A discovery by researchers at the University of British Columbia promises to improve care for patients with endometrial cancer, the most common gynecologic malignancy.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to spot patterns across thousands of cancer cell images, the researchers have pinpointed a distinct subset of endometrial cancer that puts patients at much greater risk of recurrence and death, but would otherwise go unrecognized by traditional pathology and molecular diagnostics.
The findings, published today in Nature Communications, will help doctors identify patients with high-risk disease who could benefit from more comprehensive treatment.
“Endometrial cancer is a diverse disease, with some patients much more likely to see their cancer return than others,” said Dr. Jessica McAlpine, professor and Dr. Chew Wei Chair in Gynaecologic Oncology at UBC, and surgeon-scientist at BC Cancer and Vancouver General Hospital. “It’s so important that patients with high-risk disease are identified so we can intervene and hopefully prevent recurrence. This AI-based approach will help ensure no patient misses an opportunity for potentially lifesaving interventions.”
AI-powered precision medicine
The discovery builds on work by Dr. McAlpine and colleagues at B.C.’s Gynecologic Cancer Initiative — a multi-institutional collaboration between UBC, BC Cancer, Vancouver Coastal Health and BC Women’s Hospital — who in 2013 helped show that endometrial cancer can be classified into four subtypes based on the molecular characteristics of cancerous cells, with each posing a different level of risk to patients.
Dr. McAlpine and team then went on to develop an innovative molecular diagnostic tool, called ProMiSE, that can accurately discern between the subtypes. The tool is now used across B.C., parts of Canada and internationally to guide treatment decisions.

Yet, challenges remain. The most prevalent molecular subtype, encompassing approximately 50 per cent of all cases, is largely a catch-all category for endometrial cancers lacking discernable molecular features.
“There are patients in this very large category who have extremely good outcomes, and others whose cancer outcomes are highly unfavourable. But until now, we have lacked the tools to identify those at-risk so that we can offer them appropriate treatment,” said Dr. McAlpine.
Dr. McAlpine turned to long-time collaborator and machine learning expert Dr. Ali Bashashati, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and pathology and laboratory medicine at UBC, to try and further segment the category using advanced AI methods.
Dr. Bashashati and his team developed a deep learning AI model that analyzes images of tissue samples collected from patients. The AI was trained to differentiate between different subtypes, and after analyzing over 2,300 cancer tissue images, pinpointed the new subgroup that exhibited markedly inferior survival rates.
“The power of AI is that it can objectively look at large sets of images and identify patterns that elude human pathologists,” said Dr. Bashashati. “It’s finding the needle in the haystack. It tells us this group of cancers with these characteristics are the worst offenders and represent a higher risk for patients.”
Bringing the discovery to patients
The team is now exploring how the AI tool could be integrated into clinical practice alongside traditional molecular and pathology diagnostics, thanks to a grant from the Terry Fox Research Institute.

“The two work hand-in-hand, with AI providing an additional layer on top of the testing we’re already doing,” said Dr. McAlpine.
One benefit of the AI-based approach is that it’s cost-efficient and easy to deploy across geographies. The AI analyzes images that are routinely gathered by pathologists and healthcare providers, even at smaller hospital sites in rural and remote communities, and shared when seeking second opinions on a diagnosis.
The combined use of molecular and AI-based analysis could allow many patients to remain in their home communities for less intensive surgery, while ensuring those who need treatment at a larger cancer centre can do so.
“What is really compelling to us is the opportunity for greater equity and access,” said Dr. Bashashati. “The AI doesn’t care if you’re in a large urban centre or rural community, it would just be available, so our hope is that this could really transform how we diagnose and treat endometrial cancer for patients everywhere.”

