Lifeboat Foundation

AI and Quality Control in Genome data are made for each other.

A new study published in The Plant Journal helps to shed light on the transcriptomic differences between different tissues in Arabidopsis, an important model organism, by creating a standardized “atlas” that can automatically annotate samples to include lost metadata such as tissue type. By combining data from over 7000 samples and 200 labs, this work represents a way to leverage the increasing amounts of publically available ‘omics data while improving quality control, to allow for large scale studies and data reuse.

“As more and more ‘omics data are hosted in the public databases, it become increasingly difficult to leverage those data. One big obstacle is the lack of consistent metadata,” says first author and Brookhaven National Laboratory research associate Fei He. “Our study shows that metadata might be detected based on the data itself, opening the door for automatic metadata re-annotation.”

The study focuses on data from microarray analyses, an early high-throughput genetic analysis technique that remains in common use. Such data are often made publically available through tools such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), which over time accumulates vast amounts of information from thousands of studies.

Beautiful.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a strategy for using synthetic biology in therapeutics. The approach enables continual production and release of drugs at disease sites in mice while simultaneously limiting the size, over time, of the populations of bacteria engineered to produce the drugs. The findings are published in the July 20 online issue of Nature.

Continue reading “Synthetic biology used to limit bacterial growth and coordinate drug release” »

This is amazing. I can see so much usage for this technique in the future in battling blood cancers, hemophilia, and other treatments beyond heart surgery and kidney dialysis.

Coating dialysis tubes with a water-repellent material leaves red blood cells unscathed.

Why Plants? Part III – Rise of The Plant Machines by Orlando de Lange.

Everyone talks about the rise of the robots. What about the rise of the “Vegetation/ Plant Machines?”

In part 3 of our series on plant synthetic biology, Orlando de Lange (@SeaGreenODL) of The New Leaf blog introduces how synbio approaches are being used to develop novel disease resistant crops, overcoming some of the challenges faced by monoculture farming.

Continue reading “Musings on Synthetic Biology and Crop Disease Resistance” »

With the need for smaller more cost effective living spaces in mind, Ori Systems has developed a line of modular furniture that makes the most of the space that is becoming more and more of a premium. And, though not yet applied outside the residential market, the technology has clear applications for maximizing precious office space as well.

The Ori in Ori Systems comes from the Japanese word origami, which makes a lot of sense when you see the furniture as it transforms a room with just the push of a button. And in so doing it can quickly transform a small living space with a variety of possible configurations. See the video below.

Continue reading “Voila! Ori Robotic Furniture Can Change Your Living Room to a Home Office in Seconds” »

Yale University scientists have reached a milestone in their efforts to extend the durability and dependability of quantum information.

For the first time, researchers at Yale have crossed the “break even” point in preserving a bit of quantum information for longer than the lifetime of its constituent parts. They have created a novel system to encode, spot errors, decode, and correct errors in a quantum bit, also known as a “qubit.” The development of such a robust method of Quantum Error Correction (QEC) has been one of the biggest remaining hurdles in quantum computation.

The findings were published online July 20 in the journal Nature.

Continue reading “New device lengthens the life of quantum information” »

Einstein said everything falls at the same rate. Is that also true for a quantum top?

Researchers have demonstrated how to control the “electron spin” of a nanodiamond while it is levitated with lasers in a vacuum, an advance that could find applications in quantum information processing, sensors and studies into the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics.

Electrons can be thought of as having two distinct spin states, “up” or “down.” The researchers were able to detect and control the electron spin resonance, or its change from one state to the other.

Continue reading “Precisely controlled levitation of nanodiamonds could bring advances in sensors, quantum information processing” »

For the first time, researchers are able to extend the lifetime of a quantum bit, or qubit, using error correction – an essential step to useful quantum computers.