Employing iPS cell technology and bioengineered scaffolds is also considered.
9/30/14: The Stadtfelt group reported a method of producing murine iPSCs with TGF-beta inhibition (ALK5 inhibitor II) and canonical Wnt activation (CHIR99021) in the presence of ascorbic acid in a week over 80% efficiency. Again, this is a dramatic increase from OSKM factors. This was not the first attempt to increase the reprogramming efficiency of iPSCs. Depleting Mbd3 with OSKM transduction successfully reprogrammed both human and mouse somatic cells within a week (by Jacob Hanna in 2013). With C/EBPa acting as a path-breaker plus OSKM, the efficiency of reprogramming of B cells was significantly increased, too (by Thomas Graf in 2014).
9/4/14: The Jaenisch group reported a different set of reprogramming factors (Sall4, Nanog, Esrrb, and Lin28 (SNEL)) that produce higher quality of mouse iPSCs. The current version of SNEL seems yet to reprogram human cells.
8/12/14: Early detection of cancer from blood would be a better option than late-stage treatments, which is costly and less effective. The liquid biopsy idea has gained more attention than ever.
8/11/14: Collection: Direct Reprogramming from Cell Stem Cell
6/11/14: Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) is rising. Although there is fear of cloning, SCNT-hESCs are known to be a bit more efficient (2-5%) and safer than iPSC technology. Recent papers in Cell Stem Cell and Nature proved that adult cells can be reprogrammed by SCNT to create hESC. The Nature paper (with NYSCF) also showed that SCNT-ESC can differentiate to insulin-producing cells from adult oocytes of a female type 1 diabete patient. (More news articles in GEN and Science Translational Medicine).
9/3/14: The Mitalipov group published an article on the comparison of IVF ESCs, SCNT ESCs, and iPSCs from the same donor. iPSCs and SCNT ESCs showed the same degree of copy number variations. The difference is not in abnormalities of methylation, but in the patters, which is more similar to that of somatic cells.
6/2/14: The Sadek group published a paper on ROS and DNA damage on CM cell cycle arrest, which affect the postnatal proliferation of cardiomyocytes (CMs). Postnatally, maintaining hypoxia (15%) and a ROS scavenger delay CM cell cycle arrest, which may be useful for therapeutic application for CM proliferation.
5/12/14: The Murry group at University of Washington published a Nature article of hESC-derived cardiomyocyte transplantation in non-human primate hearts. Chuck already announced this promising result last year at NIH (NHLBI CVRM) and PCBC meeting at Minneapolis, MN. They delivered around 1 billion cTnT positive cardiomyocytes (ca. 73%) expressing calcium indicator (GCaMP3) in a pro-survival cocktail (including Matrigel) and identified remuscularization and vascularization from the host (pigtail macaques). Further mechanistic understanding of hESC-CM engraftment as it showed transient ventricular arrhythmias. They plan to move to clinical trials in 4 years.
6/24/14: Mark Sussman commented on this Nature paper. He argued that the data actually confirm that hESC-CM clinical trial would not be safe, especially due to the arrhythmias developed during the experiment. This commentary article was published in Circ Res.
8/12/14: It is published as a review on non-human primate experiments, but essentially a follow up explanation on their Nature paper.
4/13/14: In 2011, the Sadek group reported the transient regeneration capacity of neonatal mouse heart, where Meis1 regulates cardiomyocyte proliferation. Another group (Stem Cell Reports) found no evidence of a complete regenerative response in the neonatal mouse heart following apex resection. This contradictory result casts doubt on our understanding of mammalian heart regeneration.
4/7/14: A murine model of optogenetic regeneration is reported in Science magazine last week. The team transplanted genetically engineered mouse ESC-derived motor neurons that express channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR-2, a cation channel sensitive to blue light). This approach provided an evidence that optogenetic stimulations activates muscles that induce less fatigue than electrical stimulation.
3/31/14: The Anseth group tried to identify whether human MSCs remember their mechanical environments, which might impact the differentiation of hMSCs. Using their tunable hydrogel platform and what they called an intracellular mechanical rheostat (YAP/TAZ transcriptional coactivators), hMSCs irreversibly differentiate to osteogenic lineages (by RUNX2) when they are cultured more than 10 days on stiff surfaces (E=10 kPa). For this reason, TCPS platforms may bias osteogenic differentiation of hMSCs.
