Tag: science

Profluent Announces AI Gene Editor Generator OpenCRISPR to Enable Creating Bespoke Cures for Diseases

Profluent, a California-based artificial intelligence (AI)-first protein design company, announced its AI model that can generate CRISPR-like proteins that do not occur in nature on Tuesday. CRISPR or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats is a complex containing important proteins that scientists can use for precise gene editing in organisms. The company claims the usage of AI can create a vast number of such proteins that can help in creating bespoke cures for diseases which, at present, remain incurable.

Ali Madani, the founder and CEO of Profluent announced the AI model in a series of posts on X (formerly known as Twitter). The company has also made a blog post detailing the initiative and a pre-print version of its research paper has been published on bioRxiv. Besides announcing the DNA editor-generating AI model, the company also launched OpenCRISPR-1, one of the AI-created gene editors, as an initial open-source release licencing it for both ethical research and commercial uses.

Why OpenCRISPR AI Model matters

While CRISPR is a major focus of scientists, the research is limited due to the protein Cas9, which acts as a gene editor, and its equivalent being only available in nature. As a result, scientists spend a significant amount of time discovering different types of gene editors and their impact. Profluent claims its AI model, which is powered by an in-house large language model (LLM) trained on “massive scale sequence and biological context”, can now generate millions of diverse CRISPR-like proteins that do not occur in nature. In theory, these synthetic gene editors can play a pivotal role in finding cures for diseases previously thought to be incurable.

In its blog post, the company said, “OpenCRISPR-1 gene editor maintains the prototypical architecture of a Type II Cas9 nuclease but is more than 400 mutations away from SpCas9 and nearly 200 mutations away from any other known natural CRISPR-associated protein.”

What is CRISPR

CRISPR, put simply, is a complex or system found in bacteria and some other unicellular organisms. This complex contains the Cas9 (or similar proteins like Cas12 and Cas13) proteins that have a specific ability to make precise cuts in gene strands of DNA to enable editing. It was first discovered in 1987, and ever since scientists have been researching it extensively. The technology has vast applications and has already been used to artificially create crop variants that have a higher yield, are resistant to diseases, and are drought tolerant.

It is also used to change the DNA of mosquitoes so that they cannot spread diseases like malaria. Experiments are being conducted to cure patients suffering from diseases such as sickle-cell anaemia. It is also theorised that the technology can be used to edit the DNA of the embryo to create babies who are naturally resistant to diseases and possess genes that promote higher physical and mental abilities.

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European Space Agency Telescope Euclid to Launch in SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket to Explore ‘Dark Universe’

A SpaceX rocket in Florida stood poised for launch on Saturday carrying an orbital telescope built to shed light on mysterious cosmic phenomena known as dark energy and dark matter, unseen forces scientists say account for 95 percent of the known universe.

The telescope dubbed Euclid, a European Space Agency (ESA) instrument named for the ancient Greek mathematician called the “father of geometry,” was bundled inside the cargo bay of a Falcon 9 rocket set for blast-off around 11 am EDT (1500 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

New insights from the $1.4 billion (roughly Rs. 11,500 crore) mission, designed to last at least six years, are expected to transform astrophysics and perhaps understanding of the very nature of gravity itself.

If all goes as planned, Euclid will be released after a short ride to space for a month-long voyage to its destination in solar orbit nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth – a position of gravitational stability between the Earth and sun called the Lagrange Point Two, or L2.

From there, Euclid is designed to explore the evolution of what astrophysicists refer to as the “dark universe,” using a wide-angle telescope to survey galaxies as far away as 10 billion light years from Earth across an immense expanse of the sky beyond our own Milky Way galaxy.

The 2-ton spacecraft is also equipped with instruments designed to measure the intensity and spectrums of infrared light from those galaxies in a way that will precisely determine their distances.

The mission focuses on two foundational components of the dark universe. One is dark matter, the invisible but theoretically influential cosmic scaffolding thought to give shape and texture to the cosmos. The other is dark energy, an equally enigmatic force believed to explain why expansion of the universe, as scientists learned in the 1990s, has long been accelerating.

The possibilities of the mission are reflected by the enormity of Euclid’s inquiry. Scientists estimate dark energy and dark matter together make up 95 percent of the cosmos, while ordinary matter that we can see accounts for just 5 percent.

European-led Mission

Euclid was designed and built entirely by ESA, with the US space agency, NASA, supplying photo detectors for its near-infrared instrument. The Euclid Consortium overall comprises more than 2,000 scientists from 13 European nations, the U.S., Canada and Japan.

A decade in the making, the mission originally was to have flown to space by way of a Russian Soyuz rocket. But launch plans were switched to SpaceX, the California-based venture of Elon Musk, after war erupted in Ukraine, and because no slot was immediately available from Europe’s Arianne rocket program.

