Balance treatment targets to space weather missions: News from Imperial

Here’s a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial.

From new treatment targets for balance problems, to space weather missions, here is some quick-read news from across Imperial. 

Space weather mission 

Imperial researchers will be building kit for a new space mission to understand a component of the solar wind and how it interacts with the Earth to create potentially dangerous ‘space weather’. 

Elfen, led by the University of Leicester and funded by the UK Space Agency, will explore the Earth’s magnetosphere – the region of space around the planet affected by its magnetic field. It is a CubeSat mission that will carry a magnetometer built by Imperial physicists. 

Elfen will measure the composition of solar wind ‘heavy ions’ in front of and behind the Earth. Heavy ions are atoms, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, that have been nearly or fully stripped of electrons. This can cause them to emit X-rays near the Earth, and also flow into and out of the Earth’s upper atmosphere.  

The region that Elfen will explore faces growing interest as crewed travel between the Earth and the Moon is set to increase. 

New Treatment Targets for Balance Problems

A recent study by Imperial College researchers and clinicians at Imperial College NHS Trust may reveal new treatment targets for balance issues in conditions like Parkinson's disease and traumatic brain injury.

Injuries from imbalance and falls cost the NHS over £15 billion annually.

In a study of 46 patients at Charing Cross Hospital, a novel technique using high-energy ultrasounds to treat tremor caused patients to experience sensations of their bodies spinning, suggesting that the vestibular system, which controls balance, was affected by the sound waves.

Dr Peter Bain, neurology lead for the MRI-guided focused ultrasound team, and Dr Barry Seemungal, Head of the Centre for Vestibular Neurology, led the study.

Dr Seemungal emphasized that improving balance could enhance quality of life and independence, especially in older adults. Dr Bain noted that Imperial was the first UK centre to offer this treatment for tremors.

Dr Matteo Ciocca, the study’s first author, highlighted that this innovative technique is revolutionising treatments for various brain conditions, including pain, psychiatric disorders, and cancer.

Gene expression  

The complex coordination of gene activity in living cells is influenced by multiple factors, such as the random timing of reactions within cells and the asynchronous growth and division of individual cells. To shed light on how this coordination is achieved, researchers in the Department of Mathematics developed a model that describes how the cell cycle (growth and division) affects gene regulation.   

Using experimental data from timed measurements of gene expression in individual cells, they quantified how often genes are turned on and off, and how frequently the RNA they code for is synthesised and degraded during cell cycle progression.  

The analysis reveals that gene activity scales with cell size and follows specific patterns throughout the cell cycle. PhD researcher Dimitris Volteras said: “These fundamental insights have crucial implications for understanding how cells make decisions and how these processes become dysregulated in disease.”  

Read the full paper in Cell Systems.

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Main image and images 2 and 3: Shutterstock.

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