#biomedical research

[kosher-salt]

I have been offered an informal job (my info being emailed around university faculty) as a sort of monkey in the middle for accessing government databases. This is because grant funding is being destroyed as we speak, and so researchers are having to rely more and more on sometimes archived research data to build off of. I am very good at seeking and sifting through data, due to my background in soft sciences research (this work will be for hard sciences) and analyst work.

Ok, this is a side hustle, but could grow into a career maybe. The researcher asking to distribute my info needs me to get back to her about how much I should be asking for per hour (or alternative pricing systems). I don't know where to start. I've only ever self-priced study-design consulting work.

Has anyone done this? Could use this service and has an idea what they'd pay for it if I was at your institution? Any thoughts?

[0elbereth]

ive officially started my masters in molecular & cellular biology 🫩🎉

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Prince William takes part and looks through a microscope in the world-leading electron microscopy facility during his visit to the Francis Crick Institute ahead of its 10th anniversary later this year on 25 February 2026 in London, England.

📸 Chris Jackson / Getty Images

[halfhildhalfmarilyn]

Hello, I am Ahmed. The war destroyed my life. Can you help me? I need 3 things from you: Share, repost, and donate if you are able to donate. Thank you for listening to me

My post link 👇💕

https://www.tumblr.com/ahmed4palestine/756439898525974528/urgent

My GFM link 👇🔗

https://gofund.me/1d8bb3df

Hello Ahmed,

Thank you for sharing your GFM, may Allah SWT help you reach your goal fast ❤️

URGENT 🚨

Attention please 🙏 Hello, I am Ahmed. I am 22 years old. I study medical equipment engineering at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, which was

Donate to Save Ahmed and His Family in Gaza, organized by Vanesa Argueta

Hi, there. My name is Vanesa Argueta and I'm from New York. I'm currently fundraising… Vanesa Argueta needs your support for Save Ahmed and

Share and donate to help Ahmed and his family evacuate to a safe place !!!

12 621$USD out of 20 000

[mental-mona]

Tiny faux organs could crack the mystery of menstruation

Researchers are using organoids to unlock one of the human body’s most mysterious—and miraculous—processes.

[sbgridconsortium]

Mechanistic insight into odorant recognition

Our sense of smell is dependent on recognition of a vast array of odorants despite having a finite number of receptors. Odorants are mostly detected by G protein-coupled receptors called odorant receptors in olfactory sensory neurons. While there are only approximately 400 odorant receptors in humans, combinatorial activation of these odorant receptors enables sensing of odorants with diverse chemical structures. However, the mechanistic basis of odorant binding to odorant receptors in humans has remained unclear.

SBGrid member Aashish Manglik and other researchers have been working to develop a structural understanding of how odorants are recognized by odorant receptors. Using cryo-EM, they report the structure of active human odorant receptor OR51E2 bound to fatty acid propionate.

Above: Structure of human OR51E2 bound to propionate in complex with miniGs399. CC BY SBGrid.

Based on this structure, they determined that propionate is bound within a pocket in the odorant receptor and makes specific contacts to achieve activation. After mutating the odorant-binding pocket, they observed altered recognition of fatty acids with varied chain length. This suggests that activation of odorant receptors by odorants is influenced by tight packing interactions. Through molecular dynamics simulations, they show that propionate induces conformational changes in a specific region of odorant receptor OR51E2, extracellular loop 3. This work provides a foundational understanding of odorant recognition by human odorant receptors at a high-resolution, structural level.

Read more about this work in Nature.

[bpod-bpod]

Bunged-up Lungs

Sleeping sickness is a disease caused by Trypanosoma brucei parasites. Thanks to recent control efforts, there are fewer cases worldwide than there have been for 80 years. The World Health Organisation aims to make sleeping sickness the second eradicated human infectious disease by 2030. But to fix something, we have to understand it, and there are still sleeping sickness mysteries to unravel. Here, in false colours, we see lung tissue from a mouse (grey) infected with T. brucei (blue). Scientists showed for the first time that the parasite forms nests in the lungs, explaining why one in five people with sleeping sickness has a cough or difficulty breathing. T. brucei also dampens the immune system in the lungs, making people more vulnerable to other infections. These insights could help doctors to diagnose symptomless people who carry the parasite, which may help stop the spread of sleeping sickness and eliminate it sooner.

Written by Henry Stennett

Image from work by Dorien Mabille and colleagues

Laboratory of Microbiology, Parasitology and Hygiene, Infla-Med Centre of Excellence, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature Communications, November 2022

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[the-loverboy-poet-no73]

Van Gogh yellow, Monet violet.

What about Pubmed blue?