Health
fromThe Washington Post
2 days agoOne way to live longer: Win the genetic lottery
Genetic factors account for about 50% of human lifespan, significantly higher than the previously estimated 20%.
Central to HR is the RAD51 recombinase, whose assembly into a nucleoprotein filament is governed by five RAD51 paralogs (RAD51B, RAD51C, RAD51D, XRCC2, XRCC3). Mutations in any of these proteins predispose individuals to multiple cancers or genetic disorders. These paralogs are thought to form two functionally separate complexes, BCDX2 and CX3, that act independently at different stages of HR.
GEMINI leverages a computationally designed protein assembly as an intracellular memory device to record the history of individual cells. GEMINI grows predictably within live cells, capturing cellular events as tree-ring-like fluorescent patterns for imaging-based retrospective readout. Absolute chronological information of activity histories is attainable with hour-level accuracy.
Scientists in the laboratory of Rendong Yang, PhD, associate professor of Urology, have developed a new large language model that can interpret transcriptomic data in cancer cell lines more accurately than conventional approaches, as detailed in a recent study published in Nature Communications. Long-read RNA sequencing technologies have transformed transcriptomics research by detecting complex RNA splicing and gene fusion events that have often been missed by conventional short-read RNA-sequencing methods.
Called AlphaGenome, the model could help scientists discover why subtle differences in our DNA put us at risk of conditions such as high blood pressure, dementia and obesity. It could also dramatically accelerate our understanding of genetic diseases and cancer. The developers of the model acknowledge it's not perfect, but experts have described it as "an incredible feat" and "a major milestone".