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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,514

Researchers develop program to read any genome sequence and decipher its genetic code

Yekaterina “Kate” Shulgina was a first year student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, looking for a short computational biology project so she could check the requirement off her program in systems biology. She wondered how genetic code, once thought to be universal, could evolve and change.

That was 2016 and today Shulgina has come out the other end of that short-term project with a way to decipher this genetic mystery. She describes it in a new paper in the journal eLife with Harvard biologist Sean Eddy.

The report details a new computer program that can read the of any organism and then determine its genetic code. The program, called Codetta, has the potential to help scientists expand their understanding of how the genetic code evolves and correctly interpret the genetic code of newly sequenced .

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Dr. Björn Örvar, PhD, CSO, EVP, Co-Founder, ORF Genetics — Designing Plants To Bring Quality Of Life

Designing Plants To Bring Quality Of Life — Dr. Björn Örvar, Ph.D., CSO, EVP, Co-Founder, ORF Genetics (Iceland)

Dr. Björn Lárus Örvar, Ph.D. is Chief Scientific Officer, Executive VP of Business Development, and a Co-Founder of ORF Genetics (https://www.orfgenetics.com/), an innovative plant biotechnology company and a pioneer in developing and manufacturing high-quality recombinant proteins, such as growth factors, derived from barley plants.

ORF Genetics was established in 2001 to develop innovative, economically viable and enabling solutions to produce recombinant proteins, using barley grain as a vehicle for their production, providing a more efficient and safer method than other protein expression systems provide.

Dr. Örvar served as the CEO of the company from 2006 to 2,013 and the Executive V.P. and Chief Scientific Officer of ORF Genetics since 2,013 and was the Member of the Board of ORF Genetics from 2001 to 2006.

Dr. Örvar received his Ph.D. in plant molecular genetics in 1997 from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and was a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University, Montréal for three years, focusing on plant cell stress signalling.

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Making science serve humanity: Jennifer Doudna, PhD, says CRISPR gene-editing technology should be accessible to all

The path that led Jennifer Doudna, PhD, and her colleagues to the development of CRISPR, the gene-editing tool that has revolutionized science and earned her a Nobel Prize, started with their deep curiosity and drive to understand how the most basic building blocks of life function.

When Doudna first decided to investigate precisely what systems bacteria use to adapt their immune systems to fight off viral infections, she had little expectation that the findings would ultimately provide the key to technology that could be used to safely alter genetic code.

“All of us [on the research team] realized that what had started as a fundamental research question was morphing into a very different kind of project; namely, one with enormous technical potential and also risks and opportunities that we had not appreciated when we started the work,” Doudna explained during a conversation with J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, chair of the AAMC Board of Directors and executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, at the opening plenary of Learn Serve Lead 2021: The Virtual Experience, on Monday, Nov. 8.

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Brain Structure is Key to Understanding Human Cognition

A CNS 2021 provided an incredible opportunity to learn more how the anatomy and integrity of brain networks impact higher-level cognition.

In the 19th and 20th century, cases of individuals with brain injury, such as Phineas Gage or Henry Molaison, have advanced our understanding of the relationship between the anatomy of the brain and its function. Back then, methods were limited to investigate whole-brain structure and function. Now, cognitive neuroscientists have some ability to visualize and measure activity of the whole brain at once, as well as the computational tools to investigate complex network-level relationships between brain structure, brain function, and behavior.

As a doctoral student working on stroke recovery, attending the CNS 2021 symposium led by Danielle Bassett was an incredible opportunity to learn more about some of the most recent methods that have been developed to understand how the anatomy and integrity of brain networks impact higher-level cognition. Strokes highly disrupt anatomical and functional connectivity, leading to cognitive and motor impairments. In individuals with post-stroke language impairments, namely aphasia, evidence shows that the more functional brain networks recover an organization similar to healthy individuals the better the recovery (Kiran et al., 2019). Understanding the relationship between brain structure and function in health and disease is therefore essential to develop appropriate treatments.

