speaking of supramolecular polymer networks and no i'm not kidding this time they acted as a scaffolding to help heal spinal injuries in a study published last month in the journal science researchers injected paralyzed mice with nanofibers that triggered injured spinal cord cells to regenerate within three to four weeks the mice could walk again now it's super important to note that this study was only done in mice this technique has not been used to treat spinal injuries in humans yet but for the mice the results were definitely promising the damaged neurons re-grew their long-signaling tails called axons the mice also developed less scar tissue and more new blood vessels in the region in question which are important for successful healing as a neat bonus the molecules all broke down within NUMBER_TOKEN weeks leaving nothing behind but nutrients for the cells to use the nanofibers were injected in liquid form but once they made contact with living tissue the fibers bonded to each other to form a gel-like spn that mimicked the normal scaffolding around the cells of the spinal cord importantly the fibers also contained components that would encourage the spinal neurons to regenerate some of them were attached to a molecule that signals neural stem cells to turn into neurons while others were attached to a molecule that encourages cells to reproduce and survive the researchers expected that a more stable scaffold structure would help ensure that receptors on neurons and other cells would encounter the signaling molecules attached to the fibers the signaling molecule could then bind to the cells and instruct them to begin repairing themselves but the weak bonds of the fibers spn meant that even once they were assembled into their extracellular scaffolding the fibers continued to move slightly sometimes even escaping the network and to the researcher's surprise that movement seemed to be important they found that the versions of their fibers that moved more within their structure also correlated with better healing and regeneration while they can't say for sure that the movement caused this better result they think it likely did the target cells and their receptors also move around so the researchers think the fiber's movement could increase the chance that they'll collide with a receptor the researchers say this finding could help explain why biological systems so often have proteins that seem messy and disordered it's possible that the chaos could help with cellular signaling now that's all we know about this for now but the results are so promising that the researchers say they want to adapt the technique for use in humans very soon but also this more basic principle that motion is important to cell signaling they say that could someday have even broader applications from countering neurodegenerative diseases to better targeting all kinds of drugs thanks for watching this episode of scishow news which was supported by climb works the climate crisis is the most important issue facing us right now and it's going to take action on a lot of fronts to fight it but climb works aims to give you one tool you can use to help climb works works to address the climate crisis by removing carbon dioxide from the air they use a type of technology called direct air capture which removes coNUMBER_TOKEN directly from the atmosphere the coNUMBER_TOKEN can then be reused up-cycled or stored geologically you can subscribe at different tiers to remove up to NUMBER_TOKEN kilograms of coNUMBER_TOKEN per month that's NUMBER_TOKEN days of central heating in a home and if you're looking for gifts for the holidays a subscription could be an awesome environmentally friendly gift to help inspire climate positive action you can head to URL_TOKEN scishow
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN thanks for watching this episode of scishow news which was supported by climb works the climate crisis is the most important issue facing us right now and it's going to take action on a lot of fronts to fight it but climb works aims to give you one tool you can use to help climb works works to address the climate crisis by removing carbon dioxide from the air they use a type of technology called direct air capture which removes coNUMBER_TOKEN directly from the atmosphere the coNUMBER_TOKEN can then be reused up-cycled or stored geologically you can subscribe at different tiers to remove up to NUMBER_TOKEN kilograms of coNUMBER_TOKEN per month that's NUMBER_TOKEN days of central heating in a home and if you're looking for gifts for the holidays a subscription could be an awesome environmentally friendly gift to help inspire climate positive action you can head to URL_TOKEN scishow END_SPONSOR_TOKEN