news 2022

A consortium of bacteria form on the microfibers of the Mediterranean Sea, becoming "floating homes for bacteria". Maria Luiza Pedrotti, a CNRS researcher at the Villefranche-sur-Mer oceanography laboratory  has reported the presence of a pathogenic bacterium on the tiny textile fibers found in the deep blue sea.

Less known to the general public, mucosal vaccination via the mucus membranes could provide robust protection against SARS-CoV-2 infections. Immune cells in the nose and lungs are considered better prepared to encounter and block the virus that causes COVID-19. An international research team has just demonstrated that its mucosal DNA vaccine is capable of ensuring the total survival of a group of mice infected with a version of the virus adapted to this species, whereas the latter kills 100% of unvaccinated mice 1 .

A CEA-Leti tutorial presented at IEDM 2022 highlighted promising advantages that resistive random-access memory (RRAM) technologies hold for implementing novel neuromorphic/in-memory computing systems for massively parallel, low-power and low-latency computation. In a presentation titled "Resistive Memories-Based Concepts for Neuromorphic Computing" , Elisa Vianello, CEA-Leti's edge AI program manager, said RRAMs, aka memristors, offer advantages in energy efficiency and computing power when processing AI workloads.

While great progress has been made in recent years in the understanding of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), its underlying molecular mechanisms remain fairly poorly documented.

Publication of the CIRI in the journal Nature Microbiology on January 5, 2023. Communication of the Institut Pasteur on January 6, 2023. A team from the Institut Pasteur, hosted at CIRI, has developed and successfully tested on a primate model a pentavalent vaccine against the five pathogenic arenaviruses circulating in South America.

Bats are asymptomatic carriers of a multitude of viruses that are pathogenic to most other mammals. How has their immune system evolved to shield them from these pathogens? A team of scientists-the majority affiliated with the CNRS, Claude Bernard Lyon 1 University, and ENS de Lyon 1 - has just published an article in Science Advances  addressing that question.

Both sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia are genetic disorders that affect hemoglobin, and as such are categorized as beta-hemoglobinopathies. A team of scientists from Inserm, Université Paris Cité and the Paris Public Hospitals Group AP-HP at the Imagine Institute has shown the efficacy of a gene therapy approach to treat these two disorders.

An international consortium has identified rare variants in two new genes that markedly increase the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The work was led by two research groups in France (headed respectively by Gaël Nicolas, Rouen and Jean-Charles Lambert, Lille) and a group in the Netherlands (headed by Henne Holstege, Amsterdam).

People with liver disease caused by eating too much sugar and fat could be at increased risk of developing serious neurological conditions like depression or dementia. In a study examining the link between non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and brain dysfunction, scientists at the Roger Williams Institute of Hepatology, affiliated to King's College London and the University of Lausanne, found an accumulation of fat in the liver causes a decrease in oxygen to the brain and inflammation to brain tissue - both of which have been proven to lead to the onset of severe brain diseases.

Cisplatin is a chemotherapy indicated to fight tumors in many types of cancer. However, it does have major side effects - especially kidney toxicity, that can lead to acute kidney failure. In addition, patients treated with cisplatin also often report high levels of neuropathic pain.

A team of European researchers has established a new principle that explains how flying insects determine the direction of gravity, without using accelerometers. These results are an important step towards the creation of tiny autonomous drones. For proper operation, drones usually use accelerometers to determine the direction of gravity.

Data can be encoded as DNA but are difficult to process thereafter. A new method enables operations to be performed on DNA-encoded data directly, without having to first translate them into their electronic equivalent. DNA can be used to reliably store a vast amount of digital data. However, retrieval or manipulation of specific data encoded in these molecules has hitherto been difficult.

A team of researchers from Inserm, CNRS, Sorbonne University and AP-HP at the Brain Institute in Paris has just deciphered how our brain behaves when we procrastinate. The study, conducted in humans, combines functional imaging and behavioral tests and allowed scientists to identify a region of the brain where the decision to procrastinate is played out: the anterior cingulate cortex.

Meditation as a tool to prevent dementia and improve the mental health and well-being of elderly people is one of the avenues explored by the European Medit-Ageing research program, coordinated by Inserm. As part of this program, researchers from Inserm and Université de Caen Normandie, in collaboration with French and European teams, observed the impact of 18 months of meditation training on certain brain structures involved in regulating attention and emotions in healthy people over 65.

Children born prematurely have a higher risk of suffering from cognitive and sensory disorders but also infertility in adulthood. In a new study, a team of researchers from Inserm, the University Hospital of Lille and the University of Lille, within the Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory, raises interesting avenues to improve their prognosis.

In a constantly changing world, making good decisions requires the ability to explore different strategies and to identify the one that will be the most appropriate. Research conducted by a team of neuroscientists from Inserm and CNRS at the École Normale Supérieure - PSL, in collaboration with Harvard University (USA), has made it possible to characterize this cognitive process by recording the tiny changes in the magnetic field emitted by the activity of the human brain.

The donkey has shaped the history of humankind, both as a source of power for farm work, and of transportation in sometimes hard to reach areas. To understand the history of the donkey's domestication, teams at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse (CNRS/ Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier) and scientists 1 from 37 laboratories around the world worked together to build and analyse the most complete panel of genomes ever studied for this animal.

Publication of the CIRI in the journal PNAS . CNRS-INSB communication on September 7, 2022. The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a coronavirus that spilled over from the bat reservoir. Despite numerous clinical trials and vaccines, the burden remains immense, and the host determinants of SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 severity remain largely unknown.

Preeclampsia is a condition that affects the placenta during pregnancy and is dangerous for both the fetus and the mother. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, Inserm and the CNRS have proposed a new therapy, tested in two rodent models, that corrects the defects identified in placental cells, and restores placental and fetal weight.

The modalities and date of emergence of bipedalism remain bitterly debated, in particular because of a small number of very old human fossils. Sahelanthropus tchadensis , discovered in 2001 in Chad, is considered to be the oldest representative of the humankind. The shape of its cranium suggests a bipedal station.