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Category: computing – Page 20

Largest catalog yet of how human cells read DNA shows how chemical marks alter genetic instructions

Every cell in the body contains essentially the same DNA, yet a brain cell behaves differently from a muscle cell or an immune cell. The difference lies largely in how each cell reads its genetic instructions.

Proteins called transcription factors bind specific DNA sequences and help control when and where genes are active. They direct processes ranging from embryonic development to immune function. When this regulation goes wrong, disease can result. But although the human genome contains around 1,600 transcription factors, the DNA-binding preferences of many have remained unknown.

An international collaboration led by Timothy Hughes at the University of Toronto has now filled many of these gaps in a study published in Nature. The researchers combined five experimental platforms with computational analyses, performing more than 4,800 experiments and identifying DNA-binding motifs for 177 transcription factors that were previously poorly characterized. The work added around 130 distinct motifs to the known vocabulary of human gene regulation.

Laser stability method advances precision control of electrons with light

Researchers at the University of Oldenburg’s Institute of Physics are working on techniques for precision control of electric fields of light, which allow the dynamics of individual electrons to be manipulated in experiments. Now a team from the Attosecond Microscopy research group, led by Dr. Jan Vogelsang, has taken a decisive step toward this goal.

In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics B —Lasers and Optics, the researchers present a laser system that generates 200,000 light pulses per second. Six Oldenburg researchers collaborated with members of a research group led by physics Nobel laureate Anne L’Huillier at Lund University in Sweden to perform a detailed characterization of the laser system.

During the experiments, the precise position of the light wave—consisting of infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye—remained extremely stable even over periods of several hours. The stable light fields resulting from a continuous series of identical light pulses make experiments on electron control possible—foundational research that could eventually lead to the development of devices such as ultrafast transistors that operate at the speed of light.

The global race to make a practical quantum computer just took a big leap forward

In the global race to build bigger and better quantum computers, researchers have taken a step forward. A new machine called Helios is radically different from other quantum computers.

Quantum computers harness the power of quantum mechanics, the laws that govern physics at atomic and subatomic scales. Among various designs for such machines, Helios is a trapped-ion quantum computer, which means it uses charged atoms suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields.

It operates using 98 qubits—the units of information that a quantum computer uses to process data. This number of qubits makes it the largest trapped-ion quantum computer built so far. Quantinuum, the company behind the device, is based in Cambridge, U.K., and Broomfield, Colorado. It demonstrated earlier machines operating on 32 qubits in 2023 and 56 qubits in 2025.

Quantum Computer Solves a Problem in 15 Minutes That Classical Methods Can’t Practically Compute

Researchers have demonstrated a quantum computation that appears to exceed the practical capabilities of leading classical simulation methods while also addressing a longstanding problem: how to verify the result.

A quantum computer completed a difficult calculation in about 15 minutes, while leading classical simulation methods would require prohibitive amounts of time. Just as importantly, the experiment included a way to establish confidence that the quantum result was accurate.

IBM and University of Chicago researchers announced the demonstration on July 30, 2026, presenting it as evidence that quantum computing has met the central requirements for quantum advantage. This means completing a task beyond the practical reach of leading classical methods while providing a reliable measure of how faithfully the quantum computation was performed.

Scientists Reprogram How Light Travels in Just 74 Femtoseconds

An ultrathin silicon surface can steer and reshape light in just 74 femtoseconds, opening a path toward a new generation of high-speed optical technology.

A pulse of light can cross the width of a human hair in roughly 74 femtoseconds. In that same vanishingly brief interval, a new device developed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) can change the direction and shape of another light beam.

The experimental technology could point toward optical systems that respond far faster than today’s beam steering hardware. Such control is important in cameras, sensors, communication networks, scientific instruments, and emerging forms of photonic computing.

MIT engineers connect bacteria to create living transistors

MIT researchers have engineered bacteria that can function as transistors, allowing the team to create living “circuit boards” that can be printed onto a growth medium in a Petri dish.

In electrical circuits, transistors function as switches that can turn current on or off. In the biological circuits that the researchers have created, bacterial switches control the flow of small molecules, which send signals to downstream circuit components.

The research team designed two different transistors, along with three bacterial strains that relay information between the transistors, giving them the building blocks they need to design nearly any type of circuit. In a new study, they used these cells to create circuits that can add two or three inputs, or send one input to a specific location in the circuit.

Quantum computer completes verified task beyond practical reach of classical simulations

IBM and researchers from the University of Chicago announced a demonstration in quantum computing that meets the fundamental criteria for “quantum advantage”—the point where quantum computers can be confirmed to have outperformed classical computers on trusted computations.

The collaboration said its system had performed computations beyond the reach of leading classical simulation methods while providing confidence that the computation returned accurate results.

In their new paper, the researchers showed that these two goals could be achieved through a novel construction of encoded quantum circuits—one of the largest demonstrations of logical quantum computing to date. The paper is published on the arXiv preprint server.

The Next Generation of CRISPR Has Arrived | Dr. Trevor Martin — CEO, Mammoth Biosciences

Dr. Trevor Martin, Ph.D. — Co-Founder & CEO, Mammoth Biosciences

Most of us think of medicine as something we take every day — a statin, a blood pressure pill, or perhaps a monthly injection. But what if those lifelong treatments eventually become obsolete? What if one carefully targeted gene edit could dramatically reduce your risk of heart disease for decades?

Dr. Trevor Martin, Ph.D. is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mammoth Biosciences (https://mammoth.bio/), a pioneering biotechnology company developing next-generation CRISPR genome editing technologies for potentially curative medicines. He co-founded the company in 2017 alongside Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR pioneer Dr. Jennifer Doudna and an interdisciplinary team of leading scientists with the goal of building more precise, versatile, and clinically practical gene editing systems.

Dr. Martin earned his undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology with honors from Princeton University before completing a Ph.D. in Genetics and Statistics at Stanford University, where his research focused on quantitative genetics, genomics, and computational biology. His scientific background in statistics and genetics has shaped Mammoth’s unique approach to developing smaller CRISPR enzymes capable of reaching tissues and diseases that have been difficult to target with first-generation technologies.

Under Dr. Martin’s leadership, Mammoth has grown into one of the world’s leading CRISPR companies, raising more than $465 million, achieving a valuation exceeding $1 billion, and establishing strategic collaborations with companies including Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Bayer, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Continue reading “The Next Generation of CRISPR Has Arrived | Dr. Trevor Martin — CEO, Mammoth Biosciences” | >

A New Era of Precision Neuromodulation in Psychiatry

Over the past century, advances in neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience reshaped how we understand psychiatric disorders, expanding the portfolio of evidence-based treatments while routine clinical practice has mostly relied on trial and error. Precision medicine has steadily extended to psychiatry, and today we can target specific cortical or subcortical brain regions within defined pathological circuits to individualize treatments to particular symptoms. Neuromodulation sits at the frontier of this shift in psychiatry, with extensive ongoing research to identify optimal treatment targets and protocols personalized to individuals’ neural circuitry.

Neuromodulation using neuronavigation achieves precise clinical target identification through computer-assisted integration of multimodal brain imaging. Neuron avigated approaches have been central to deep brain stimulation (DBS) for decades. More recent advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) extended this framework from isolated gray matter nuclei toward pathological neural circuits through resting-state functional connectivity analysis and tractography, which enabled the identification of connectomic fingerprints associated with specific symptom clusters, or circuitopathies, a concept particularly relevant to psychiatric disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression.

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