“Cyborg” pancreatic organoids can monitor the maturation of islet cells

Summary author: Becky Ham

2026-02-19

(Press-News.org) Qiang Li and colleagues have created “cyborg” pancreatic organoids that combine stretchy miniature electronics with stem cell-derived pancreatic islets, using the implanted electronics to monitor electrical activity related to glucose regulation in maturing α and β cells. Islet α and β cells secrete glucagon and insulin hormones, in response to electrical changes in the cell membrane. The researchers also used the electronics to stimulate the cells to enhance their glucose responsiveness and show how that responsiveness changes as the cells mature, how it is affected by different chemical compounds and circadian hormones, and how it is related to gene expression. Together, the cyborg organoids offer a path to study the biology and trace the maturation of α and β cells at the single-cell level, with an eye toward potentially treating or engineering new pancreatic islets in people with diabetes. In a related Perspective, Jochen Lang and Matthieu Raoux discuss how the cyborgs could be used to guide the growth of mature human pancreatic organoids for regenerative medicine and other applications.

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Technique to extract concepts from AI models can help steer and monitor model outputs

2026-02-19

AI models have their own internal representations of knowledge or concepts that are often difficult to discern, even as they are critical to the models’ output. For instance, knowing more about a model’s representation of a concept would help explain why an AI model might “hallucinate” information, or why certain prompts can trick it into responses that dodge its built-in safeguards. Daniel Beaglehole and colleagues now introduce a robust method to extract these representations of concepts, which works across several large-scale language, reasoning, and vision AI models. Their technique uses ...

Study clarifies the cancer genome in domestic cats

2026-02-19

Although cancer is a common cause of death in domestic cats, little is known about the range of cancer genes in cat tumors, and how this range might compare with the oncogenome in people. Now, Bailey Francis and colleagues have sequenced cancer genes in 493 samples from 13 different types of feline cancer and matched healthy control tissue, gaining a clearer picture of the cat oncogenome and comparing the genes to known cancer-causing mutations in humans. Under the “One Medicine” approach, ...

Crested Spinosaurus fossil was aquatic, but lived 1,000 kilometers from the Tethys Sea

2026-02-19

A new Spinosaurus species uncovered in northern Niger by Paul Sereno and colleagues appears to have been a wading predator of fish like its close relatives, but it lived as many as 1,000 kilometers inland from the Tethys Sea. The fossil find may represent a third phase of evolution for this group of massive, fish-eating dinosaurs, according to Sereno et al. The new species Spinosaurus mirabilis, uncovered in the central Sahara near Sirig Taghat (“no water, no goat” in Tamasheq, the local Berber language), lived with long-necked dinosaurs in a riparian habitat 100-95 million years ago. Sereno et al. suggest there were ...

MULTI-evolve: Rapid evolution of complex multi-mutant proteins

2026-02-19

The search space for protein engineering grows exponentially with complexity. A protein of just 100 amino acids has 20^100 possible variants—more combinations than atoms in the observable universe. Traditional engineering methods might test hundreds of variants but limit exploration to narrow regions of the sequence space. Recent machine learning approaches enable broader searches through computational screening; however, these approaches still require tens of thousands of measurements or 5-10 iterative rounds. With the advent of these foundational protein models, the bottleneck for protein engineering swings back ...

A new method to steer AI output uncovers vulnerabilities and potential improvements

2026-02-19

A team of researchers has found a way to steer the output of large language models by manipulating specific concepts inside these models. The new method could lead to more reliable, more efficient, and less computationally expensive training of LLMs. But it also exposes potential vulnerabilities. The researchers, led by Mikhail Belkin at the University of California San Diego and Adit Radhakrishnan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, present their findings in the Feb. 19, 2026, issue of the journal Science. In the study, researchers went under the hood of several LLMs to locate specific concepts. They then mathematically increased or decreased the ...

Why some objects in space look like snowmen

2026-02-19

Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. Far beyond the violent, chaotic asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter lies what’s known as the Kuiper Belt. There, past Neptune, you’ll find icy, untouched building blocks from the dawn of the solar system, known as planetesimals. About one in 10 of these objects are contact binaries, planetesimals that are shaped like two connected spheres, much like ...

Flickering glacial climate may have shaped early human evolution

2026-02-19

Researchers have identified a ‘tipping point’ about 2.7 million years ago when global climate conditions switched from being relatively warm and stable to cold and chaotic, as continental ice sheets expanded in the northern hemisphere. Following this transition, Earth’s climate began swinging back and forth between warm interglacial periods and frigid ice ages, linked to slow, cyclic changes in Earth’s orbit. However, glacial periods after this tipping point became far more variable, with ...

First AHA/ACC acute pulmonary embolism guideline: prompt diagnosis and treatment are key

2026-02-19

Guideline Highlights: The first clinical practice guideline on acute pulmonary embolism (PE) from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology introduces a new Acute Pulmonary Embolism Clinical Category system to define the severity of an acute pulmonary embolism and assist in developing a treatment strategy for adults with this condition. The guideline details risk factors for acute PE, such as recent surgery or hospitalization, trauma, prolonged immobility, pregnancy, obesity, cancer and blood clotting ...

Could “cyborg” transplants replace pancreatic tissue damaged by diabetes?

2026-02-19

PHILADELPHIA— A new electronic implant system can help lab‑grown pancreatic cells mature and function properly, potentially providing a basis for novel, cell-based therapies for diabetes. The approach, developed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, incorporates an ultrathin mesh of conductive wires into growing pancreatic tissue, according to a study published today in Science. “The words ‘bionic’, ‘cybernetic’, ...

Hearing a molecule’s solo performance

2026-02-19

When things vibrate, they make sounds. Molecules do too, but at frequencies far beyond human hearing. Chemical bonds stretch, bend and twist at characteristic rates that fall in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared spectroscopy, which measures how light excites these vibrations, is often likened to listening to a molecule's voice. Each molecule has its own unmistakable tone – a vibrational “fingerprint” that reflects not only its chemical structure but also the nanoscale environment around it. But the voices of individual molecules are so faint that traditional infrared spectroscopy ...

“Cyborg” pancreatic organoids can monitor the maturation of islet cells

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: