Google DeepMind’s groundbreaking new AI predicts not only the structure of proteins, ligands, DNA, RNA and “all of life’s molecules,” but how they’ll interact. It promises a radical, revolutionary acceleration in many fields of science.
The forensic facial reconstruction is based on a precise 3D model of the skull created with medical scans.
An international team led by researchers at the University of Toronto has found a family of natural compounds with potential as new and more effective treatments for parasitic worms. The compounds stall the unique metabolic process that worms use to survive in the human gut.
Depression and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are serious concerns for public health. Approximately 280 million people worldwide have depression, while 620 million people have CVD.
It has been known since the 1990s that the two diseases are somehow related. For example, people with depression run a greater risk of CVD, while effective early treatment for depression cuts the risk of subsequently developing CVD by half. Conversely, people with CVD tend to have depression as well. For these reasons, the American Heart Association (AHA) advises to monitor teenagers with depression for CVD.
What wasn’t yet known is what causes this apparent relatedness between the two diseases. Part of the answer probably lies in lifestyle factors common in patients with depression and which increase the risk of CVD, such as smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of exercise, and a poor diet. But it’s also possible that both diseases might be related at a deeper level, through shared developmental pathways.
A study focusing on childhood maltreatment in Australia has uncovered its alarming impact, estimating it causes up to 40 percent of common, life-long mental health conditions.
The mental health conditions examined were anxiety, depression, harmful alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and suicide attempts. Childhood maltreatment is classified as physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and emotional or physical neglect before the age of 18. Childhood maltreatment was found to account for 41 percent of suicide attempts in Australia, 35 percent for cases of self-harm, and 21 percent for depression.
The analysis, published in JAMA Psychiatry is the first study to provide estimates of the proportion of mental health conditions in Australia that arise from childhood maltreatment. The researchers said the results are a wake-up call for childhood abuse and neglect to be treated as a national public health priority.
Superfast levitating trains, long-range lossless power transmission, faster MRI machines—all these fantastical technological advances could be in our grasp if we could just make a material that transmits electricity without resistance—or “superconducts”—at around room temperature.
Not ideal!
In January, multi-hyphenate billionaire Elon Musk announced that his brain-computer interface startup Neuralink had successfully implanted a wireless brain chip into a human subject for the first time.
Over the next couple of months, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh was shown moving a cursor with his mind, playing Civilization VI and even a fast-paced round of Mario Kart.
Each CRISPR system has two parts: a strand of RNA that matches the target and a protein that makes the edit. The most commonly used protein for gene editing is called “Cas9,” but scientists have discovered CRISPRs with other proteins that give them unique capabilities — while CRISPR-Cas9 slices through DNA, for example, CRISPR-Cas13 targets RNA.
Our current CRISPR gene editors are far from perfect, though. They can make edits in the wrong places or edit too few cells to make a difference, so researchers are constantly on the hunt for new CRISPR systems.
AI-designed CRISPR: Up until now, that hunt has been limited to the CRISPRs that have been discovered in nature, but Profluent has used the same types of AI models that allow ChatGPT to generate language to develop an AI platform that can generate millions of CRISPR-like proteins.
Tumors that move to the brain are difficult to treat because of the brain-blood barrier that separates the brain from the rest of the body.
Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers have developed a nanoparticle that could one day be used to treat brain metastases.
Summary: Researchers created the largest 3D reconstruction of human brain tissue at synaptic resolution, capturing detailed images of a cubic millimeter of human temporal cortex. This tiny piece of brain contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, which amounts to 1,400 terabytes of data.
This research is part of a broader effort to map an entire mouse brain’s neural wiring, with hopes of advancing our understanding of brain function and disease. The technology combines high-resolution electron microscopy and AI-powered algorithms to meticulously color-code and map out the complex neural connections.
