Category: Medicine

ENG: Researchers have created a mathematical model to predict genetic resistance to antimalarial drugs in Africa to manage one of the biggest threats to global malarial control. Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites and spread to humans through infected mosquitos. It is preventable and curable, yet resistance to current antimalarial drugs is causing avoidable loss of life. The World Health Organisation estimated there were 241 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2020, with more than 600,000 deaths.

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ENG: Sequencing the human genome revealed as early as 2001 that over 45% of it is composed by sequences called transposons, so-called ‘jumping genes’ that, through molecular copy-and-paste or cut-and-paste mechanisms, can ‘move’ from one point to another of an individual’s genome, shuffling or duplicating. In most cases, these mobile elements remain silent: they have no visible effects and have lost their ability to move.

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ENG: New research in mice has identified neurons in the brain that influence competitive interactions between individuals and that play a critical role in shaping the social behavior of groups. Published in Nature by a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the findings will be useful not only for scientists interested in human interactions but also for those who study neurocognitive conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia that are characterized by altered social behavior.

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ENG: Advanced techniques in DNA and RNA sequencing have opened up the possibility of studying individual cells in tissue in a more comprehensive way than was previously possible. The big challenge with these sequencing techniques is that they lead to large amounts of data. To make this data comprehensible, each cell is mathematically positioned in three-dimensional space to form a “roadmap” of the cells, and how they relate to each other. However, these maps can be difficult to navigate using a regular desktop computer.

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