Martí-Mateos et al. show that red blood cells explain improved glucose tolerance at high altitude. By manipulating red blood cell number, they determine that these cells are necessary and sufficient for hypoxic hypoglycemia. This highlights red blood cells as unappreciated glucose regulators and reveals novel strategies to treat diabetes.
Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm. In biology, AI tools called deep neural networks (DNNs) have proven invaluable for predicting the results of genomic experiments. Their usefulness has these tools poised to set the stage for efficient, AI-guided research and potentially lifesaving discoveries—if scientists can work out the kinks. The findings are published in the journal npj Artificial Intelligence.
“Right now, there are a lot of different AI tools where you’ll give an input, and they’ll give an output, but we don’t have a good way of assessing the certainty, or how confident they are, in their answers,” explains Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Associate Professor Peter Koo. “They all come out in the same format, whether you’re using a large language model or DNNs used in genomics and other fields of biology.”
It’s one of the greatest challenges today’s researchers face. Now, Koo, former CSHL postdoc Jessica Zhou, and graduate student Kaeli Rizzo have devised a potential solution—DEGU (Distilling Ensembles for Genomic Uncertainty-aware models). DNNs trained using DEGU are more efficient and more accurate in their predictions than those learning via standard methods.
Maureen A. Su find the epigenetic regulator UTX complexes with transcription factors TCF1 and STAT3 to promote pathogenicity of long-lived, stem-like progenitor T cells in models of type 1 diabetes (T1D)
1Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA.
2Department of Pediatrics and.
3Department of Genetics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Sunny Y. Wong & team characterize gene expression changes that occur during acne pathogenesis and identify a therapeutic that reduces acne-like pustule formation in a mouse model of high fat diet-induced folliculitis:
The image shows prominent neutrophilic pustules from ear skin of the mouse model, stained for the neutrophil marker Ly6G (green) and KRT14 (red).
Address correspondence to: Sunny Y. Wong or Joseph S. Durgin, Department of Dermatology, University of Michigan, 1,500 E. Medical Center Dr., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48,109, USA. Email: [email protected] (SYW); [email protected] (JSD).
The expert council of the Japanese Ministry of Health has approved two regenerative medicine drugs based on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) — a cure for Parkinson’s disease and heart failure. If the health minister approves the experts’ decision, Japan will become the first country in the world to allow the commercial sale of such products — almost 20 years after the discovery of the technology itself.
Japan’s health ministry said on Thursday a panel of specialists had endorsed Sumitomo Pharma’s iPS cell-derived treatment for Parkinson’s disease, paving the way for the world’s first medical products based on the technology.
A new electronic implant system can help lab-grown pancreatic cells mature and function properly, potentially providing a basis for novel, cell-based therapies for diabetes. The approach, developed by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, incorporates an ultrathin mesh of conductive wires into growing pancreatic tissue, according to a study published in Science.
“The words ‘bionic,’ ‘cybernetic,’ ‘cyborg,’ all of those apply to the device we’ve created,” said Juan Alvarez, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. While these terms may sound futuristic, he noted this approach is already in use in the form of deep brain stimulation, which treats neurological conditions.
“What we’re doing is like deep stimulation for the pancreas. Just like pacemakers help the heart keep rhythm, controlled electrical pulses can help pancreatic cells develop and function the way they’re supposed to,” he said.