Reaching the golden years doesn’t always feel so golden. As we age, disease, injury, and other stress factors from the environment will damage our bodies' cells. Most cells may be able to repair that damage, while our immune system usually clears those damaged cells through a process called apoptosis.^[1] However, if cellular repair and clearance is not effective, the residual damaged cells will further weaken the immune system and deteriorate other biological processes. Is there a possibility that we can avoid this cellular damage and improve the health of older people? A cellular state known as senescence might hold the key to this question.^{[1, 2]} During senescence, the damaged cells irreversibly stop dividing and resist being removed. ^[3] Researchers have shown that determining senescence biomarkers could lead to new therapies for the inflammatory disease caused by senescence in older people.^[4]

Perhaps we only think of zinc as the extra element in our coins to keep manufacturing costs down, or as that random clip from the Simpsons about a world without zinc. Aside from thinking it is a wacky sounding word (I did look up the etymology and it is rather appropriate!), we just don’t consider zinc as being all that important. Once the pandemic hit, though, I noted that Costco was marketing their zinc supplements a lot more, and after doing some extra research, I bought some to add to my diet.

When I was an aspiring (much younger) scientist, one of the challenges was finding quality antibodies to accommodate our research group’s high-throughput Western blotting platform ¹ while studying signaling pathways in cancer cell lines. When I got into marketing, I learned about ABclonal’s high-quality, high-specificity, and high-affinity antibody products. I really wish that I had access to these products when I was doing my thesis research! With a team of passionate, capable scientists supporting these quality products, I was thrilled at the opportunity to be part of this company and to help spread ABclonal’s brand to the scientific community.

Cluster of differentiation, or CD molecules, are cell surface markers that are used for identification of cell types in pathology and other bioscience disciplines. The expression levels of CD markers may increase or decrease (or disappear altogether, at least to undetectable levels) when cells (for example, leukocytes, red blood cells, platelets, and vascular endothelial cells, etc.) differentiate into new and different lineages. Depending on the CD marker, the expression level may identify a phenotype for different segments of cells, such as when they become active or diseased. Most CD molecules are transmembrane proteins or glycoproteins, including extracellular regions that bind a ligand or opposing receptor, transmembrane regions to anchor the CD marker into the cell, and cytoplasmic regions that may confer some adaptor or catalytic function. Some CD molecules can also be "anchored" on the cell membrane by means of inositol phospholipids. A few CD molecules are carbohydrate haptens. The study of CD molecules can be used in many basic immunology research fields, such as the relationship between CD antigen structure and function, cell activation pathway, signal transduction and cell differentiation, etc. It can be used clinically for disease mechanism research, clinical diagnosis, disease prognosis, efficacy tracking and treatment, and more. CD molecules such as CD4, CD8, CD25, etc. can be used to identify populations of cells when studying samples by flow cytometry or immunofluorescence.

The Hippo signal is very conservative in evolution. It regulates organ size and tissue stability by regulating cell proliferation, apoptosis, and stem cell renewal. The core process of Hippo signaling is a kinase tandem process, Mst1/2 and Sav1 form a complex, phosphorylate and activate Lats1/2; Lats1/2 kinase then phosphorylates and inhibits transcriptional coactivators Yap and Taz. Yap and Taz are the most important effectors downstream of the Hippo pathway. Upon dephosphorylation, Yap and Taz translocate to the nucleus and interact with TEAD1-4 or other transcription factors (such as CTGF) to induce gene expression, thereby initiating cell proliferation and inhibiting apoptosis.

The nucleosome consists of an octamer composed of four histones (H2A, H2B, H3, and H4) and a DNA entangled with 147 base pairs. The core of the histones constituting the nucleosome are roughly the same, but the free N-terminus can be subjected to various modifications.