The blood-brain barrier — a network of blood vessels and tissues that nurtures and protects the brain from harmful substances circulating in the blood — is disrupted in Alzheimer’s disease. Now, researchers at Mayo Clinic and collaborators have uncovered unique molecular signatures of blood-brain barrier dysfunction that could point to new ways to diagnose and treat the disease. Their findings are published in Nature Communications.
“These signatures have high potential to become novel biomarkers that capture brain changes in Alzheimer’s disease,” says senior author Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic and leader of the Genetics of Alzheimer’s Disease and Endophenotypes Laboratory at Mayo Clinic in Florida.
To conduct the study, the research team analyzed human brain tissue from the Mayo Clinic Brain Bank, as well as published datasets and brain tissue samples from collaborating institutions. The study cohort included brain tissue samples from 12 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 12 healthy patients with no confirmed Alzheimer’s disease. All participants had donated their tissue for science. Using these and external datasets, the team analyzed thousands of cells in more than six brain regions, making this one of the most rigorous studies of the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s disease to date, according to the researchers.
They focused on brain vascular cells, which make up a small portion of cell types in the brain, to examine molecular changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease. In particular, they looked at two cell types that play an important role in maintaining the blood-brain barrier: pericytes, the gatekeepers of the brain that maintain the integrity of blood vessels, and their support cells known as astrocytes, to determine if and how they interact.
They found Alzheimer’s disease patients’ samples exhibited altered communication between these cells, mediated by a pair of molecules known as VEGFA, which stimulates the growth of blood vessels, and SMAD3, which plays a key role in cellular responses to the external environment. Using cellular and zebrafish models, the researchers validated their finding that increased levels of VEGFA lead to lower levels of SMAD3 in the brain.
The team used stem cells from blood and skin samples of the Alzheimer’s disease patient donors and those in the control group. They treated the cells with VEGFA to see how it affected SMAD3 levels and overall vascular health. The VEGFA treatment caused a decline in SMAD3 levels in brain pericytes, indicating interaction between these molecules.
Donors with higher blood SMAD3 levels had less vascular damage and better Alzheimer’s disease-related outcomes, according to the researchers. The team says more research is needed to determine how SMAD3 levels in the brain impact SMAD3 levels in blood.
Researchers plan to further study the SMAD3 molecule and its vascular and neurodegenerative outcomes for Alzheimer’s disease and also search for other molecules with potential involvement in maintaining the blood-brain barrier.
This research is part of a federal grant supporting projects that identify targets for Alzheimer’s disease treatment. The study was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association Zenith Fellows Award and Mayo Clinic Center for Regenerative Biotherapeutics.

Our cells and the machinery inside them are engaged in a constant dance. This dance involves some surprisingly complicated choreography within the lipid bilayers that comprise cell membranes and vesicles — structures that transport waste or food within cells. In a recent ACS Nano paper, Luis Mayorga and Diego Masone shed some light on how these vesicles self-assemble, knowledge that could help scientists design bio-inspired vesicles for drug-delivery or inspire them to create life-like synthetic materials.
Double-membrane vesicles have inner and outer lipid bilayers. While scientists previously predicted that these membranes fold and warp themselves into a variety of shapes, researchers could not observe the rearrangement experimentally. So, Mayorga and Masone used molecular dynamics calculations together with an algorithm developed by Bart Bruininks and colleagues to virtually “segment” the layers so they can be seen separately.
After running dozens of simulations with different vesicle sizes and lipid compositions, five common shapes were identified: oblates and prolates (elongated or flattened blobs), toroids (doughnuts), stomatocytes (cup shapes) and spheroids. This work, say the researchers, offers insight into the “unexpected inner intricacies” of how lipid bodies spontaneously self-organize.

