Tendons are strong – but not invincible. If repeatedly overloaded, for example during intense training, they can undergo gradual but harmful changes with debilitating pain.

A protein known as HIF1 is central to these changes, as researchers have now demonstrated in experiments in mice and with tendon tissue from humans.

Their findings open a path to new treatments that could act before the tissue is irreversibly damaged.

A new paper in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry finds that common flea and tick control medications used in dogs and cats may pose a significant environmental risk to wild insects.

When the four-member crew of Axiom-2 launched into space in May 2023 their 10-day mission was chock full of experiments aimed at understanding human physiology. Results from some of those experiments, now online at Aging Cell, highlight spaceflight as a unique model for studying aging as well as cellular resilience. The research sets the stage for testing potential anti-aging interventions for those of us who have no plans to travel in space.

By studying genes that affect cuticle pigmentation in the laboratory fruit fly, researchers were able to identify new genes, mask and clu, that are involved in regulating dopamine levels in the brain. The findings offer new possibilities to restore in people disruptions in dopamine that have been associated with neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders, including addiction, depression, sleep disorders and schizophrenia.

In a highly collaborative, cross-institutional ImPLANT project funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT)  program under a new contract of up to $25M over 5 years, world-leading researchers from the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, MIT, University of Colorado Boulder, and Columbia University join their expertise to create the multidisciplinary technological framework for building the first off-the-shelf engineered product that could address liver failure in many of the over 500M patients who suffer from the disease worldwide.

Abdominal fat is not a uniform tissue. A new study from Karolinska Institutet, Steno Diabetes Center Copenhagen, and Helmholtz Munich reveals that fat located close to the large intestine contains an unusually high number of inflammatory fat cells and immune cells. The findings suggest that this tissue is specially adapted to communicate with the immune system in the gut region. The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.