Volume 42 Issue 5, May 2024

Young human glial progenitors replace older counterparts

An illustration of transplanted human glial progenitor cells (red) killing resident human glia (pink) in the adult mouse brain. Vieira et al. show that transplanted young glial progenitors outcompete older or diseased glia, suggesting a therapeutic strategy for neurodegenerative and myelin diseases.

See Vieira et al.

Image: Nadia Alzoubi. Cover design: Erin Dewalt

Editorial

An effective MASH drug is good, but biotech can make it better

Understanding this complex disease requires better model systems and large-scale data.

Editorial 08 May 2024

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News

A second chance for plant biotechnology in Europe

Europe tilts towards gene-edited plants, but progress could be derailed over who owns the patents.

Cormac Sheridan
News 17 May 2024
Star-studded AI biotech launch

News in Brief 17 May 2024
Biopharma foresees a ‘quantum advantage’: they could be right

Companies are betting on the power of quantum computing to simulate molecular dynamics, solve drug design and even accelerate clinical studies.

Anita Chandran
News 17 May 2024
FDA clears prime editors for testing in humans

News in Brief 17 May 2024
Industry moves on 3Rs

News in Brief 17 May 2024
Biotech news from around the world

News in Brief 17 May 2024

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Correspondence

Why Japan lacks a vibrant biotech industry

Mark Kessel
Chris Vickrey
Correspondence 22 Apr 2024

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Features

Patents
- Overcoming unpredictability in biotech patents by tailored claiming aligned with genuine enablement
  
  The unpredictability inherent to biological systems poses singular obstacles for biotechnology patents regarding the satisfaction of the enablement and written description requirements.
  
  Ranjit S. Ranbhor
  Patents 17 May 2024
- Nanopore sequencing
  
  Recent patents relating to devices and methods for the improvement of nanopore sequencing systems.
  
  Patents 17 May 2024

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Research Highlights

FOXO1 enhances CAR T cell fitness and function

Iris Marchal
Research Highlight 17 May 2024
A genetic rescue strategy for Timothy syndrome

Iris Marchal
Research Highlight 17 May 2024
Gut microbes may influence cardiovascular health

Iris Marchal
Research Highlight 17 May 2024

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News & Views

Survival of the fittest glia

Human glial progenitors transplanted into a chimeric mouse brain replace sick or older human glia, a finding that could one day lead to new treatments for neurological disease.

V. Alexandra Moser
Clive N. Svendsen
News & Views 28 Aug 2023
Podcast
- From Bench to Podcast: Marcus Walker
  
  Podcast 17 May 2024
- From Bench to Podcast: He, Jin and Shi
  
  Podcast 17 May 2024

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Research Briefings

High-throughput screening of TnpB proteins identifies hypercompact genome editors

TnpB proteins are hypercompact RNA-guided DNA endonucleases. By systematically mining and characterizing TnpB proteins from the IS605 family, we identified potent genome editors and established a framework for high-throughput annotation and screening of TnpB systems in prokaryotic genomes.

Research Briefing 29 Jun 2023
Detecting somatic mutations in single-cell data sets

We present an algorithm, SComatic, that can be used to directly detect somatic mutations in single-cell data sets without using a reference sample. This method opens the possibility of studying clonal relationships among cells, mutational processes at single-cell resolution, and the impact of somatic mutations on cell function in development and disease.

Research Briefing 06 Jul 2023
BugSigDB — a database for identifying unusual abundance patterns in human microbiome studies

BugSigDB is a community-editable wiki that harmonizes how key microbial differential abundance methods and results are reported, identifying rare and common patterns across the literature of published host-associated microbiome studies.

Research Briefing 11 Sept 2023

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Research

Brief Communications
- Detection of phosphorylation post-translational modifications along single peptides with nanopores
  
  Drawing peptides slowly through a nanopore distinguishes individual phosphorylation sites.
  