3/10/14: If it is hard to reach tumor cells in an organ, we can drain or attract those cells into different location to treat them. The Bellamkonda group at Georgia Tech reported that a PCL nanofiber conduit was implanted to drain glioblastoma cells into a cyclopamine-conjugated collagen hydrogel sink, leading to significant decrease of tumor volume.
3/6/14: 3D engineered tissues have an inherent limitation - lack of vasculature. In 2012, Chen and Bhatia groups designed a sacrificial sugar network for perfusable 3D engineered tissues (which can be removed by introducing hot water). Utilizing 3D printing technology, Jennifer Lewis group at Wyss Institute reported that vascularized, heterogeneous cell-laden structures were created with gelatin-methacrylate and HUVECs.
2/23/14: One of the iPSC technology utilizes a cocktail of small molecules to induce pluripotent stem cells, published last year in Science. Sheng Ding and Deepak Srivastava reported in Cell Reports that some of the same small molecules with Oct4 can reprogram mouse fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes without entering the pluripotency state. The Ding group also applied similar method in repopulating hepatocytes via induced multipotent progenitor cells (iMPCs).
2/13/14: Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine review by Molly Stevens in Tissue Engineering B, summarized in five research areas: 1) iPS cells, 2) Tissue Engineering (Biomaterials), 3) Directing cell phenotypes via soluble and insoluble signals, 4) Advanced imaging, and 5) Clinical and preclinical translation.
2/4/14: In a damaged zebrafish heart, cardiomyocytes activate gata4 and initiate cell cycling. However, this cycle exits by neonatal day 7 through upregulation of meis1 and miR-15. The results from a recent PNAS paper showed that Notch signaling stimulates the production of an endocardial and epicardial paracrine signal that instructs the proliferation of myocardial cells. Notch is a genetic determinant of heart regeneration.
1/30/14: Mechanical stress and pH 5.7 reprogram CD45-positive blood cells into pluripotent cells (1st Nature paper) and they are not just pluripotent, but totipotent (forming placental tissue, 2nd Nature paper). We expect to see if this method works for human cells and reproducible.
1/23/14: Stem cell biology and regenerative medicine from ACS Chemical Biology, small molecules (Sheng Ding and Dennis Schade) and insoluble signals (Bill Murphy) - strategies for emerging regenerative medicine!
News, Policy, Career, and Education
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.
2/23/17: In recognition of Engineering Week (2/19-25), NIH showcased the funded research through NIBIB including Tissue Engineering.
1/7/17: My mentor Jakub Tolar is on TEDxFargo.
12/10/16: WICHE is institutionalizing creationism. According the recent report by Dr. Baltzley in Science, WICHE introduced the Ken Hamm-Bill Nye debate to evaluate creationism-evolution. This may mislead and facilitate that creationism can be taught as a scientific discipline (THIS IS WRONG).
11/2/16: Science (alone) is not enough. Many times, people value career progression out of what they can make or where they work. However, that is not all. Then, probably the best candidate would be a robot or AI in the near future. Legislators and educators (those in edition business) believe we need welders and coders than philosophers or artists. Please do not dump liberal arts education, indeed, we need more philosophy, the classics, etc. Younger generations need more fundamental foundation of thinking.
9/2/16: Nobel Laureate Roger Tsien dies at age 64. Dr. Tsien discovered and developed GFP derived from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria.
8/9/16: Many students and trainees tend to hide their research problems, but open attitude from labmates and PIs can turn such discouragement into a great stepping stone. This article by Tenaya tells us how we embrace such failure and grow as a scientist.
6/10/16: NIH invested a researcher rehab program, initially called RePAIR, later changed to the Professionalism and Integrity Program (PI Program). Everyone is susceptible to research misconduct!
3/5/16: This is the story on the STAP cell scandal and what happened afterwards. The Stress Test in the New Yorker by Dana Goodyear.
3/3/16: Frustrated postdocs made their own way. Postdocs are the epitome of well-trained scientists (social and physical) with underpayment and overworking. From the first report in 2000 and the second report in 2014, this problem gets worse. Please don't tell us that find a job and leave it. This is a problem that needs attention from all of us.
3/2/16: Tomorrow's children. CRISPR is a very powerful tool for gene-editing and many scientists are trying to test hypotheses. However, we have not applied this technology to human and still not sure the consequences of such treatment options. It could be better or worse then we ever imagined. This article showed other spectra of the gene-editing in social consequences (comparing cases for prenatal genetic screening for Down's syndrome) and voices from patients and their family.