Balance can be impacted by various factors, including diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, acute and chronic injuries to the nervous system, and the natural aging process. Accurately assessing balance in patients is important to identify and manage conditions that affect coordination and stability. Balance assessments also play a key role in preventing falls, understanding movement disorders, and designing appropriate therapeutic interventions across age groups and medical conditions.
However, traditional methods used to assess balance often suffer from subjectivity, are not comprehensive enough and cannot be administered remotely. Moreover, these assessments rely on expensive, specialized equipment which may not be readily accessible in all clinical settings and depend on the clinician’s expertise, which can lead to variability in results. More objective and comprehensive assessment tools in balance evaluation are greatly needed.
Using wearable sensors and advanced machine learning algorithms, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science have developed a novel approach that addresses a crucial gap in balance assessment and sets a new benchmark in the application of wearable technology and machine learning in health care. The approach is a significant advance in objective balance assessment, especially for remote monitoring in home-based or nursing care settings, potentially transforming balance disorder management.
For the study, researchers used the Modified Clinical Test of Sensory Interaction on Balance (m-CTSIB), widely used in health care to assess a person’s ability to maintain balance under different sensory conditions. Wearable sensors were placed on study participants’ ankle, lumbar (lower back), sternum, wrist and arm.
Researchers collected comprehensive motion data from the participants under four different sensory conditions of m-CTSIB: balance performance with eyes open and closed on a stable surface; and eyes open and closed on a foam surface. Each test condition lasted about 11 seconds without breaks to simulate continuous balance challenges and streamline the assessment process. Researchers used inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors coupled with a specialized system to evaluate ground truth m-CTSIB balance scores for their analysis.
The data was then preprocessed and an extensive array of features was extracted for analysis. To estimate the m-CTSIB scores, researchers applied Multiple Linear Regression, Support Vector Regression and XGBOOST algorithms. The wearable sensor data served as the input for their machine-learning models, and the corresponding m-CTSIB scores from Falltrak II, one of the leading tools in fall prevention, acted as the ground truth labels for model training and validation. Multiple machine-learning models were then developed to estimate m-CTSIB scores from the wearable sensor data. Researchers also explored the most effective sensor placements to optimize balance analysis.
Results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Digital Health, underscore this approach’s high accuracy and strong correlation with ground truth balance scores, suggesting the method is effective and reliable in estimating balance. Data from lumbar and dominant ankle sensors demonstrated the highest performance in balance score estimation, highlighting the importance of strategic sensor placement for capturing relevant balance adjustments and movements.

“Wearable sensors offer a practical and cost-effective solution for capturing detailed movement data, which is essential for balance analysis,” said Behnaz Ghoraani, Ph.D., senior author, an associate professor, FAU Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, co-director of the FAU Center for SMART Health, and a fellow, FAU Institute for Sensing and Embedded Network Systems Engineering (I-SENSE). “Positioned on areas like the lower back and lower limbs, these sensors provide insights into 3D movement dynamics, essential for applications such as fall risk assessment in diverse populations. Coupled with the evolution of machine learning, these sensor-derived datasets transform into objective, quantifiable balance metrics, using an array of machine learning techniques.”
Results provide important insights into the significance of specific movements, feature selection and sensor placement in estimating balance. Notably, the XGBOOST model, utilizing the lumbar sensor data, achieved outstanding results in both cross-validation methods and demonstrated a high correlation and a low mean absolute error, indicating consistent performance.
“Findings from this important research suggest that this novel method has the potential to revolutionize balance assessment practices, especially in situations where traditional methods are impractical or inaccessible,” said Stella Batalama, Ph.D., dean, FAU College of Engineering and Computer Science. “This approach is more accessible, cost-effective and capable of remote administration, which could have significant implications for health care, rehabilitation, sports science or other fields where balance assessment is important.”
The objectives of this study emerged from recognizing the need for advanced tools to capture the nuanced effects of different sensory inputs on balance.
“Traditional balance assessments often lack the granularity to dissect these influences comprehensively, leading to a gap in our understanding and management of balance impairments,” said Ghoraani. “Moreover, wearables support remote monitoring, enabling health care professionals to evaluate patients’ balance remotely, which is particularly useful in diverse health care scenarios.”

