Life Science Frontier
The leading edge of life science and medical research as reported by major journals
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Researchers at Tsinghua University developed Airscope, a wireless miniature microscope weighing 1.0 g with a 6 mm field of view. It recorded cortical activity at the level of thousands of cells in mice running and swimming without cables.
In a phase 3 trial of 63 adults with FOP, garetosmab, an antibody that blocks activin A, cut the number of new heterotopic bone lesions over 56 weeks by more than 90% compared with placebo. The results were published in The Lancet.
The AstraZeneca Centre for Genomics Research analysed whole genomes from 467,152 UK Biobank participants and examined, all at once, associations between large genomic rearrangements of 50 bases or more (structural variants) and more than 18,000 traits. Conventional methods could not see 82% of these variants.
Lonvoguran ziclumeran (lonvo-z), a therapy that edits liver cell genes directly inside the body, lowered the average monthly number of attacks by 87% compared with placebo in a phase 3 trial. The results, from 80 people randomised 2:1, were published in NEJM.
Researchers at the University of Toronto expanded the map of tiny exons that are inserted only in neurons, used machine learning to read the rules that regulate them, and found variants in the genomes of autistic people that are predicted to disrupt splicing.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology followed 171 people who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and found that people with more flagellated gut bacteria and higher signs of gut inflammation before vaccination had a higher risk of fever. Organoid and germ-free mouse experiments also supported causality.
A team led by Jay Shendure at the University of Washington used a molecular recorder that leaves records in DNA in order each time a cell divides to reconstruct about two weeks of development in a single mouse embryo as a lineage tree of 1.28 million cells.
Researchers grew pieces of human lung tissue intact to make organoids that contain T, B and NK cells, and confirmed the defensive function of tissue-resident memory T cells.
An expanded single-cell reference atlas covering more than 20 organs reveals how transcription factors and senescent cells vary by tissue.
A dietary component grew specific commensal bacteria, which split the roles of providing antigen and an adjuvant signal to build the gut mucosal antibody response.
Bridge recombinases, which recombine DNA under RNA guidance, were engineered for human cells to achieve 20% insertion and megabase-scale inversions and deletions.
A deep learning model trained on 45,000 PAMs predicted the recognition sequences of Cas proteins and designed variants that widen the range of editable targets.
A genetic circuit engineered into the commensal bacterium Bacteroides made it report rising gut osmolarity in a diarrhoea mouse model through fluorescence over a long period.
A generative protein model that handles sequence, structure and function together designed a new protein far from existing fluorescent proteins, and it actually glowed.
Tracking the gut microbial genomes of 81 infants showed that strains from fathers were passed on steadily regardless of delivery mode.
AlphaFold 3, which switched to a diffusion model, predicted protein-ligand and protein-nucleic acid binding structures more accurately than specialised tools.
Researchers at the University of Toronto handled cell type classification and perturbation response prediction in one model trained on single-cell transcriptomes as if they were 'sentences.'