Hypertrophic chondrocytes are deeply involved in the growth of mammalian bones. Researchers find that these cells transform into multiple functional cell types, including those responsible for lengthening bones, maintaining the periosteum, and promoting the invasion of blood vessels that supply newly formed bone. Thrombospondin-4, a key signaling molecule produced by these cells, drives blood vessel formation. These findings open new avenues for enhancing bone repair and healing injured bones.

Lithium is a strategically very important mineral in the present decade. Latin American countries, with their abundant resources, have taken divergent paths in terms of governance strategies. In a recent study, a researcher from Jeonbuk National University has proposed a two-stage decision-making framework to explain this trend, providing a useful starting point for examining how states navigate the interplay between external pressures and domestic structural constraints in governing lithium industries.

Researchers have found a way to control protein levels inside different tissues of a whole, living animal for the first time. The technological advance works while a nematode worm continues to live normally: eating, moving and growing as the system quietly adjusts protein levels inside the tissues of its body. The study paves the way for designing completely new experiments that were impossible to carry out with current techniques and unravel the molecular underpinnings of whole-body processes like ageing.