Nearly half of long-term antidepressant users can quit the drugs with GP support and access to internet or telephone helplines alone, a study has revealed.
Scientists found that more than 40 per cent of people who were well and not at risk of relapse managed to come off the medication with advice from their doctors.
They also discovered patients who could access online support and psychologists by phone had lower rates of depression, fewer withdrawal symptoms, and reported better mental wellbeing.
More than ten per cent of adults in the UK are taking antidepressants for depression with more than half using them for longer than two years, according to NHS figures.
The study, which was published in JAMA Network Open, was led by the universities of Southampton, Liverpool and Hull York Medical School.
Professor Tony Kendrick from Southampton was the lead author of the research, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
He said the findings are significant as they show high numbers of patients withdrawing from the drugs do not need costly intense therapy sessions.

He added: “This approach could eliminate the risk of serious side-effects for patients using antidepressants for long periods who have concerns about withdrawal.
“Offering patients internet and psychologist telephone support is also cost-effective for the NHS.
“Our findings show that support not only improves patient outcomes but also tends to reduce the burden on primary health care while people taper off antidepressants.”
The scientists behind the study enrolled 330 adults who have been taking the medication for more than a year for a first episode of depression, or more than two years for a recurrence of the illness.
Co-author Una Macleod, Professor of Primary Care Medicine at Hull York Medical School, said: “Many patients are taking antidepressants for depression for longer than two years, when they probably no longer need them.
“The evidence in our study is clear and suggests the UK should establish a national helpline, by phone and online, to help people intending to come off the medication.”
The new study is the latest in a seven-year research programme, named REDUCE, led by the universities to investigate the long-term effects of withdrawing from antidepressants.

Professor of General Practice Mark Gabbay, a co-author from the University of Liverpool, said the research shows that many patients do not need intense face-to-face therapy sessions while withdrawing.
He added: “This is the first study to demonstrate that stopping inappropriate long-term antidepressant treatment is possible at scale without psychological therapy.
“Antidepressants are recommended only for up to two years in most cases, and people are running the risk of increasing side effects as they get older.
“From our findings, we are calling for active family practitioner reviews for antidepressant discontinuation to be promoted.”

A study led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has shown that both amateur and professional dancers are less neurotic than people who do not dance. They are also more agreeable, more open, and more extraverted. But genre of dance matters.
“Tell me if you dance and I will tell you who you are!” A study led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has shown that both amateur and professional dancers are less neurotic than people who do not dance. They are also more agreeable, more open, and more extraverted. The results of the study have recently been published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
In cooperation with Matthias Blattmann, CEO of Gutmann Dance School in Freiburg im Breisgau and Tanzloft GmbH, and Luisa Sancho-Escanero, dance director at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, the MPIEA’s researchers analyzed data from 5,435 people from Sweden and 574 people from Germany, with regards to their Big Five Personality Traits “Openness,””Conscientiousness,””Extraversion,””Agreeableness,” and “Neuroticism.”
“What is unique about this work is that we have brought together very large samples from two different countries. Such data are generally scarce, and previous studies have often been based on rather small samples,” explains senior author Fredrik Ullén, Director at the MPIEA.
In Sweden, the research team was able to rely on an existing database that included data about peoples’ creative engagement and dance achievements. To collect dancer data in Germany, the researchers developed an online survey that was widely shared by dance institutions.
Previous research has found that musicians are more agreeable and more open to others than non-musicians. In the current study, this was also confirmed for dancers. But the researchers also found an interesting difference between the two groups: In comparison to musicians, dancers are not more neurotic, but — on the contrary — less neurotic than people who do not dance.
“In general, both dancers and singers show a high degree of extraversion in their personality — which may be due to the fact that their means of expression when dancing and singing is their body — and this is a very socially exposed situation, more than if you express through an instrument, for example. However, more in-depth investigations are needed to explore this further,” says lead author Julia F. Christensen of the MPIEA.
There was also some evidence of personality differences between dancers of different styles. Swing dancers, for example, seemed to be even less neurotic than Latin and Standard dancers. However, this needs to be confirmed with larger samples of dancers. In the future, the researchers hope to extend their research into dancers’ personalities to many other cultures and dance styles.

