Liver

CNN reporter Ashley Strickland spotlights first year student Kristoff Misquitta’s work winning the 2020 Genes in Space contest for an experiment aimed at understanding how the human liver functions in space. "We're trying to develop a powerful and efficient workflow to understand the state of the liver in space, and to use that as a basis to understand some of the issues surrounding the way astronauts take medication currently and to remedy issues we find," explains Misquitta. "Hopefully we can use this as a platform to someday develop more advanced and different types of medications."

Using nanotechnology and CRISPR, Prof. Daniel Anderson has turned off a cholesterol-related gene in mouse liver cells, reports Julie Steenhuysen for Reuters.  This new development “could lead to new ways to correct genes that cause high cholesterol and other liver diseases,” Steenhuysen writes.