Neuroscientists led by Michael Yartsev used wireless neural recording devices to track the brain activity of Egyptian fruit bats as they freely interacted in groups and occasionally vocalized to each other through high-pitched screeches and grunts. The study published in the journal Science provides the first glimpse into how the brains of social mammals process these types of complex group interactions.
research
Synthetic biology moves into the realm of the unnatural
Berkeley researchers, including Professor Jay Keasling, have for the first time engineered bacteria to produce a molecule that, until now, could only be synthesized in a laboratory. This advance opens the door to production of a broader range of chemicals from yeast and bacterial fermentation.
Can bats help us design a better driverless car?
Bats’ navigation system was designed by the world’s top engineer: evolution. A new effort in the lab of Michael Yartsev, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Neuroscience, to translate the bats’ neurological “rules of the road” into computational algorithms to guide development of navigation systems for driverless cars.
The Science of Antiaging
UC Berkeley’s Irina Conboy, Ph.D., is unlocking the keys to healthy longevity
Diablo Magazine features the Conboy Lab’s research on the aging process, and ways to reverse it.
Supercooling technique advances preservation of human tissue
Researchers led by Professor Emeritus Boris Rubinsky successfully revived human heart tissue after it had been preserved in a subfreezing, supercooled state for 1 to 3 days.
Five-year NIH grant supports collaborative research into rejuvenating the aging brain
Irina Conboy is one of the principal partners of a new joint study on the aging brain. Conboy, an expert in aging and blood-based rejuvenation, will partner with Yi Zuo, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology at UC Santa Cruz, and Philippe Mourrain, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The group are looking specifically at changes to blood composition and how immune cells in the brain and central nervous system called microglia alter cognition with age, hoping to identify therapeutic interventions.
Using two CRISPR enzymes, a COVID diagnostic in only 20 minutes
Patrick Hsu, Liana Lareau and Daniel Fletcher have collaborated on a new rapid COVID test that rivals the sensitivity of the gold-standard qRT-PCR testing, with results in less than an hour.
A peek inside a flying bat’s brain uncovers clues to mammalian navigation
New research from Michael Yartsev’s lab shows that the ability to focus on the location where we will be in the near future may be a key characteristic of the mammalian brain’s built-in navigation system. Lab members wirelessly tracked the brain activity of Egyptian fruit bats as they flew throughout a custom flight room. The study, which opens many questions about how we process our movement in time and space, appeared online Thursday, July 8, in the journal Science.
Conboy lab continues to make strides against aging
Professor Irina Conboy’s lab is a world leader in research to slow and reverse the effects of physical aging. Recently, Conboy was interviewed in a LongevityTechnology story, “Can CRISPR be used to diagnose aging?” And her work on the controversial issue of using young blood to rejuvenate was featured in the article “Young blood to […]