2/14/16: Scientists face many many rejections, revision, re-re-re-revisions to publish their papers. Here is how this trend has changed for a last decade or so. New models for publication are suggested and experimented.
2/4/16: Impostor syndrome - I am not the only one in failing to reach my goals. One suggestion is to stand with someone else. I agree, but we forget this very often. What we only see is someone else's success since we all hide our failure (of publication, grant or job). Do not compare my life to others and I need patience and persistence. Each one's universe is different and unique.
11/30/15: Seven facts about genome editing.
8/30/15: Crafting a research brand - making my own research area is an important step toward career advancement. Papers, talks and proactive engagement in your research community is all necessary.
8/28/15: Students' math anxiety is unlikely inherited, but their parents' attitude can undermine students' math achievement, by the new study in Psychological Science and UChicago News.
7/29/15: The Universe as information - Planet hard drive in Scientific American.
6/30/15: Summer reading list by Nature Methods
6/5/15: One hundred years of General Relativity
5/10/15: I love science and that's what I decided to do for the rest of my life. However, resources have been changed especially over the last 7-8 years. A recent Boston University special report discussed what we face now and how scientists have responded to such changes.
4/16/15: 별이 된 아이들에게 너무나 미안합니다. 아무것도 바뀐게 없습니다.
4/14/15: Gene-editing moratorium - Scientists concern germ line engineering using CRISPR-Cas9 technology. They recommended to take steps to strongly discourage human germ line modification and to create more open discussion for safety and ethics.
5/1/15: The publication on gene editing in human embryo was discussed more from articles in Nature, Science and NIH. Even though there is an ethical concern, this embryo was not viable. I also respect the editorial decision from Protein and Cell, advocating their stance on alarming human embryo editing.
6/4/15: A brief history of CRISPR-Cas9. Scientists talked about the safety and impact of this revolutionary technology.
3/26/15: The postdoc series at Naturejobs Blog talked about two recent reports on postdocs. One from F1000Research and the other from the National Academy of Sciences. Why do we have so many unhappy postdocs these days? This is more likely true, but there are suggestions and action items to tackle these problems.
3/8/15: Graduate students and postdocs want more information for their future job (Nature Jobs Column). What we know now is that less than 10% can land in tenure-track position. Then, what information is needed for those 30-40% for academia and other 80-90% including all sections? Not just more information, but different and practical plans for trainees. Some practical suggestions are already made by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus (my post on 1/27/14). Invest more on education and research, not on athletics and (unnecessary) administration.
12/15/14: Biomedical Engineers can expand their capability to improve global health, especially in water, food, and energy-related problems. An article in Science Translation Medicine portrayed these problems and discussed what biomedical engineers can do. They also urged funding for research on global health from governments and global stakeholders. I know private foundations (e.g. Gates foundation) and DARPA projects have funded these researches.
12/14/14: The genome editing technology CRISPR-Cas9 got patented by Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute. This patent could have been granted to other two researchers, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, together. Doudna and Charpentier discussed the development and application of this technology in Science.
12/12/14: Although stem cell treatments are not approved yet and only showed marginal improvements on functional regeneration, professional athletes are getting injections of stem cells. An injection of bone marrow costs around $6000, however, only a fraction of cells are adult stem cells that can be contributing to functional differentiation. This SC treatment should not be encouraged at this point.
11/27/14: Indirect costs: How it is calculated, received and distributed by Nature this week.
11/4/14: People don't like high overhead costs in their charitable donations. However, the administrative costs are inevitable and necessary. A recent study suggested that the money from a handful of big donors spend to build and maintain strong infrastructure (overhead), while that from the general public goes to donations as much as possible.
11/3/14: Creationism conference at MSU in East Lansing. My strategy is to neglect their literal interpretation and consequent activities. What they really want is to popularize Creationism and ID. This is also another big concern in higher education in South Korea.
10/4/14: A bit of skills to hire potential postdocs. This tells us how we should be different from graduate students.
9/4/14: Job talk for a tenure-track faculty position. Also, an obituary for Yoshiki Sasai. When I met him for the first time at the Wisconsin Stem Cell Symposium in 2012, his talk was outstanding. It is such a great loss in stem cell research.
