Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have shed valuable light on the nuanced functions and intricate regulatory methods of RNA editing, a critical mechanism underlying brain development and disease.

In a study published June 26 in Nature Communications, the team reported finding major differences between postmortem and living prefrontal cortex brain tissues as they relate to one of the most abundant RNA modifications in the brain, known as adenosine-to-inosine (A-to-I) editing.

This discovery will play a significant role in shaping the development of diagnostics and therapies for brain diseases.

A UCLA Health study explored the traits of resilient individuals, discovering significant neural activities in the brain regions for cognition and emotional regulation, and healthy gut microbiome activities.

The research highlighted differences in microbiome metabolites and gene activity, indicating lower inflammation and better gut health in resilient people compared to less resilient individuals. This comprehensive approach may lead to interventions that enhance resilience to stress, possibly preventing various health issues.

Resilience and Health.

Recent research on isoporous membranes, which feature uniformly sized pores, show potential for improving the precision and efficiency of industrial separation processes by allowing solutes multiple attempts to pass through the pores.

Imagine a close basketball game that comes down to the final shot. The probability of the ball going through the hoop might be fairly low, but it would dramatically increase if the player were afforded the opportunity to shoot it over and over.

A similar idea is at play in the scientific field of membrane separations, a key process central to industries that include everything from biotechnology to petrochemicals to water treatment to food and beverage.

An international consortium has developed a new global standard for the compression and transmission of haptic information, said to be a boost for telesurgery and remote driving.

Aussie scientists have developed a new gene-editing technique that could be a major breakthrough. It could allow scientists to make accurate and more significant changes to DNA.

#Science #GeneEditing #genes

For hundreds of years, the clarity and magnification of microscopes were ultimately limited by the physical properties of their optical lenses. Microscope makers pushed those boundaries by making increasingly complicated and expensive stacks of lens elements. Still, scientists had to decide between high resolution and a small field of view on the one hand or low resolution and a large field of view on the other.

In 2013, a team of Caltech engineers introduced a microscopy technique called FPM (for Fourier ptychographic microscopy). This technology marked the advent of computational microscopy, the use of techniques that wed the sensing of conventional microscopes with computer algorithms that process detected information in new ways to create deeper, sharper images covering larger areas. FPM has since been widely adopted for its ability to acquire high-resolution images of samples while maintaining a large field of view using relatively inexpensive equipment.

Now the same lab has developed a new method that can outperform FPM in its ability to obtain images free of blurriness or distortion, even while taking fewer measurements. The new technique, described in a paper that appeared in the journal Nature Communications, could lead to advances in such areas as biomedical imaging, digital pathology, and drug screening.

A team led by NCI researchers has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that uses data from individual cells inside tumors to predict whether a person’s cancer will respond to a specific drug. Learn more about how these findings hold promise for optimally matching cancer drugs to patients:

Precision oncology, in which doctors choose cancer treatment options based on the underlying molecular or genetic signature of individual tumors, has come a long way. The Food and Drug Administration has approved a growing number of tests that look for specific genetic changes that drive cancer growth to match patients to targeted treatments. The NCI-MATCH trial, supported by the National Cancer Institute, in which participants with advanced or rare cancer had their tumors sequenced in search of genetic changes that matched them to a treatment, has also suggested benefits for guiding treatment through genetic sequencing. But there remains a need to better predict treatment responses for people with cancer.

A promising approach is to analyze a tumor’s RNA in addition to its DNA. The idea is to not only better understand underlying genetic changes, but also learn how those changes impact gene activity as measured by RNA sequencing data. A recent study introduces an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven tool, dubbed PERCEPTION (PERsonalized single-Cell Expression-based Planning for Treatments In ONcology), developed by an NIH-led team to do just this.¹ This proof-of-concept study, published in Nature Cancer, shows that it’s possible to fine-tune predictions of a patient’s treatment responses from bulk RNA data by zeroing in on what’s happening inside single cells.

Continue reading “AI Tool Using Single-Cell Data Has Promise for Optimally Matching Cancer Drugs to Patients” »

Stanford’s new tiny, cheap laser:

Researchers have achieved a potentially groundbreaking innovation in laser technology by developing a titanium-sapphire (Ti: sapphire) laser on a chip. This new prototype is dramatically smaller, more efficient, and less expensive than its predecessors, marking a significant leap forward with a technology that has broad applications in industry, medicine, and beyond.

Ti: sapphire lasers are known for their unmatched performance in quantum optics, spectroscopy, and neuroscience due to their wide gain bandwidth and ultrafast light pulses. However, their bulky size and high cost have limited their widespread adoption. Traditional Ti: sapphire lasers occupy cubic feet in volume and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, in addition to requiring high-powered lasers costing $30,000 each to feed it the energy it needs to operate.

Continue reading “Researchers develop tiny, cost-effective Ti laser that fits on a chip” »

This may be about as wildly entertaining, disruptive and philosophically profound as legitimate scientific research gets. Michael Levin’s work in cellular intelligence, bioelectrical communication and embodied minds “is going to overturn everything.”