At this CNS symposium, the speakers showed how different models can help us better understand brain structural organization and how this particular organization constrains cognitive processes. They also showed direct relationships between alteration of anatomical networks, caused by disease or behavioral training, and changes in behavioral performance.

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China struggles to contain Delta variant of COVID

China’s zero-COVID-19 policy is showing strain as health authorities struggle to contain the growing spread of the Delta variant.
At least 1,000 locally-transmitted infections have been reported since mid-October in 20 provinces, prompting strict quarantine periods and area-specific lockdowns.
The onset of winter in China’s north is also helping disperse the disease.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu reports from Beijing, China.

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Powerful New Tool Can Peer Into the Vast Genetic Library Inside of Your Cells

The human genome can be thought of as a massive library, containing over 20,000 different “instruction manuals”: your genes. For example, there are genes which contain information to build a brain cell, a skin cell, a white blood cell, and so on. There are even genes that contain information about regulating the genome itself—like books that explain how to organize a library. The ability to regulate gene expression —in other words, the cell’s ability to turn various constellations of genes on or off—is the basis of why different cells (such as a muscle cell or a brain cell) have different forms and functions.

For any library to be useful to a reader, it needs to be organized in an easily searchable way. For example, all the books pertaining to world history may be on one shelf, whereas the cookbooks may be in an entirely different section of the library. In a cellular nucleus, there is over six feet of genetic material packed into a space 50 times smaller than the width of a human hair. How is the “library” in the nucleus organized? When a cell needs to regulate certain genes, how does the cellular machinery find the right ones amongst 20,000 others?

A new paper from the laboratory of Mitchell Guttman, professor of biology, uses a powerful new tool that can peer into the world of the cell’s genetic material (DNA.

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Meet ROSA: Robot guides brain surgery at Houston VA

The Neuro-Network.

𝙈𝙚𝙚𝙩 𝙍𝙊𝙎𝘼: 𝙍𝙤𝙗𝙤𝙩 𝙜𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙞𝙣 𝙨𝙪𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙖𝙩 𝙃𝙤𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙣 𝙑𝘼

𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘯. 𝘙𝘖𝘚𝘈, 𝘢 𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵, 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘫𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘝𝘈 𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘮 … See more.

Houston VA surgeons successfully complete VA’s first use of ROSA, a minimally invasive robotic device, on an Army Veteran from Oklahoma.

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As the U.K. nears elimination of cervical cancer, the U.S. isn’t close

A decade ago, a London cancer prevention researcher predicted that the United Kingdom’s national HPV vaccination campaign would take more than 15 years to prevent a majority of cervical cancers. So when he analyzed the data this year, he was stunned to find that the vaccine may already have nearly eliminated cervical cancer in the U.K. among young women.

“If this is right,” Peter Sasieni of King’s College London said of his findings, cervical cancers “could be reduced to about 50 – just 50 cancers in the whole of the U.K. for women under 30. It’s really quite exciting to see that day come – excitement and just joy.”

That joy was tempered with envy in the United States, where some of Sasieni’s peers lamented that the HPV vaccination rate for teenage girls lags far behind — about 59% in the U.S. vs. more than 85% in the U.K. The analysis, published last week in the Lancet, suggests the U.K. has notched a major public health victory against cancer through vaccinating the vast majority of young women against HPV, said Allison Kempe, a pediatrics professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who did not work on the study.

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Health Canada adds autoimmune disorder warning to AstraZeneca, J&J COVID-19 vaccines

Health Canada is updating the labels for the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines to add immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), an autoimmune condition, as a potential side effect.

In a statement on Tuesday, the agency said very rare cases of ITP have been reported internationally after receiving the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) and Janssen (J&J) COVID-19 vaccines.

ITP is a disorder that can cause easy or excessive bruising and bleeding, which results from unusually low blood platelet levels.

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