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Medicine + Health
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![An illustrative image of small peptide helices.](/sites/default/files/styles/large_2340x1212/public/2024-04/protien-illustration-uc-santa-barbara.png?itok=7P1UbUrL)
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
This is a story about proteins, how they malfunction, and what cells do to prevent that.
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![the cellular development of an embryonic tooth](/sites/default/files/styles/large_2340x1212/public/2024-04/tooth-epithelium-shroff-uc-santa-barbara.jpg?itok=NiT27YkO)
Photo Credit
Neha Pincha Shroff and Pengfei Xu
Tooth epithelium (cell surface; yellow) and mesenchyme (cell surface; magenta). Proliferating cells (cyan) expand the tissue, generating a mechanical pressure at the tissue center that drives the formation of the main tooth signaling center or organizer, the enamel knot.
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![Beijing’s Forbidden City lies shrouded in industrial smog.](/sites/default/files/styles/large_2340x1212/public/2024-02/Smog-Forbidden-City-iStock.jpg?itok=j265YMzb)
Photo Credit
Holger Kleine via iStock
China’s infamous air pollution affects its citizens’ minds as well as their bodies.
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![a cathedral in the middle of a mountain town in Colombia](/sites/default/files/styles/large_2340x1212/public/2024-02/yarumal-alzheimers-istock-uc-santa-barbara-small.jpg?itok=IRZY1Iri)
Yarumal, a municipality in the foothills of the Andes north of Medellín, is one of several communities in Colombia that host a large kindred with a genetic form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease
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![A blue macrophage engulfs a magenta lymphocyte, as rendered by ChatGPT4.](/sites/default/files/styles/large_2340x1212/public/2024-01/macrophage-dalle-2-uc-santa-barbara.jpg?itok=HnRSYiQY)
Photo Credit
ChatGPT4, prompt by Denise Montell
A blue macrophage engulfs a magenta lymphocyte, as rendered by ChatGPT4.
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![Portrait of Kenneth Kosik](/sites/default/files/styles/large_2340x1212/public/2023-09/ken-kosik-hero-uc-santa-barbara.jpg?itok=tMfZulB4)
Photo Credit
Matt Perko
Kenneth S. Kosik