Light powers everything from communications to sensing, yet even tiny imperfections can scatter it and weaken signals. To address this, a team led by the University of Bath—working with the University of Cambridge and international partners—has developed a new structure that keeps light flowing smoothly even through bends, twists or damage, with the potential to operate over unprecedented distances.
Microsoft is investigating a known issue that causes the mouse pointer to disappear in the classic Outlook desktop email client for some users.
This bug has been acknowledged almost two months after the first reports started surfacing online, with users saying that Outlook became unusable after the mouse pointer vanished while using the app.
“My mouse just stopped being visible while I am using Outlook, and this is very, very, frustrating because my permission wasn’t given to make these changes, and now I can’t find anything, can’t open emails, can’t copy and paste, and the list goes on and on,” one customer noted.
An interesting paper evaluating the challenges faced by the existing generation of AAV vectors and proposing best practices for the future of AAVs in gene therapy. Useful tables of serotype, dose, and outcome are included. [ https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.02957-25](https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.02957-25)
Adeno-associated virus (AAV), discovered in 1965 (1), was considered a “biological oddity” and was dubbed as “almost a virus” (2), because it fails to undergo a productive replication in the absence of co-infection with a helper virus, such as adenovirus (3), herpesvirus (4), vaccinia virus (5), or human papillomavirus (6). Infection with the wild-type (WT) AAV infection is also not associated with any known disease in humans. However, following the availability of the complete nucleotide sequence of the WT AAV2 genome (7), molecular cloning (8, 9), and the demonstration of its remarkable ability to integrate site-specifically into human chromosome 19q13.3 (10, 11), sparked a significant interest in AAV, subsequently leading to the development of the first generation of recombinant AAV2 vectors (12, 13), followed by further refinements (14, 15).
Ever since then, interest in AAV vectors has continued to grow exponentially (16–19). The first generation of AAV vectors has been used in at least 700 programs, and there are over 200 currently active Phase I/II/III clinical trials for gene therapy of a wide variety of human diseases. Thus far, seven AAV “drugs”—Luxturna for Leber congenital amaurosis (20–22); Zolgensma for spinal muscular atrophy (23); Hemgenix for hemophilia B (24–27); Elevidys for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (28); Roctavian for hemophilia A (29–32); Beqvez for hemophilia B (33) (Beqvez has now been discontinued); and Kebilidi for aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase deficiency (34, 35)—have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
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This means you’re free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). More details.
Qu et al. identify HRD1 as a key negative regulator of autophagosome-lysosome fusion. They demonstrate that HRD1 interacts with the SNARE protein SNAP29 to suppress its liquid-liquid phase separation. This work establishes the regulation of SNARE complex assembly via phase separation as a critical control mechanism for autophagy progression.
🛰️Future Day is coming soon ⚡️
Participants include: Anders Sandberg, Ben Goertzel, Hugo de Garis, Roman Yampolskiy, Lev Lafayette, Adam Ford, Christine Peterson, Robin Hanson, Aubrey de Grey, Joscha Bach, James Hughes and Danica Dillion.
Live from Australia! This time we have Future Day spanning 3 days – from March 2nd to March 4nd AEDT – from March 1st to March 5th PST.
Why not celebrate the amazing future we are collectively creating?
Future Day 2026 -> where the future isn’t just discussed, but actively shaped.