CRISPR has started moving out of university research laboratories and into the world of human clinical trials.
We are about to see the emergence of a new medical technology, genetic vaccines.
Enhancers change rapidly during evolution, but the mechanisms by which new enhancers originate in the genome are mostly unknown. Not all regions of the genome evolve at the same rate and mutations are elevated at late DNA replication time. To understand the role played by mutational processes in enhancer evolution, we leveraged changes in mutation rates across the genome. By examining enhancer turnover in matched healthy and tumor samples in human individuals, we find while enhancers are most common in early replicating regions, new enhancers emerged more often at late replicating regions. Somatic mutations in cancer are consistently elevated in enhancers that have experienced turnover compared to those that are maintained. A similar relationship with DNA replication time is observed in enhancers across mammalian species and in multiple tissue-types. New enhancers appeared almost twice as often in late compared to early replicating regions, independent of transposable elements. We trained a deep learning model to show that new enhancers are enriched for mutations that modify transcription factor (TF) binding. New enhancers are also typically neutrally evolving, enriched in eQTLs, and are more tissue-specific than evolutionarily conserved enhancers. Accordingly, transcription factors that bind to these enhancers, inferred by their binding sequences, are also more recently evolved and more tissue-specific in gene expression. These results demonstrate a relationship between mutation rate, DNA replication time and enhancer evolution across multiple time scales, suggesting these observations are time-invariant principles of genome evolution.
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Researchers at the University of Göttingen have created a new approach to generate colored X-ray images. Previously, the only way to determine the chemical composition and arrangement of components in a sample using X-ray fluorescence analysis was to focus X-rays on the entire sample and scan it, which was both time-consuming and costly. The new method allows for the creation of an image of a large area with just one exposure, eliminating the need for focusing and scanning. The findings were published in the journal Optica.
In contrast to visible light, there are no comparably powerful lenses for “invisible” radiation, such as X-ray, neutron, or gamma radiation. However, these types of radiation are essential, for example, in nuclear medicine and radiology, as well as in industrial testing and material analysis.
Uses for X-ray fluorescence include analyzing the composition of chemicals in paintings and cultural artifacts to determine authenticity, origin, or production technique, or the analysis of soil samples or plants in environmental protection. The quality and purity of semiconductor components and computer chips can also be checked using X-ray fluorescence analysis.
Running ChatGPT costs millions of dollars a day, which is why OpenAI, the company behind the viral natural-language processing artificial intelligence has started ChatGPT Plus, a $20/month subscription plan. But our brains are a million times more efficient than the GPUs, CPUs, and memory that make up ChatGPT’s cloud hardware. And neuromorphic computing researchers are working hard to make the miracles that big server farms in the clouds can do today much simpler and cheaper, bringing them down to the small devices in our hands, our homes, our hospitals, and our workplaces.
One of the keys: modeling computing hardware after the computing wetware in human brains.
“Inference costs far exceed training costs when deploying a model at any reasonable scale,” say Dylan Patel and Afzal Ahmad in SemiAnalysis. “In fact, the costs to inference ChatGPT exceed the training costs on a weekly basis. If ChatGPT-like LLMs are deployed into search, that represents a direct transfer of $30 billion of Google’s profit into the hands of the picks and shovels of the computing industry.”
Genome-wide studies have identified 27 risk loci associated with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and shown its genetic link with other psychiatric conditions.
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This has been the news lately. This is a good breakdown of info and apparently Katcher wishes to do dog trials.
In this video we provide a quick update on activities at Yuvan Research. It is very exciting to see that Sima, the last remaining rat in the E5 trial is still alive and has surpassed the age of the previous record for lifespan of a Sprague Dawley rat.
Apitherapy is an emerging field with the potential to impact the economic aspects of cancer research globally, particularly in under-resourced communities. To date, however, studies are yet to fully investigate the molecular mechanism of action of honeybee venom and melittin, and their consequent optimum usage in the oncology arena is yet to be comprehensively investigated, particularly for the treatment of breast cancer, the most commonly occurring cancer in women worldwide2. TNBCs and HER2-enriched tumors are highly aggressive breast cancer subtypes. TNBC is associated with the highest mortality and, despite frequent EGFR expression, commonly displays resistance to anti-EGFR therapies with high dependence on PI3K/Akt signaling for proliferation, survival, and chemotherapy resistance34.
Anti-HER2 therapies have substantially improved long-term survival in early-stage HER2-positive cancers, but the majority of late-stage patients eventually develop resistance and succumb to the disease33,35,36. Not only did we demonstrate selectivity of honeybee venom and melittin for malignant cells, but we also revealed higher potencies for these aggressive types of breast cancer.
Here, we show that honeybee venom and melittin suppress the ligand-induced phosphorylation of EGFR and HER2, dynamically modulating downstream signaling pathways in breast cancer cells. We propose that melittin directly or indirectly inhibits RTK dimerization. Melittin may also enter the cell to directly or indirectly modulate downstream signaling pathways25,60. Previous work has shown that melittin can be targeted to HER2-overexpressing cell lines using immunoliposomes bearing trastuzumab61. Here, we demonstrate that melittin alone selectively targets HER2-and EGFR-overexpressing breast cancer cells. Interestingly, melittin was more potently toxic to breast cancer cells compared to honeybee venom, warranting further investigation.
Scientists from the Micro, Nano and Molecular Systems Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research and the Institute for Molecular Systems Engineering and Advanced Materials at Heidelberg University have created a new technology to assemble matter in 3D. Their concept uses multiple acoustic holograms to generate pressure fields with which solid particles, gel beads and even biological cells can be printed.
These results pave the way for novel 3D cell culture techniques with applications in biomedical engineering. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing enables the fabrication of complex parts from functional or biological materials. Conventional 3D printing can be a slow process, where objects are constructed one line or one layer at a time. Researchers in Heidelberg and Tübingen now demonstrate how to form a 3D object from smaller building blocks in just a single step.
When it comes to DNA, one pesky mosquito turns out to be a rebel among species.
Researchers at Rice University’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) are among the pioneers of a new approach to studying DNA. Instead of focusing on chromosomes as linear sequences of genetic code, they’re looking for clues on how their folded 3D shapes might determine gene expression and regulation.
For most living things, their threadlike chromosomes fold to fit inside the nuclei of cells in one of two ways. But the chromosomes of the Aedes aegypti mosquito—which is responsible for the transmission of tropical diseases such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika, mayaro and yellow fever—defy this dichotomy, taking researchers at the CTBP by surprise.
