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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,883

ARROW, a reconfigurable fiber optics network, aims to take on the end of Moore’s law

Wide Area Networks (WANs), the global backbones and workhorses of today’s internet that connect billions of computers over continents and oceans, are the foundation of modern online services. As COVID-19 has placed a vital reliance on online services, today’s networks are struggling to deliver high bandwidth and availability imposed by emerging workloads related to machine learning, video calls, and health care.

To connect WANs over hundreds of miles, fiber optic cables that transmit data using light are threaded throughout our neighborhoods, made of incredibly thin strands of glass or plastic known as optical fibers. While they’re extremely fast, they’re not always reliable: They can easily break from weather, thunderstorms, accidents, and even animals. These tears can cause severe and expensive damage, resulting in 911 service outages, lost connectivity to the internet, and inability to use smartphone apps.

Scientists from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and from Facebook recently came up with a way to preserve the network when the fiber is down, and to reduce cost. Their system, called ARROW, reconfigures the optical light from a damaged fiber to healthy ones, while using an online algorithm to proactively plan for potential fiber cuts ahead of time, based on real-time internet traffic demands.

The complete sequence of a human genome

In 2,001 Celera Genomics and the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium published their initial drafts of the human genome, which revolutionized the field of genomics. While these drafts and the updates that followed effectively covered the euchromatic fraction of the genome, the heterochromatin and many other complex regions were left unfinished or erroneous. Addressing this remaining 8% of the genome, the Telomere-to-Telomere (T2T) Consortium has finished the first truly complete 3.055 billion base pair (bp) sequence of a human genome, representing the largest improvement to the human reference genome since its initial release. The new T2T-CHM13 reference includes gapless assemblies for all 22 autosomes plus Chromosome X, corrects numerous errors, and introduces nearly 200 million bp of novel sequence containing 2,226 paralogous gene copies, 115 of which are predicted to be protein coding. The newly completed regions include all centromeric satellite arrays and the short arms of all five acrocentric chromosomes, unlocking these complex regions of the genome to variational and functional studies for the first time.

The latest major update to the human reference genome was released by the Genome Reference Consortium (GRC) in2013and most recently patched in2019(GRCh38.p13). This assembly traces its origin to the publicly funded Human Genome Project and has been continually improved over the past two decades. Unlike the competing Celera assembly , and most modern genome projects that are also based on shotgun sequence assembly , the GRC human reference assembly is primarily based on Sanger sequencing data derived from bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones that were ordered and oriented along the genome via radiation hybrid, genetic linkage, and fingerprint maps. This laborious approach resulted in what remains one of the most continuous and accurate reference genomes today. However, reliance on these technologies limited the assembly to only the euchromatic regions of the genome that could be reliably cloned into BACs, mapped, and assembled.

A Natural Protein to ‘SEND’ Gene Editing Cargo to Cells

One of the most difficult aspects of gene therapy might be ensuring that it gets into the right cells safely so it can have a therapeutic effect. Researchers have now created a new way to deliver various types of RNA cargo to cells, which utilizes one of the human body’s natural proteins to create particles that can bind to RNA. This approach, called SEND, may help reduce any immune response that would be mounted against a gene therapy. The work has been reported in Science.

Current delivery systems are not efficient, may integrate their cargo improperly, and can cause serious immune reactions. “The biomedical community has been developing powerful molecular therapeutics, but delivering them to cells in a precise and efficient way is challenging,” said senior study author Feng Zhang, Ph.D., a core institute member at the Broad Institute, among many other appointments. “SEND has the potential to overcome these challenges.”

New Data Confirm Pfizer and Moderna Vaccines Bring a Small Risk of Heart Problems

Newly released data confirms that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are both associated with rare heart problems, and that this side effect is most common after the second shot in adolescent boys and young men. Still, the benefits of vaccination continued to outweigh the risks, scientists said.

The side effects tend to be mild, temporary and uncommon. For every million doses of the second shot given to 12-to 39-year-olds, there were 14 to 20 extra cases of the heart problems, according to the new data, which was presented Monday at a meeting of an independent advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The data suggest an association of myocarditis with mRNA vaccination in adolescents and young adults,” Dr. Grace Lee, a pediatrician at Stanford and chair of the committee, said at the meeting. “Further data are being compiled to understand potential risk factors, optimal management strategies and long-term outcomes.”

Scientists Add Human Fat Gene Into Potatoes to Make Them Grow Huge

A team of scientists found an unusual trick for growing bigger, heartier crops: inserting a human gene related to obesity and fat mass into plants to supersize their harvest.

Augmenting potatoes with the human gene that encodes a fat-regulating protein called FTO, which essentially alters the genetic code to rapidly mass-produce proteins, made otherwise identical potato plants grow crops that were 50 percent larger, Smithsonian Magazine reports. By growing more food without taking up more space for agriculture, the scientists say their work could help fight global hunger — without adding to its climate impact.

“It [was] really a bold and bizarre idea,” University of Chicago chemist Chuan He, coauthor of a paper published in Nature Biotechnology, told Smithsonian. “To be honest, we were probably expecting some catastrophic effects.”

This new antibody can stop all COVID-19 strains, including new variants, experts say

A team of researchers may have found an antibody that can neutralize all known novel coronavirus strains, including the developing variants.

GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology recently conducted a huge collaborative study by scientists and developed a new antibody therapy, called Sotrovimab. During the project, they discovered a new natural antibody “that has remarkable breadth and efficacy,” according to the Berkeley Lab.

The scientists reportedly discovered a new antibody, called S309, which “neutralizes all known SARS-CoV-2 strains — including newly emerged mutants that can now ‘escape’ from previous antibody therapies — as well as the closely related original SARS-CoV virus,” according to a press release from the Berkeley Lab.

Seeking Immortality Through Gene Therapy — with Liz Parrish /Awesome Health Podcast

Favorite part at 19:06, Bioinformatics with Rutgers University attacking the hallmarks of aging.

#genetherapy, #immortality, #bioinformatics.

Awesome Health Podcast Episode 155

According to this episode’s guest: Liz Parrish, people should be demanding access to the latest gene therapy treatments.

According to Liz, effective gene therapy that treats and heals a plethora of diseases could be in place today if not for the human race’s mistakes in prioritizing our funds. Trillions of dollars have been invested in war machines, for example, when we could have used that money to advance humanity into a healthier, more productive, and enjoyable way of life.

Continue reading “Seeking Immortality Through Gene Therapy — with Liz Parrish /Awesome Health Podcast” | >

Scientists Discover How Neuro-Immune Interactions Burn Deep Fat

Pioneering mouse study offers new therapeutic avenues for reducing visceral fat stores, which have been associated with cardiovascular disease and multiple types of cancer.

Obesity has been linked to no less than 13 cancers, including the two most prevalent (breast and colorectal), as well as to cardiovascular disease, which remains a leading cause of death worldwide.

The most harmful type of obesity is caused by the excessive accumulation of so-called “deep” fat. Contrary to fat stores located directly under the skin, deep, or “visceral,” fat stores reside inside our abdominal cavity, where they envelop vital organs. In normal amounts, visceral fat supports various fundamental functions, such as reproduction. However, when it is too abundant, it produces unhealthy levels of proteins and hormones that negatively affect neighboring tissues and organs.

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