Posts tagged RNAi
Can a moisturizer treat cancer?
Aug 17th
How often do you moisturize your skin? Every day? Once a month? Well researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago have given a moisturizer the ability to perform RNA interference and regulate genes.
Topical treatments are common for skin cancers like melanoma, as they can be applied directly to the affected cells. But our skin is very effective at blocking toxins getting into our bodies so the challenge was how to cross that barrier.
Again, enter the realm of nanotechnology, a topic I post about regularly.
This time, the scientists paired gold nanoparticles with small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules to form a siRNA “sphere.” These miniscule More >
Beauty may be only skin deep, but so are brains.
Jul 18th
In an exciting paper by from a group from Stanford, researcher Andrew Yoo and colleagues have demonstrated that fibroblasts can be transformed into neurons using RNAi to coax these skin cells into becoming functional neurons.
Different cell type (skin cells, neurons, osteoblasts, etc.) start out from less specialized cells, called stem cells. What a cell will become (its characteristics and functions) is also known as the cell’s “fate.” It may seem odd that seemingly simple skin cells can be transformed into cells that make up the thinking brain. However, all cells have a common set of DNA instructions, and it is More >