  Ian C. Nova
  Justas Ritmejeris
  Cees Dekker
  Brief Communication 29 Jun 2023
- Greengenes2 unifies microbial data in a single reference tree
  
  A comprehensive microbial resource reconciles genomic and 16S rRNA data in a single tree.
  
  Daniel McDonald
  Yueyu Jiang
  Rob Knight
  Brief Communication Open Access 27 Jul 2023
Articles
- Young glial progenitor cells competitively replace aged and diseased human glia in the adult chimeric mouse brain
  
  Old or diseased human glial cells in the chimeric mouse brain are eliminated by transplanted young cells.
  
  Ricardo Vieira
  John N. Mariani
  Steven A. Goldman
  Article Open Access 17 Jul 2023
- High-efficiency transgene integration by homology-directed repair in human primary cells using DNA-PKcs inhibition
  
  A small molecule enhances targeted gene integration at therapeutically relevant loci in human primary cells.
  
  Sridhar Selvaraj
  William N. Feist
  Matthew H. Porteus
  Article 03 Aug 2023
- Evolutionary mining and functional characterization of TnpB nucleases identify efficient miniature genome editors
  
  Compact genome editors were discovered by mining a transposon library.
  
  Guanghai Xiang
  Yuanqing Li
  Haoyi Wang
  Article 29 Jun 2023
- De novo detection of somatic mutations in high-throughput single-cell profiling data sets
  
  SComatic identifies somatic mutations from scRNA-seq and scATAC data without a matched reference sample.
  
  Francesc Muyas
  Carolin M. Sauer
  Isidro Cortés-Ciriano
  Article Open Access 06 Jul 2023
- Generation of accurate, expandable phylogenomic trees with uDance
  
  Large, updatable phylogenetic trees are constructed using a divide-and-conquer strategy.
  
  Metin Balaban
  Yueyu Jiang
  Siavash Mirarab
  Article 27 Jul 2023
- PhyloVelo enhances transcriptomic velocity field mapping using monotonically expressed genes
  
  A refined velocity model improves cell fate mapping with lineage-traced scRNA-seq data.
  
  Kun Wang
  Liangzhen Hou
  Zheng Hu
  Article 31 Jul 2023
- BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures
  
  A database of microbial signatures is used for systematic comparison of differential abundance patterns.
  
  Ludwig Geistlinger
  Chloe Mirzayi
  Levi Waldron
  Article Open Access 11 Sept 2023
- Single-nucleotide variant calling in single-cell sequencing data with Monopogen
  
  Monopogen identifies single-nucleotide variants in single-cell sequencing data.
  
  Jinzhuang Dou
  Yukun Tan
  Ken Chen
  Article Open Access 17 Aug 2023

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Amendments & Corrections

Author Correction: Greengenes2 unifies microbial data in a single reference tree

Daniel McDonald
Yueyu Jiang
Rob Knight
Author Correction Open Access 18 Oct 2023
Author Correction: Generation of accurate, expandable phylogenomic trees with uDance

Metin Balaban
Yueyu Jiang
Siavash Mirarab
Author Correction 18 Oct 2023

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Careers & Recruitment

Career Feature
- The impact of gender diversity on junior versus senior biomedical scientists’ NIH research awards
  
  Unearthing within-group inequality in science funding and careers highlights a new mechanism explaining the disadvantages faced by younger generations of women scientists.
  
  Christopher C. Liu
  Beril Yalcinkaya
  Waverly W. Ding
  Career Feature 17 May 2024
People
- People
  
  Recent moves of note in and around the biotech and pharma industries.
  
  People 17 May 2024

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Volume 42 Issue 5, May 2024

Young human glial progenitors replace older counterparts

Editorial

News

Correspondence

Features

Patents

Research Highlights

News & Views

Podcast

Research Briefings

Research

Brief Communications

Articles

Amendments & Corrections

Careers & Recruitment

Career Feature

People

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