Research Scientist

Using the MutRank framework trained with EvoRank, Danny Diaz and professor Andrew Ellington’s team are developing an improved version of a protein critical for the biomanufacturing of mRNA therapeutics and vaccines. In this example, the model recommends keeping the blue parts the same as the natural version of the protein and strongly considering mutating the red parts. Credit: Danny Diaz/University of Texas at Austin USTIN, Texas — A new artificial intelligence model developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin paves the way for more effective and less toxic treatments and new preventive strategies in medicine. The AI model informs the design of protein-based therapies and vaccines by leveraging the underlying logic from nature’s evolutionary processes. The AI advance, called EvoRank, offers a new and tangible example of how AI may help bring disruptive change to biomedical research and biotechnology more broadly. Scientists described the work at the Internationa...

  Dr Leske told the congress a suitable long-term site to screen for frost was essential to help farmers manage the risk to crops. He said DPIRD’s Dale facility had played a pivotal role in the success of various frost research projects. “ Establishing a long-term trial site to characterise large crop populations to search for reproductive frost tolerance in wheat and other grain crops was an upmost priority ,” Dr Leske said. “Dale was established in 2016 and grew from humble beginnings to a fully serviced 40ha trial site, with irrigation to create a reliable field phenotyping environment. “ Since then, more than 1200 wheat germplasm have been screened for frost tolerance and the site has hosted many and varied trials to better understand frost and develop strategies that help farmers reduce its impact on crops .” The site was selected for its access to irrigation water, uniform soil type and flat area for trials. It is surrounded by undulating topography to enhance frost occurr...

A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells1. She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body. “ I can eat sugar now,” said the woman, who lives in Tianjing, on a call with Nature. It has been more than a year since the transplant, and, she says , “I enjoy eating everything — especially hotpot.” The woman asked to remain anonymous to protect her privacy. James Shapiro, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says the results of the surgery are stunning. “ They’ve completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial amounts of insulin beforehand. ” The study, published in Cell today, follows results from a separate group in Shanghai, China, who reported in April that they had successfully transplanted insulin-producing islets into the liver of a 59-year-ol...

Late-stage functionalisation – defined as “ a desired chemoselective transformation on a complex molecule to provide at least one analog in sufficient quantity and purity for a given purpose without the necessity for installation of a functional group that exclusively serves the purpose to enable said transformation ” [1] – has emerged as a valuable enabling tool within the arsenal of a medicinal chemist. As newer synthetic methods become developed for the generation of small molecules, so too has the chemical space that medicinal chemists will have access to. Of course, these methods are valuable to the R&D team – but did you know that late-stage functionalisation will also likely have an impact on the IP profession? This perspective provides some insight into how late-stage functionalisation not only helps the chemists at the bench, but also the patent attorneys working in-house and within outside counsel who are very much off the bench. The conventional approach to chemical syn...

An ideas generator powered by artificial intelligence (AI) came up with more original research ideas than did 50 scientists working independently, according to a preprint posted on arXiv this month 1 . The human and AI-generated ideas were evaluated by reviewers, who were not told who or what had created each idea. The reviewers scored AI-generated concepts as more exciting than those written by humans, although the AI’s suggestions scored slightly lower on feasibility. But scientists note that the study, which has not been peer-reviewed, has limitations. It focused on one area of research and required human participants to come up with ideas on the fly, which probably hindered their ability to produce their best concepts. AI in science There are burgeoning efforts to explore how LLMs can be used to automate research tasks, including writing papers , generating code and searching literature . But it’s been difficult to assess whether these AI tools can generate fresh research angle...

3D X-ray microscope The Analytical and Diagnostics Laboratory added a $1.7 million Zeiss 620 Versa Xradia instrument to its suite of tools, which are available to campus researchers and industry partners. The Xradia, a 3D X-ray microscope, is capable of tremendous magnification without destroying a sample. Senior scientist Anju Sharma says the versatile instrument is suited to a broad range of applications; it can capture images of biological materials, whole electronic devices, 3D printed parts, batteries, rocks, fossils and more. Images in 2D are collected as a sample rotates under X-ray; powerful software reconstructs them into a 3D volume that can be virtually cross-sectioned at any location or orientation. “It can do truly nondestructive characterization and give you very high-resolution data,” Sharma says. “You can look at the micro world inside a large-scale object.” She says a quick scan can be conducted in an hour, while other tests may take a few hours or more. The Xradia s...

Gold nanoparticles are key to University of Texas at Dallas research that has changed researchers’ understanding of how kidneys work at the fundamental level. New research by University of Texas at Dallas scientists is providing fundamental insight into how the kidneys remove materials from the blood and excrete them into the urine based on the electric charge of the materials. The findings, published May 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , could lead to improvements in nanomedicines used for early detection and treatment of kidney damage or disease, as well as disease in other areas of the body. “Our research findings were surprising and also very significant because they change people’s understanding of how the kidney works at the fundamental level,” said Dr. Jie Zheng , professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and a corresponding author of the study. PhD’20, a research scientist in Zheng’s lab and the study’s ...

