Mechanical forces drive many processes in the human body, from organ and tissue formation during development, to stem cell differentiation, to wound healing. Until recently, scientists could only study these forces at the single cell level in two-dimensional experimental models. Now, researchers have developed a new tool and computer model to study forces generated by cells in 3-D contexts at a very small scale.
Gene therapy to correct inherited illnesses hinges on successful delivery of DNA into a person’s cells. Most gene therapists work with viruses to ferry their DNA cargo. Yet the body tends to fight even disarmed viruses that should be harmless. As an alternative, researchers have devised dendrimers, branched molecules whose endings can be tailored to package DNA. Now, in the first molecular-level simulation of a gene therapy vector in action, researchers have simulated a dendrimer docking at a model cell surface and shown how long it can hold on to its DNA cargo.
Kids often claim they are just as smart—if not smarter—than their parents. Childish nonsense? Perhaps not, according to a recent study. It turns out that young children’s brains are as efficient in solving information-processing tasks as their adult versions, despite being very differently organized. This finding could improve our understanding of normal brain development as well as of disorders such as autism and Tourette syndrome.
Try packing a two-meter-long stretch of DNA into a cell nucleus just a few millionths of a meter thick—with key coding segments readily accessible. It’s a seemingly impossible feat that eukaryotic cells routinely pull off by building a highly compact, fibrous mix of DNA and proteins called chromatin. Now a new study uses a combination of novel lab experiments and computer simulations to provide long-sought details about the structure of chromatin fibers.
No two cancer patients respond identically to treatment. Some will be cured while others will see their cancer return, and physicians are at a loss to explain why. Now, using MRI imaging researchers have developed a mathematical model of tumor growth that identifies two factors that are predictive of cervical cancer treatment success: responsiveness to radiation and the ability to clear dead cells.
A robot that develops hypotheses of its own
Robots already have a place in many labs, automating tedious tasks such as pipetting samples. But a new system designed at Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom has taken laboratory automation a step further.
According to a new computational analysis of DNA structure, variations in DNA shape—along the grooves of the double helix—may play an important role in defining how the genome works. The analysis revealed that six percent of the DNA ladder’s shape is conserved across a range of different mammals—even though the sequences that produce those conserved shapes could vary.
Keeping up with the literature is a challenge for all scientists. But some researchers are making it easier by enhancing the usability and understanding of an article’s contents in a variety of ways—an approach called “semantic publishing.” Recent efforts include a manual demonstration project published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS) as well as a number of automated tools being developed around the world. Combined, they provide an intriguing glimpse at scientific publishing’s possible future.
Current methods of tracking the flu all come with a bit of a time lag—which is unfortunate when trying to monitor for potential pandemics like today’s swine flu crisis. There is a faster way: According to a February 2009 report in Nature, Google researchers can track flu incidence in real time by monitoring online search queries. The Google model catches a flu outbreak one to two weeks earlier than the Center for Disease Control’s current reporting methods.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic and IBM have each built computer pipelines for extracting useful information from unstructured notes in patient charts, such as physician’s notes and pathology reports. And they’ve now partnered to make these best-of-breed natural language annotators freely available through the Open Health Natural Language Processing (OHNLP) Consortium ( http://ohnlp.org ).
