Students will learn about the use of biomaterials to create advanced diagnostic tools for detection of infectious and chronic diseases, restore insulin production to supplement lost pancreatic function in diabetes, provide cells with appropriate physical, mechanical, and biochemical cues to direct tissue regeneration, and enhance the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.
This course is one of many Advanced Undergraduate Seminars offered by the Biology Department at MIT. These seminars are tailored for students with an interest in using primary research literature to discuss and learn about current biological research in a highly interactive setting. Many instructors of the Advanced Undergraduate Seminars are postdoctoral scientists with a strong interest in teaching.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Our lungs use very fine tissues to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide between the air and our blood. About 95% of this tissue is made up of a single kind of cell, called type-1 pneumocytes, or AT1 cells. Because they’re so delicate and thin, these cells are vulnerable to damage by pollutants, viruses, and bacteria. Fortunately, lung tissues also have specialized stem cells called AT2 cells that can replace damaged AT1 cells. But exactly how these cube-shaped AT2 cells generate large, flat AT1 cells has remained something of a mystery. To study this problem, the Tata lab in Cell Biology at Duke University has created “mini lungs” inside Petri dishes. They found that inside these “organoids”, the blocky stem cells enter an intermediate state on their way to generating the thin AT1 cells. The stem cells stretch considerably while passing through this transitional state, making them vulnerable to DNA damage. Cells normally pass through that transition within days..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"How do you fix a broken heart? According to a new study, TREEs can help—that is, tissue regeneration enhancer elements. The study found that these short DNA control modules from zebrafish can precisely regulate gene expression in mammals to promote healing after a heart attack. Heart attack, or myocardial infarction, and heart failure are common and devastating cardiac conditions. But the hearts of adult mammals can’t regenerate well after injury, making treatment difficult. One option is to attempt to use gene therapy with viral vectors to enhance heart cell proliferation, thus improving cardiac regeneration. However, current gene therapies are limited in their ability to control their cargoes, leading to strong, continuous delivery in one or more organs. And unchecked cell proliferation can lead to problems like tumor formation, making methods for precise control essential. Zebrafish TREEs are promising mediators of such precise control..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.