Xiaojun “Lance” Lian, associate professor of biomedical engineering and of biology at Penn State, alongside biomedical engineering doctoral candidate Tahir Haideri contributed to a paper recently published in Matter. The research, led by scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), introduced a physical system that squeezes cells, temporarily loosening the DNA inside and making space for gene-editing tools to reach the target genes.

The team said this is an improvement upon previous approaches because it enables a better yield of cell reprogramming, when researchers can coax one cell type to turn into another cell type. Lian and Haideri supported the research by guiding the molecular engineering of reprogramming cells from one type to another, building on their prior work improving how gene-editing tools are delivered to the cell’s genetic material.

Editor’s note: The full article describing this work can be found on the UCLA news site.

A 61-year-old man with extensive, treatment-resistant lichen planus-like skin and mouth lesions was diagnosed with systemic peripheral T-cell lymphoma, not otherwise specified; combination chemotherapy substantially improved his skin plaques and oral erosions.

Cellular senescence is a major driver of tissue aging and functional decline. Although mitochondrial dysfunction is a well-established hallmark of senescence, how inter-organelle communication regulates mitochondrial dynamics during stem cell aging remains poorly understood. In particular, whether age-associated alterations in mitochondria–endoplasmic reticulum contacts (MERCs) disrupt mitochondrial homeostasis and contribute to cellular senescence remains unclear.

In a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society researchers experimentally synthesized for the first time Mg₂RhH₆ that exhibits superconductivity at a significantly reduced pressure of 30 GPa. Mg₂RhH₆ was synthesized via a two-step process and showed superconductivity with a maximum T_c of 29 K. The findings open a highly promising pathway for the rational design and discovery of high temperature superconductors at accessible pressures for industrial pressure facilities.