The discovery of a new blood group, MAL , has solved a 50- year-old mystery. Researchers from NHS Blood and Transplant (Bristol), NHSBT’s International Blood Group Reference Laboratory (IBGRL) and the University of Bristol identified the genetic background of the previously known but mysterious AnWj blood group antigen. The findings allow identification and treatment of rare patients lacking this blood group. Some people can lack this blood group due to the effect of illness, but the rare inherited form of the AnWj-negative phenotype has only been found in a handful of individuals – though due to this discovery it will now be easier to find others in the future. The two best known blood group systems are ABO and Rh but blood is more complex and matching across the other groups can be lifesaving. If people who are AnWj-negative receive AnWj-positive blood t hey could have a transfusion reaction, and this research allows development of new genotyping tests for detecting such rare ind...

A food scientist from the Riddet Institute , Natalie Ahlborn, has wowed judges at an international dairy industry award, placing second in the International Dairy Federation Professor Pavel Jelen Early Career Scientist Prize. The International Dairy Federation (IDF) is an international authority in the development of science-based standards for the global dairy sector, with the IDF Professor Pavel Jelen Early Career Scientist Prize specifically for scientists who gained their highest degrees three years ago or less. Ahlborn has been researching processed milk and its effects on digestion and nutrient absorption, as part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment-funded New Zealand Milk Means More research programme at the Riddet Institute, based at Massey University in Palmerston North. Pasteurisation, UHT treatment , and homogenisation are commonly used to process milk, and Ahlborn wanted to know what these treatments mean for digestion and nutrient uptake. She examine...

  Thousands of lives could be saved around the world after NHS scientists discovered a new blood group system - solving a 50-year-old mystery. The research team, led by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) scientists in South Gloucestershire and supported by the University of Bristol, found a blood group called MAL. They identified the genetic background of the previously known AnWj blood group antigen, which was discovered in 1972 but unknown until now after this world-first test was developed. Senior research scientist at NHSBT Louise Tilley said the discovery means better care to rare patients can be offered. Ms Tilley, who has worked on the project for 20 years, told the BBC it is "quite difficult to a put a number" on how many people will benefit from the test. However, the NHSBT is the last resort for about 400 patients across the world each year. Everyone has proteins outside their red blood cells known as antigens, but a small number might lack them. Using genetic tes...

When one Chinese national recently petitioned the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to become a permanent resident, he thought his chances were pretty good. As an accomplished biologist, he figured that news articles in top media outlets, including The New York Times, covering his research would demonstrate his "extraordinary ability" in the sciences, as called for by the EB-1A visa . But when the immigration officers rejected his petition, they noted that his name did not appear anywhere in the news articles. News coverage of a paper he co-authored did not directly demonstrate his major contribution to the work. As this biologist's close friend, I felt bad for him because I knew how much he had dedicated to the project. He even started the idea as one of his Ph.D. dissertation chapters. But as a scientist who studies topics related to scientific innovation , I understand the immigration officers' perspective: Research is increasingly done through teamwork , ...

New YorkCNN — Scientists in the United States, especially those in the biomedical fields, are increasingly leaving the world of academia for better-paying industry jobs amid stagnant federal funding and low wages. It’s a troubling sign for the future of US-based medical research and development at p harmaceutical and biotech companies, which rely on the experimental science housed at universities to develop cutting-edge commercial products. According to the National Institutes of Health, the number of postdoctoral fellows supported by NIH grants has been steadily falling for more than 20 years, with a significant dip after 2020. The number of postdocs in the biological and biomedical fields has declined 9% between 2018 and 2022, and those in health-related fields have fallen by 8%, according to a survey published on March 20 by the National Science Foundation. Why are postdoctoral researchers important? The problem is that postdocs are a critical component of the research and develop...

A generation ago, most people with multiple sclerosis could expect to rely on walkers and wheelchairs or be limited to their bed within 15 years of diagnosis. Today, UC San Francisco’s discoveries are keeping millions with MS healthier for longer – many disability-free. Now, the university is paving the way for an MS cure in our lifetimes. But the breakthrough almost didn’t happen. “Biologically implausible,” is what the National Institutes of Health’s rejection letter said. It was the late ’90s and UCSF Neurology Professor Stephen Hauser , MD, and team had applied for federal funding for the first clinical trial of the new medicine, rituximab, as a potential MS treatment. The study wouldn’t just test a new drug, but a revolutionary new theory about MS’ inner workings. So outlandish was the idea that the largest public funder of scientific research said it couldn’t be done. The rejection “ hit like a ton of bricks ,” Hauser remembered in his 2023 memoir, The Face Laughs While the Bra...