By deducing the possible ancient forms of a bacterial enzyme, OIST scientists have resurrected one of its ancestral versions, with a comparably higher ability to chemically modify RNA. In the Protein Engineering and Evolution Unit's latest publication in Nucleic Acids Research, the team presents an engineered RNA methyltransferase, which can be used to study the role of RNA modifications in cells. 

With RNA modifications affecting stability, promoting translation, and influencing its location within the cell, such modifications play an important role in the cell’s health and in diseases.

A decade ago, researchers introduced a new model for studying Alzheimer’s disease. Known as “Alzheimer’s in a dish,” the model uses cultures of mature brain cells suspended in a gel to recapitulate what takes place in the human brain over 10 to 13 years in just six weeks. But does the model truly produce the same changes that take place in patients? In a new study, researchers from Mass General Brigham, in collaboration with colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), created an algorithm to assess, in an unbiased manner, how well models of Alzheimer’s disease mimic the function and gene expression patterns seen in patients’ brains.  Their results, published in Neuron, identify crucial shared pathways, confirming that the Alzheimer’s in a dish model can be used to assess new drugs accurately and rapidly as well as point the way to drug discovery.