A national position statement on emergency action plan development and implementation in sports from a West Virginia University athletic training researcher sets in motion new priorities for responding to catastrophic injuries. The recommendations apply to sports through all levels, from youth to high school to collegiate and professional leagues.
“The ultimate goal of this position statement is to reduce unnecessary deaths from sport participation. We want this document to save more lives,” said Samantha Scarneo-Miller, assistant professor and program director for the Master of Science in Athletic Training program in the WVU School of Medicine, who is lead author for the position statement.
Scarneo-Miller was tapped by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, NATA, to update the organization’s 22-year-old document. The position statement is revised to recommend designating an emergency action plan coordinator who collaborates with other athletic staff, enhancing venue-specific plans to include variables for each sport and comprehensive documentation of incidents.
The leading causes of catastrophic injury in sports are cardiac arrest, exertional heat stroke, traumatic head injury and cervical spine injury.
Published in the National Athletic Trainers’ Association Journal of Athletic Training, the position statement provides a framework for emergency action plan development and implementation. This includes recommendations for the preparations and on-site emergency response of health care professionals and other stakeholders to catastrophic or potentially catastrophic injuries in a pre-hospital setting.
The position statement includes several updates and recommendations. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, it offers general guidelines that teams can tailor to their specific settings and best use of resources.
Among those is the integration of a pre-event medical meeting, an informational session previously termed “medical timeout” that will occur before a competition and provide details on emergency procedures and signals, and equipment locations.

Expanding on previous guidelines focusing on venue-specific emergency action plans, the new document suggests incorporating the distinct needs of various sports in relation to the skills of assigned personnel and any changes in facilities, such as new construction.
“Having a plan for just the facility isn’t good enough anymore,” Scarneo-Miller said. “One facility might be used by different teams with different personnel. We need a sport- and venue-specific emergency action plan because coaches and staff have their own unique skills they can contribute to the plan activation.”
The importance of designating an emergency action plan coordinator is also emphasized, suggesting that the duty be shifted solely from athletic trainers to include collaboration with the whole athletic staff. The outcome would result in a plan that is more effective in development and implementation.
“The position statement stresses the importance of having an EAP coordinator that is supported by an interdisciplinary health care team,” Scarneo-Miller said. “The athletic trainer might be the one coordinating the plan, but they have coaches, administrators, physicians and athletes who need to be involved in reviewing and implementing the plan. We’re really trying to emphasize to athletic trainers that they have so many other resources they may not be utilizing.”
The systematic approach to the position statement focuses on evolving medical science and was formulated with input from professionals in a variety of fields, including sports medicine physicians and athletic trainers from multiple settings. It’s the first position statement developed under NATA’s new procedures, emphasizing an objective approach to author team selection, considering diversity in gender, race, location, specialty and setting.
“Previously, clinicians have not been authors on position statements as the documents have been highly focused on the newest research for clinicians to use,” Scarneo-Miller said. “But the NATA is pushing hard to ensure clinicians voices are heard when developing these recommendations, since they are the ones who will be translating this document into clinical practice.”
Scarneo-Miller stressed the importance of unveiling this new position statement. “We invite stakeholders and partners in embracing these essential recommendations, working together to create a culture of preparedness and safety that will protect and benefit our athletes.”
Scarneo-Miller’s presentation of the position statement was part of NATA’s 75th Clinical Symposia and AT Expo June 25-28 in New Orleans.

