News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have shown that different strains of the same bacterial pathogen can be distinguished by a machine learning analysis of their growth dynamics alone, which can then also accurately predict other traits such as resistance to antibiotics. The demonstration could point to methods for identifying diseases and predicting their behaviors that are faster, simpler, less expensive and more accurate than current standard techniques.

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a method for controlling the phase separation of an emerging class of proteins to create artificial membrane-less organelles within human cells. The advance, similar to controlling how vinegar forms droplets within oil, creates opportunities for engineering synthetic structures to modulate existing cell functions or create entirely new behaviors within cells.

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) have showed that applying "temporal pressure" to the skin of mice can create a new way to deliver drugs.

The mechanism unveiled triggers a mutation fog, causing hundreds of mutations in each tumor, which spread through the genome of lung, head-and-neck and breast cancers. Researchers from the Genome Data Science Lab have identified the antiviral APOBEC3A enzyme as the major cause of this new type of hypermutation. Published in Nature Genetics, the study shows how the mutation fog process generates many oncogenic "cancer driver" mutations, thus accelerating tumour development.

A Purdue University team developed a fully implantable radio-frequency transmitter chip for wireless sensor nodes and biomedical devices

The study of cellular dynamics is crucial to understand how cells develop and how diseases progress. Scientist at Helmholtz Zentrum München and Technical University of Munich (TUM) created 'scVelo' - a machine learning method and open source software to estimate the dynamics of gene activity in single cells. This allows biologists to robustly predict the future state of individual cells.

A small device, called "Smart Stirrer", performed a function of a conventional laboratory stir bar, has an integrated microprocessor and various sensors capable of wireless and autonomous report the conversion of properties of a solution. Results are sent to a computer over Bluetooth, and any changes notify the user wirelessly.