Like it or not, your living room says a lot about you. Given a few moments to poke around, a stranger could get a good idea of your likes and dislikes, and maybe even your future plans. Medical school scientists, employing a similar "peeping Tom" tactic to learn more about how stem cells develop, have taken a significant step forward by devising a way to re­create the cells' lair—a microenvironment called a niche—in an animal.

Tagged: Bio-X, stem cells, Human Health, Medicine

Small stretches of seemingly useless DNA harbor a big secret. There’s one problem: We don’t know what it is. Although individual laboratory animals appear to live happily when these genetic ciphers are deleted, these snippets have been highly conserved throughout evolution, suggesting that they have some value.

Tagged: Bio-X, DNA, evolution, Health Research, Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowships

Scientists at the School of Medicine and at UCSF have succeeded in isolating stem cells from human testes. The cells bear a striking resemblance to embryonic stem cells—they can differentiate into each of the three main types of body tissue—but the researchers caution against viewing them as one and the same.

Tagged: Bio-X, stem cells, Human Health, Medicine

Clusters of mouse embryonic stem cells called embryoid bodies more closely approximate true embryos in organization and structure than previously thought, according to researchers at the School of Medicine. Harnessing the signals that influence the cells' fate may help researchers more accurately direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells for use in therapy.

Tagged: Bio-X, stem cells, Human Health, Humanities & Sciences, Medicine

Using a tiny scope and laser light Bio-X researchers including BioE and ME Professor Scott Delp have found a new way to study how muscle works, which could aid in treatment of muscle disesases such as cerebral palsy.

Tagged: Bio-X, Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program, muscle, Human Health, Engineering, Medicine

How can medical students practice surgery without placing patients at risk? Stanford surgeons and computer scientists are working together to create a hands-on surgical simulator with an incredibly realistic sense of touch.

Tagged: Bio-X, Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program, healthcare, simulation, surgery, Human Health, Engineering, Medicine

The fight against the liver disease hepatitis C has been at something of an impasse for years, with more than 150 million people currently infected, and traditional antiviral treatments causing nasty side effects and often falling short of a cure. Using a novel technique, medical and engineering researchers at Stanford have discovered a vulnerable step in the virus' reproduction process that in lab testing could be effectively targeted with an obsolete antihistamine.

Tagged: Bio-X, bioengineering, hepatitus, Human Health, Engineering, Medicine

According to Sanjiv "Sam" Gambhir, molecular imaging is not so very different from good detective work. Just as detectives use a range of creative methods to find out what's going on behind the scenes, so do his "molecular detectives," as he calls them.

Tagged: Bio-X, cancer, molecular imaging, Human Health, Medicine

In the vast expanse of African grasslands, wild herds of migrating elephants have learned to communicate with each other by listening with their feet to vibrations in the ground. Now a Stanford University School of Medicine researcher has found their seismic communication system is so sophisticated the elephants have their own version of "caller ID."

Tagged: Africa, Bio-X, Bio-X Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program, elephants, Engineering, Medicine

Stanford professors are bringing quantitative and life sciences together; using physical and mathematical modeling to create computerized simulations of biological structures and functions. The hope is that this will ultimately enable doctors to make better diagnoses and treatment plans.

Tagged: Bio-X, biomedical, Simbios