A question left unanswered in a biologist’s lab notebook for 40 years has finally been explained, thanks to a little fish that couldn’t wriggle its tail.
New research from the University of Oregon describes how nerve cells and muscle cells communicate through electrical signals during development — a phenomenon known as bioelectricity.
The communication, which takes place via specialized channels between cells, is vital for proper development and behavior. The study identifies specific genes that control the process, and pins down what happens when it goes wrong.
The finding offers clues to the genetic origins of muscle disorders in humans, and taps into longstanding questions in developmental biology.
“This is something many of us have wondered about for many, many years — and now we’ve figured it out!” said Judith Eisen, the UO neuroscientist who, in the 1980s, spotted a communication pattern between zebrafish muscle cells that she couldn’t explain.
Eisen and her colleagues report their findings in a paper published June 26 in Current Biology.
The work ties together three generations of UO neuroscientists and provides a lesson for all researchers: keep those lab notebooks. Eisen unearthed her original hardcover notebooks when moving into temporary lab space for a building renovation a few years ago. The sketches and shorthand notes she recorded in ink years ago are still relevant today.

A muscular mystery
In 1983, Eisen was a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Monte Westerfield, just beginning her career at the UO. She was part of a small group of scientists working to establish zebrafish as a new model organism, hoping to use these small, shimmery fish to probe questions about the development of vertebrate animals.
Model organisms like mice, fruit flies and worms allow scientists to do experiments that aren’t possible in humans, answering fundamental biological questions and providing guidance for more focused testing in humans.
Zebrafish were a promising addition to the scene. Zebrafish and humans share many genes, making the fish useful for testing the genetic underpinnings of human diseases and conditions. And because zebrafish embryos are transparent, scientists can watch development happen in real time under the microscope.
But at the time, everything about this system was new. Biologists had to figure out how to care for the fish in the lab and effectively use them in experiments.
One day, Eisen and Westerfield were using a yellow tracing dye to highlight individual nerve cells in the zebrafish, for observation under the microscope. The cells they wanted to reach could only be accessed by inserting a pipette filled with the glowing dye through the muscles. So some dye ended up mingling with the muscle cells, too.