While the James Webb Space Telescope launched by NASA late last year allows astronomers to zero in on particular objects from the early universe with unprecedented clarity, Euclid is intended to expose the hidden fabric and mechanics of the cosmos by meticulously charting an enormous swath of the observable universe in 3-D, more than 1 billion galaxies in all.

Dark matter and dark energy cannot be detected directly, but their properties “are encoded in the shapes and positions of the galaxies,” said astrophysicist Jason Rhodes, lead scientist for Euclid at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.

“Measuring the shapes and positions of galaxies allows us to infer the properties of dark matter and dark energy,” Rhodes said on Friday.

The data will be collected as Euclid maps the last 10 billion years of cosmic history across a third of the sky, gazing outward, and thus back in time, to an era of the universe astronomers call “cosmic noon,” when most stars were forming.

Observing subtle but distinct changes in the shapes and positions of galaxies over vast spans of time and space will reveal fine variations in cosmic acceleration, indirectly exposing the forces of dark energy, scientists say.

Euclid also will help reveal the nature of dark matter by measuring an effect called gravitational lensing, which produces faint distortions in galaxies’ visible shapes and is attributed to the presence of unseen material warping the fabric of space around it.

Through insights into dark energy and matter, scientists hope to better grasp the formation and distribution of galaxies across the so-called cosmic web of the universe.

Beyond Euclid’s primary objectives, it will provide “a gold mine for all fields of astronomy for several decades,” said Yannick Mellier, Euclid Consortium lead and astronomer at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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MIT engineers create 3D printed hearts to improve surgery

Life imitates heart.

MIT engineers are 3D printing replicas of patients’ hearts in an attempt to improve replacement valve procedures for those living with heart disease.

Scientists are creating custom robotic hearts that match the original form of a patient’s organ, function and blood-pumping ability.

“All hearts are different,” Luca Rosalia, a graduate student in the MIT-Harvard Program in Health Sciences and Technology, said in a statement. “There are massive variations, especially when patients are sick. The advantage of our system is that we can recreate not just the form of a patient’s heart, but also its function in both physiology and disease.”

Rosalia and his team developed a procedure that begins with converting medical images of a patient’s heart into a three-dimensional computer model to create a “soft, flexible shell in the exact shape of the patient’s own heart,” as well as a printed version of the aorta.

They used scans from 15 patients with aortic stenosis — a narrowing of heart valves that impedes blood flow that affects about 1.5 million people in the United States — to create the printed hearts.


Engineers creating custom 3D hearts that match a patient’s original organ’s form, function and blood-pumping ability.
Melanie Gonick/MIT

The engineers are also able to manually match the heart’s pumping to mimic the stress and limited airflow heart and heart valve disease patients suffer from.

The team hopes that doctors performing heart replacement valve surgeries will be able to use their 3D method to plan out and practice implanting a variety of valves into a printed model of their patient’s heart ahead of the real procedure.

As many as 85,000 aortic valve replacements are performed in the US each year, the authors said, but the surgery could leave patients with deadly effects if they aren’t given the right size valve.


As many as 85,000 aortic valve replacements are performed in the US each year.
Melanie Gonick/MIT

“Valve migration is probably the worst, because you have something inside your heart,” Rosalia told Bloomberg. “That’s extremely dangerous. You would need another surgery to get that removed.”

The extra level of precise planning, the engineers believe, will better help doctors find what “design results in the best function and fit for that particular patient.”

“Patients would get their imaging done, which they do anyway, and we would use that to make this system, ideally within the day,” says co-author Christopher Nguyen. “Once it’s up and running, clinicians could test different valve types and sizes and see which works best, then use that to implant.”

The heart replicas could also be used by research labs and the medical device industry as realistic platforms for testing therapies for various types of heart disease, the team said.

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Ancient crocodile-like fossil sheds light on pre-Jurassic earth

What’s up, croc?

Scientists have discovered an ancient species known to be the “sister” of modern-day crocodiles, according to a new study.

The pre-historic predator, Turnersuchus hingleyae, was found incredibly preserved off the Jurassic Coast of Dorset, England. The fossil is the most complete of the “marine crocodiles” to be recovered from 185 million years ago during the Pliensbachian period.

It was a two-meter long, highly aggressive predator that swam the coasts snacking on fish or cephalopods at a time before dinosaurs ruled the animal kingdom.

The fossil’s remarkable state is also helping scientists to learn more about the other pre-historic marine species of thalattosuchia — an extinct genus resembling modern day crocodiles — that existed millions of years ago. Researchers anticipate finding more crocodile-like species and learning more about their pre-dino existence.

“I expect we will continue to find more older thalattosuchians and their relatives. Our analyses suggest that thalattosuchians likely first appeared in the Triassic and survived the end-Triassic mass extinction,” said co-author Dr. Eric Wilberg, Assistant Professor at the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University.


An ancient species related to modern day crocodiles was recently found.
Getty Images

It was that extinction event that led to the Jurassic Age of dinosaurs first roaming and ruling the Earth prior to their own elimination and ice age.

