Interactions among viruses can help them succeed inside their hosts or impart vulnerabilities that make them easier to treat. Scientists are learning the ways viruses mingle inside the cells they infect, as well as the consequences of their socializing. Although it is debatable whether viruses are living things, they do compete, cooperate and share genome materials that can sometimes alter their responses to antiviral drugs, result in new variants or play a role in virus evolution. A paper today in Nature Ecology & Evolution by UW Medicine scientists looks at the evolution of poliovirus resistance to a promising experimental antiviral drug, pocapavir. While it seemed counterintuitive, the researchers demonstrated that lowering the potency of pocapavir could improve the situation by enhancing the survival of enough susceptible viruses to continue sensitizing the resistant ones.

Syntax Bio, a synthetic biology company programming the next generation of cell therapies, today announced the publication of new research in Science Advances detailing the company’s CRISPR-based Cellgorithm™ technology, which lays the groundwork for programmable control of gene activity in human stem cells and offers an alternative to the slow, variable manual processes researchers use today.

In traditional cell differentiation, scientists expose stem cells to a series of growth factors, media changes, and environmental cues over months to coax them into a desired lineage. Each step is highly sensitive to timing and reagent conditions, leading to inconsistent results that are difficult to reproduce or scale. Syntax Bio aims to address this challenge. 

“Our research shows that we can now achieve an unprecedented level of temporal control over how genes turn on inside stem cells,” said Ryan Clarke, PhD, Syntax Bio co-founder, chief technology officer, and study co-author. “It’s the foundation of a new programming language for cells, one that we believe can eventually surpass the slow, inconsistent cell differentiation approaches researchers have relied on for years. Our goal is to make cell programming as reliable and scalable as running software.”

Increased extracellular matrix (ECM) stiffness, a hallmark of risk in cardiovascular disease (CVD), is closely associated with inflammation triggered by immune cell infiltration in the vessel wall.

With the rapid revolution in super-resolution microscopy, the resolution of far-field optical microscopy has entered the sub-nanometer era, providing new insights into macromolecules in vitro and in situ.

The intricate structure of the brain at various scales is linked to its functional and biomechanical properties. Since understanding the biomechanical properties is vital for comprehending brain diseases, development, and injuries, measurements at different scales are necessary.