Eisen and Westerfield were intrigued by the way the dye spread through the muscle cells. It spread cell-to-cell in a way that suggested that the cells were sharing messages directly — via some physical connecting channel between them, rather than via longer-range chemical messengers.
This didn’t fit the understanding of how adult muscle cells communicate with each other. But there was a dawning realization in the field that connections between muscle cells might be important during muscle development.
Eisen sketched out what she saw in her lab notebook, as did Westerfield. But there wasn’t a good way to probe further, Eisen said. While scientists at the time knew these sorts of communication channels existed, they didn’t know the genes that created them, or have the tools to ask what they were doing. So it was a dead end.
Eisen moved onto other questions, making major contributions to the field of developmental biology over the course of her career. This April, she was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences.
Over the last 40 years, Eisen and her UO colleagues, alongside scientists around the world, have continued to develop the zebrafish as a model organism. The advance of genetic technologies has made this little fish an even more powerful ally for understanding biology.
A fish that couldn’t swim
A few years ago, Eisen’s observation resurfaced in the lab of another UO neuroscientist, Adam Miller.
Miller was recruited to the University of Oregon by Eisen and colleagues to build a research group focused on electrical communication between cells. His lab studies how neural circuits build connections and create behavior. One area of focus is gap junctions, physical channels that allow electrical signals to move directly between cells. These communication pathways are particularly important during early development, as the body’s many systems are getting set up and organized.
Zebrafish are the perfect species to study electrical communication. Thanks to their transparent embryos, “we can image electricity flowing through cells in real time,” said Rachel Lukowicz-Bedford, a postdoc in Miller’s lab.
While hunting for zebrafish with different gap junction mutations, Lukowicz-Bedford made an intriguing find: a zebrafish that couldn’t move its tail properly. Usually, a zebrafish embryo will flop around and spontaneously flick its tail, but these fish didn’t do that.
As they did experiments to figure out why, the team realized this fish might be a possible link back to Eisen’s observation in muscle cells in the 1980s.
In healthy zebrafish, researchers can watch the electrical signals propagate through the gap junctions between muscle cells, like a plume of food dye diffusing into a cup of water. In fish with this mutation, the signals don’t flow. The mutation was impairing electrical communication between the cells via the gap junctions.
And that communication breakdown led to improper muscular development, the team showed. In an ordinary healthy zebrafish, the muscle fibers are straight and orderly. In this zebrafish with this mutation, the muscle fibers are crinkly and wavy, like crepe paper streamers.
The researchers pinned the change on a mutation in a specific gene. Through a series of experiments, they showed that this gene, when functioning normally, makes the gap junction channels between muscle cells that allow the nervous system to coordinate the activity of early developing muscle. And without appropriate electrical signaling at the right time during development, the muscle fibers can’t organize properly, causing crinkly muscle fibers and severe muscle defects.
“We figured out that this gap junction channel is a conduit — it allows electricity from the nerve cells to be sent out to muscle fibers,” Lukowicz-Bedford said.
The finding answers Eisen’s decades-old question, sketched out in a lab notebook that she still has: The yellow dye was moving between muscle cells because of these specific communication channels.
More than a curiosity, though, the findings can help inform scientists’ understanding of muscle development in humans. In disorders where muscles don’t develop properly, faulty gap junction channels might be one cause, a link that was previously unknown.
“The gene we studied in this paper is not a weird zebrafish gene; it’s also found in humans,” Lukowicz-Bedford said. “By using zebrafish, we can go after this gene with basically unknown function in humans, and be able to understand what it’s doing in context. We’ve been able to uncover the function of a gene that’s been really elusive.”
The research also illustrates that electrical signaling between different systems is critical for development. Similar communication is probably at play in the development of other body systems, too, the researchers suggest — it’s likely not specific just to muscles.
“The transfer of bioelectricity from one organ system to another is critical for development and adult function,” Miller said. “Finding the genes that allow this to occur, understanding how they work, and exactly what goes wrong when communication is disrupted, will provide new insight into human disease.”

19 hours agoReutersHow common is mpox?

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has called on a government watchdog to investigate. Here’s what you need to know.Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chair of the Senate health committee, called on a government watchdog to investigate why insurance companies are still charging women for birth control — a move that thrust access to contraceptives back into the spotlight.In a letter to the Government Accountability Office, the senator noted that insurance companies were charging Americans for contraceptives that, under federal law, should be free — and that they were also denying appeals from consumers who were seeking to have their contraceptives covered. Some experts estimate that those practices could affect access to birth control for millions of women.Since 2012, the Affordable Care Act has mandated that private insurance plans cover the “full range” of contraceptives for women approved by the Food and Drug Administration, including female sterilizations, emergency contraceptives and any new products cleared by the F.D.A. The mandate also covers services associated with contraceptives, like counseling, insertions or removals and follow-up care.That means that consumers shouldn’t have any associated co-payments with in-network providers, even if they haven’t met their deductibles. Some plans might cover only generic versions of certain contraceptives, but patients are still entitled to coverage of a specific product that their providers deem medically necessary. Medicaid plans have a similar provision; the only exception to the mandate are plans sponsored by employers or colleges that have religious or moral objections.Yet many insurers are still charging for contraceptives — some in the form of co-payments, others by denying coverage altogether.A Quarter of Women Are Paying Unnecessarily for Contraceptives In his letter, Senator Sanders cited a recent survey by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, that found that roughly 25 percent of women with private insurance plans said they had paid at least some part of the cost of their birth control; 16 percent reported that their insurance plans had offered partial coverage, and 6 percent noted that their plans did not cover contraceptives at all. Additionally, a 2022 congressional investigation, which analyzed 68 health plans, found that the process to apply for exceptions and have contraceptives covered was “burdensome” for consumers and that insurance companies denied, on average, at least 40 percent of exception requests.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.