Using advanced intravital microscopy to visualize immune cell movement within the tissues, investigators at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne have discovered that the neurotransmitter noradrenaline produced by the sympathetic nervous system causes a dramatic paralysis of immune cell movement.

Researchers have gained new insights into what makes for transplantable livers – and what doesn’t. In a clinical trial of 12 livers, a team from Massachusetts General Hospital showed that both livers with high fat content and those without could be viable for transplantation.

Twenty years after the first, exclusively white human genomes were fully sequenced, science finds itself in the same position as the rest of society: with the uncomfortable realization that old inequalities are often morphing, rather than disappearing. Vocal racists – scientists of the stripe of a James Watson – are by no means a thing of the past. But they are only the tip of the iceberg.

BioWorld looks at translational medicine, including: Neurons forget who they are in Alzheimer’s disease; Sensor can predict hallucinogenic serotonin receptor effects.

Under certain circumstances, a normally innocuous key molecular intermediate of regular cell metabolism, farnesyl pyrophosphate, can trigger neuronal lysis and cell death, according to a study led by Chinese researchers at Tsinghua and Peking universities in Beijing.

A collaboration aimed at identifying and developing potential new antimalarial drug candidate drugs has been announced between Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and Janssen Pharmaceutica, with assistance from Johnson & Johnson Innovation.