Turnersuchus is quite a specimen for another reason. Scientists are analyzing its traits, which are surprisingly disconnected from today’s crocodiles.

Unlike the modern reptile, which lives in wetlands near all sorts of water bodies, the long-snouted Turnersuchus “lived purely in coastal marine habitats,” said co-author Dr. Pedro Godoy, from the University of São Paulo in Brazil.

He added that the Turnersuchus skulls are also different from crocodiles. They — along with other thalattosuchia — boasted enlarged jaw muscles that enabled fast bites of prey.

Still, researchers believe it is possible that Turnersuchus shares a “thermoregulatory function,” which helps to control brain temperature, with modern crocodiles.


Crocodiles share traits with the newly found Turnersuchus.
Getty Images/500px Prime

Many questions still remain regarding the ancient croc-like creature’s days on early Earth.

There exists a “ghost lineage” of time periods — ranging from the end of the Triassic until the Toarcian period within the Jurassic — where thalattosuchians have not been found in ancient rocks, according to the research.

“But now we can reduce the ghost lineage by a few million years,” the team stated upon their big dig.

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NASA discovered Earth-size planet that could be habitable

Our galaxy may have acquired some new real estate.

NASA has discovered an Earth-size planet orbiting around a faraway star — and it could be habitable. 

Dubbed TOI 700 e, the exoplanet is the fourth discovered in the TOI 700 system, at 100 light-years away. 

The research team presented the result at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle on Tuesday.

TOI 700 is the small, cool dwarf star at the center of the system, home also to the recently discovered planets TOI 700 b, c and d. But just two out of the four planets, d and e, fall in the habitable “goldilocks” zone, where the distance between the planet and star is at a point that can sustain liquid water — meaning the conditions could be right for life.

NASA has discovered an Earth-sized planet in the TOI 700 star system.
NASA Goddard

“This is one of only a few systems with multiple, small, habitable-zone planets that we know of,” Emily Gilbert, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California who led the work, said in a statement.

The scientists used data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to identify the new planet, which is 95% of Earth’s size and likely rocky. Planet e takes 28 days to orbit its star, while d has a 37-day orbit.

The innermost planet, b, is about 90% of Earth’s size and is on a 10-day orbit around the star. TOI 700 c is over 2.5 times bigger than Earth and orbits the star every 16 days.

The researchers believe the planets are probably tidally locked, meaning they only spin once per orbit, so one side always faces the star — similar to how Earth only sees one side of the Moon.

Finding other systems with Earth-sized planets can actually help scientists learn more about our own solar system, and demonstrates why continued study of the TOI 700 system is important for future insights.

“That makes the TOI 700 system an exciting prospect for additional follow up. Planet e is about 10% smaller than planet d, so the system also shows how additional TESS observations help us find smaller and smaller worlds,” Gilbert explained.

The TOI 700 system is 100 light-years away.
NASA Goddard
The TOI 700 system is 100 light-years away.
NASA Goddard
The planet is the fourth planet discovered in the TOI 700 system.
NASA Goddard


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TESS monitors large portions of the sky, also known as sectors, for about 27 days at a time, allowing it to track any alterations in brightness caused by a planet crossing over its star.
NASA Goddard


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TESS, designed to detect far-flung planets and stars, has four cameras that allow it to see 85% of the sky while searching for exoplanets orbiting stars less than 300 light-years away. It monitors large portions of the sky, also known as sectors, for about 27 days at a time, allowing it to track any alterations in brightness caused by a previously unobserved planet crossing over its star.

TESS was originally on a two-year mission that started in 2018 to observe the southern and northern sky, but returned to the southern sky in 2020 for an extra year — which was when the new planet was discovered.

“TESS just completed its second year of northern sky observations,” said Allison Youngblood, a research astrophysicist and the TESS deputy project scientist at Goddard. “We’re looking forward to the other exciting discoveries hidden in the mission’s treasure trove of data.”

TESS, which was designed to discover planets and stars, has four cameras that allow it to see 85% of the entire sky.
NASA Goddard

The extra year of TESS also allowed scientists to recalculate previous findings and ascertain planet sizes, which ended up being about 10% smaller than they originally thought.

“If the star was a little closer or the planet a little bigger, we might have been able to spot TOI 700 e in the first year of TESS data,” said Ben Hord, a graduate researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But the signal was so faint that we needed the additional year of transit observations to identify it.”

Since TESS’ launch, it’s discovered more than 260 “confirmed” exoplanets, along with 4,000 “candidates” remaining to be verified. About 1,700 potential candidates have been ruled out.

TOI 700 d and e are in the “habitable zone.”
NASA Goddard

More than 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered and “confirmed” by NASA out of the billions that exist in our Milky Way galaxy alone.

In 2022, over 300 exoplanets were identified, including water worlds and a burgeoning gas giant, as well as TOI 3757 b, an exoplanet that’s slightly bigger than Jupiter, yet carries the density of a marshmallow.

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