9/3/14: The stressed-out postdocs. This is an extremely hard topic to discuss. Postdocs are neither students nor faculties, but they have to be in both. Many of them have met a good mentor and energizing/encouraging environments (luckily, I am one of them in such a small lab), but still many of them are not. Often, they want to be a highly educated technician or are forced to be. Both advisors and postdocs should be more honest in what they want from both parties (Naturejobs Blog).
8/27/14: Active learning has changed many traditional methodologies that we have used in K-12 and college education. Students learn better than passive learning or traditional lectures (Stop lecturing me). Education or fixing education needs different perspective, which has to be cultivated and nurtured over a long period of time. New teaching materials based on relatively small piece of evidence without much explanation to teachers and students can overwhelm them, too.
8/25/14: Traditional chemical companies are involved in eliminating food fraud. Their technologies will help detect food adulteration in molecular levels.
8/14/14: A pioneer in direct reprogramming, Deepak Srivastava, is featured in Circulation Research - New Leaders in Cardiovascular Science. We are using his miPS-Nkx2.5 GFP cell line.
7/24/14: The Myth of income inequality: it may not be ideal as we like to be, but it may not be that large and immobile as we feel.
7/15/14: PNAS papers are often considered as a privileged publication by NAS members. Although "communicated paper" is phased out in 2010, the portion of "contributed paper" remains constant. More details on their effort for faster publication is described here.
6/18/14: From a recent paper from BMJ, there are discrepancies in MSC (bone marrow derived) clinical trails for heart failure treatment (EF enhancement). One of the major concern was that only trials containing errors or flaws showed enhancement of treatment. Christine Mummery commented on this that MSC transplantation may elicit inflammatory responses and help vascularization, but long-term effects and their mechanisms are not clear yet.
6/11/14: A paper describes a computer model that predicts success on being a PI in academia (the website is pipredictor.com). The most outstanding factor is the number of first author publication following journal impact factors and institution ranks.
6/4/14: Independent genetic tests of STAP stem cell lines (STAP cells showing totipotency) suggested that the mouse strains did not match the STAP stem cell lines. One of the coauthor Teruhiko Wakayama will have a press conference soon, reported in Nature New Blog by David Cyranoski.
7/7/14: Nature officially retracted the two STAP and STAP stem cell papers last week.
5/26/14: 세월호 희생자 추모 진혼곡 및 sand art (Forget me not)
11/3/14: 세월호 참사 200일입니다. 좌린 스케치
2/2/15: 잊지 않기 위한 또 하나의 기록. projectboo.com
5/22/14: Critical thoughts and helpful suggestions on US biomedical education and research by Bruce Alberts et al. in PNAS.
5/5/14: On 4/16/2014, a ferry (Sewol) en route to Jeju in South Korea was capsized. Eventually, more than 300 people (mostly high school students) were found dead or missing until today. The government failed to rescue a SINGLE passenger from the very first moment and collectively showed that they were not able to handle this disaster (historically from the past). I will NOT FORGET how we lost more than 300 precious people by the incorrigible corruption systematically rooted in the government and WILL TELL my children why this was happened (and has happened over and over again).
4/7/14: Molly Stevens at TED talked about in vivo bioreactor for bone regeneration.
3/31/14: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey began from this March. I did not watch the original 1980 series but heard of Carl Sagan and his contribution to science a lot. Presented by the famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
3/12/14: A microscope under $1. Manu Prakash developed a paper-based microscope that can be easily utilized to detect and analyze diseases, especially for where a microscope is not available or not easily accessible. (His inspiring talk at Ted).
3/6/14: The details of the STAP cell protocol are published in Nature Protocol Exchange, including 28 important tips. Other researchers in the team (RIKEN) reproduced the most of the results and other team also showed some success in Oct4 expression after the acid treatment. More details will be published by the authors.
2/18/14: STAP cell protocol under investigation and so far 9 trials reported. I am looking forward to having the detailed protocol from the authors soon.
1/30/14: Stem cells and the transformative power of hope. Bernard Siegel emphasized consumer movement and personal health of stem cell research.
1/28/14: RNA design rules from a massive open laboratory - collective intelligence could solve a challenging scientific problem. Adrien's work was introduced in NOVA.
1/27/14: Higher Education? How colleges are wasting our money and failing our kids - and what we can do about it by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus (2011) - Thoughtful reading! We may have different angles of recognizing current higher education trends, but the authors clearly showed problems in the colleges and universities at our age.
1/22/14: Nature News on Woo Suk Hwang - His research is on going at Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. Do we really know what he is doing?