NEW YORK — In a groundbreaking development, scientists have created a revolutionary method to track the spread of cancer throughout the body, potentially paving the way for more effective treatments against this devastating disease. The new technology, developed by researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, uses genetic “barcodes” to monitor the movement of individual cancer cells, providing unprecedented insights into the process of metastasis.
In recent years, the scientific community has made significant strides in the field of gene editing, particularly through the development of the CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) systems. In 2020, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to the scientists for the discovery of CRISPR–Cas9 system, a revolutionary genome editing technology that advanced DNA therapeutics. Subsequently, the CRISPR–Cas13 system has emerged as a potential tool to identify and rectify errors in RNA sequences. CRISPR–Cas13 is a novel technology is specifically engineered for virus detection and RNA-targeted therapeutics. The CRISPR RNA (CrRNA) targets specific and non-specific RNA sequences, and Cas13 is an effector protein that undergoes conformational changes and cleaves the target RNA. This RNA-targeting system holds tremendous promise for therapeutics and presents a revolutionary tool in the landscape of molecular biology.
Now, in a recently published BioDesign Research study, a team of researchers led by Professor Yuan Yao from ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center, Zhejiang University, China has elucidated the latest research trends of CRISPR–Cas13 in RNA-targeted therapies. Talking about this paper, which was published online on 6 September 2024, in Volume 6 of the journal, Prof. Yao says, “By focusing on RNA-;the intermediary between DNA and proteins-;CRISPR-Cas13 allows scientists to temporarily manipulate gene expression without inducing permanent changes to the genome. This flexibility makes it a safer option in scenarios where genome stability is critical.”
RNA plays a central role in carrying genetic information from DNA to protein-synthesizing machinery, and also regulates gene expression and participates in numerous cellular processes. Defects in RNA splicing or mutations can lead to a wide variety of diseases, ranging from metabolic disorders to cancer. A point mutation occurs when a single nucleotide is erroneously inserted, deleted, or changed. CRISPR–Cas13 plays a role in identifying and correcting these mutations by employing REPAIR (RNA editing for programmable A-to-I replacement) and RESCUE (RNA editing for specific C-to-U exchange) mechanisms. Explaining the applications of Cas13-based gene editors, Prof. Yao adds, “The mxABE editor, for example, can be used to correct a nonsense mutation linked with Duchenne muscular dystrophy that can be corrected with mxABE. This approach has proved high editing efficiency, restoring dystrophin expression to levels more than 50% of those of the wild type.”
Augmented reality (AR) takes digital images and superimposes them onto real-world views. But AR is more than a new way to play video games; it could transform surgery and self-driving cars. To make the technology easier to integrate into common personal devices, researchers report in ACS Photonics how to combine two optical technologies into a single, high-resolution AR display. In an eyeglasses prototype, the researchers enhanced image quality with a computer algorithm that removed distortions.
CHICAGO — Surgeons at Northwestern Medicine successfully completed a double-lung transplant on a Minnesota woman who was battling cancer. In 2017, at just 34 years old, Amanda “Mandy” Wilk initially suspected she had food poisoning. However, her lingering symptoms prompted further investigation, ultimately leading to her diagnosis of stage 4 colorectal cancer.
Hi folks, I’d like to invite you to a webinar I will be giving on my research, hosted by the Foresight Institute! It takes place this Friday at 12:00pm CST. You can sign up on the linked page. The donation is optional, so if you don’t want to donate, you can just put $0.00. I hope to see you there!
Biotech and Health Extension sponsored by 100 Plus Capital
Viruses inside vaults: a powerful new gene therapy delivery system
Bio: Logan Thrasher Collins is a synthetic biologist, author, and futurist. He is currently a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Logan began engaging in scientific research during his sophomore year of high school when he created a new synthetic biology approach for combatting antibiotic resistant infections. Since then, he has led research projects on developing x-ray microscopy techniques for connectomics, using molecular dynamics simulations to study SARS-CoV-2, and inventing novel gene therapy delivery systems. Logan has spoken at TEDxMileHigh and has published peer-reviewed scientific papers on his research. He has also published science fiction and sci-fi poetry and as well as a peer-reviewed philosophy journal article. Logan passionately advocates for applying interdisciplinary solutions to global challenges and leverages both the arts and sciences to help build a bright future.
Imagine being one cartwheel away from changing your appearance. One flip, and your brunette locks are platinum blond. That’s not too far from what happens in some prokaryotes, or single-cell organisms, such as bacteria, that undergo something called inversions.
A study led by scientists at Stanford Medicine has shown that inversions, which cause a physical flip of a segment of DNA and change an organism’s genetic identity, can occur within a single gene, challenging a central dogma of biology — that one gene can code for only one protein.
“Bacteria are even cooler than I originally thought, and I’m a microbiologist, so I already thought they were pretty cool,” said Rachael Chanin, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in hematology. Microbiologists have known for decades that bacteria can flip small sections of their DNA to activate or deactivate genes, Chanin said. To the team’s knowledge, however, those somersaulting pieces have never been found within the confines of a single gene.
Dopamine was long thought to play a part in the placebo effect for pain relief, but a new study is questioning its true role.