Seattle’s Allen Institute launches ‘moonshot’ to create new approach to cell biology research

 


Human cells, like the people they create, are dynamic and complex. And while researchers can create images and videos of how they move, organize and change their properties, it’s hard to efficiently and accurately describe all that’s happening.

So a 75-person team at Seattle nonprofit Allen Institute is embarking on a 10-year project called Cell Scapes to devise a new language using mathematics to capture these essential processes.

“This is a new way of approaching very fundamental cell biology,” Ru Gunawardane, executive director and vice president of the Allen Institute for Cell Science, told GeekWire. “We want to combine math and biophysical modeling, which are things that people are doing right now, but in a siloed way in very different systems.”

The Allen Institute was founded more than 20 years ago by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his sister Jody Allen to dive into challenging problems in the biosciences.

Previous efforts at multiple institutions have created numerical systems for understanding biological processes. That includes Bayes Space, a computational tool that produces data on gene expression in mixed cell types that developed researchers at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center. The Allen Institute has engineered modeling for organelles, which are the various machines packed inside cells that make proteins, produce energy and perform other key operations.

“The exciting thing is that we are trying … to bring different disciplines together,” Gun awardane said, “because data is everywhere — but how do you make sense out of that data?”

The CellScapes researchers are working with human stem cells, which are cells that don’t yet have a set identity as, say, a skin or liver cell. The hope is through analysis and experimentation they’ll devise mathematics that describe the cell’s behavior, ultimately allowing them to predict and manipulate what the cells do.

A primary goal would be to use these tools to unravel mysteries such as the intermediate steps to developing cancer, and ultimately discover new cell therapies.


Event Name : International Molecular Biologist Awards

Website Link: molecularbiologist.org/

Contact Mail ID : support@molecularbiologist.org

Nomination Link  : https://molecularbiologist.org/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee


Follow On:

Twitterhttps://x.com/Camilla532645                                                                   

Blogger https://molecularconference.blogspot.com/ 

Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCehrwFGWKbQa0mKDDNJCwvA                  

Pinterest https://in.pinterest.com/molecularbiologistawards/                   

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?trk=onboarding-landing               

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/molecularawards


#CellScapes #AllenInstitute #CellBiology #MathematicalModeling #ComputationalBiology #RegenerativeMedicine #CancerResearch #TissueEngineering #SyntheticBiology #SystemsBiology #OpenScience #BiomedicalInnovation #CellularDynamics #PredictiveBiology #StemCellResearch #HumanCellAtlas #BiophysicalModeling #CellularDecisionMaking #FutureOfMedicine #3DCellImaging

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uncovering the molecular drivers of liver cancer

Image
  Researchers discover that inflammation and aging contribute to non-viral liver cancer development. Green tea's role in reversing some of the pathway dysregulation that may contribute to the cancer development and other therapies explored. Liver cancer can arise spontaneously from healthy liver tissue. Recently, however, researchers have discovered an increasing correlation between some liver cancers and non-viral chronic liver disease (CLD). One liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is associated with CLD in about 15–25% of cases. While increasing awareness and screening of cancers has improved the ability to detect liver cancer at earlier stages when it is more effectively treated, cancer prevention is always a primary goal of both healthcare providers and biomedical researchers. The increasing prevalence of CLD with HCC suggests that this underlying condition predisposes liver tissue to cancer development. In order to investigate how healthy liver tissue differs from th...
Read more

How to determine the molecular weight of a monoclonal antibody

Image
  Protein aggregation typically results from conformational or colloidal instability. Conformational stability is the difference in free energy (ΔG) between folded and unfolded states. While not direct assessments of free energy, melting temperature value (T m ) and aggregation temperature (T Agg ) can be utilized as qualitative measurements of conformational stability. Colloidal stability is calculated by balancing repulsive and attractive intermolecular interactions among protein molecules to sustain the native folded state. Less intermolecular interaction reduces the aggregation propensity. Thus, quantifying the second virial coefficient (B 22 ) is an important screening tool for predicting aggregation propensity. ARGEN ™  is the perfect instrument for assessing quantitative and qualitative characteristics of all classes of biotherapeutics and determining T Agg , B 22 , molecular weight (M w ), alongside differences in weight, average molecular weight (aggregation)...
Read more

Pausing” Cell Death Could Be the Key to Longevity

Image
  Necrosis drives aging and disease by triggering damaging inflammation. Interrupting it may offer new treatments for chronic conditions and improve health in space travel. Necrosis, a form of uncontrolled cell death, may hold one of the most promising keys to altering the course of human aging, disease, and even space travel, according to a new study by researchers at UCL, the drug discovery company LinkGevity, and the  European Space Agency  (ESA). Challenging conventional thinking, the paper draws on evidence from cancer biology, regenerative medicine, kidney disease, and space health to argue that necrosis is not just a final stage of cell death, but a major driver of aging—and a potential target for intervention. Dr. Keith Siew, an author of the study from UCL Centre for Kidney & Bladder Health, said: “Nobody really likes talking about death, even cell death, which is perhaps why the physiology of death is so poorly understood. And in a way, necrosis is death. If...
Read more