Alzheimer’s is the leading cause of dementia, but the cellular pathways affected by its progression are not well understood. By profiling gene expression in 1.3 million cells from 48 individuals with and without Alzheimer's, Hansruedi Mathys, Carles Boix, Leyla Akay, Li-Huei Tsai, Manolis Kellis, and colleagues constructed a transcriptomic atlas of six human brain regions in aging humans, defining 76 cell types based on expression patterns. The team identified several types of neurons sharing circuit connections and signaling features that were less abundant in people with Alzheimer’s, as well as several resilience-associated genes expressed in astrocytes. Read more in Nature. #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch #Alzheimers #Dementia
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Research Services
Cambridge, MA 128,162 followers
About us
The Broad Institute brings together a diverse group of individuals from across its partner institutions — undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, professional scientists, administrative professionals, and academic faculty. The culture and environment at the Broad is designed to encourage creativity and to engage all participants, regardless of role or seniority, in the mission of the Institute. Within this setting, researchers are empowered — both intellectually and technically — to confront even the most difficult biomedical challenges. The Institute’s organization is unique among biomedical research institutions. It encompasses three types of organizational units: core member laboratories, programs and platforms. Scientists within these units work closely together — and with other collaborators around the world — to tackle critical problems in human biology and disease.
- Website
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http://www.broadinstitute.org/
External link for Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
- Industry
- Research Services
- Company size
- 501-1,000 employees
- Headquarters
- Cambridge, MA
- Type
- Nonprofit
- Founded
- 2003
- Specialties
- Chemical biology, Genomics, Imaging, Metabolite profiling, Proteomics, RNAi, Therapeutics discovery and development, Cancer, Cell circuits, Genome sequencing and analysis, Epigenomics, Infectious disease, Metabolism, Psychiatric disease, and Medical and population genetics
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Employees at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Updates
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Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reposted this
“I was curious if I could use the logic in computer science to help me understand the logic in biological science,” says our postdoc fellow Yue Qin, who is also a member of Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center Director Caroline Uhler and Paul Blainey’s labs. Learn more about how she found her place in science, her aim in building an in silico cell, and how she juggles computational and wet lab research: http://broad.io/YueQin Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard #SchmidtCenter #BroadInstitute #CarolineUhler #PaulBlainey #YueQin #ML #MachineLearning #ComputerScience #ComputationalBiology #insilico #CRISPRPerturbations #ScienceNews #ScientificResearch #STEMCareer
Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center | #WhyIScience Q&A: A systems biologist develops computational tools to bring scale to cell experiments
ericandwendyschmidtcenter.org
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Nominations are now open for the 2025 Merkin Prize in Biomedical Technology! This international prize recognizes pathbreaking technologies that have improved human health through treatment, diagnosis, or prevention of disease. The prize comes with a $400,000 award for the researchers who, by pioneering a transformative technology, have made a profound impact on medicine. Learn more about the prize and submit a nomination: https://merkinprize.org/ Nominations close Friday, December 6, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. ET. #MerkinPrize #Biomedicine #BiomedicalTechnology #Science #SciencePrize #ScienceAward
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Molecular glue degraders stabilize the interface between ubiquitin ligases and proteins of interest, triggering targeted therapeutic degradation of those proteins. In Nature Chemical Biology, Yen-Der Li, MD, PhD, Michelle Ma, Muhammad Murtaza Hassan, Eric Fischer, Ben Ebert, and colleagues describe a new class of molecular glue degraders that could be more efficient and specific. These degraders act through a “template-assisted covalent modification” mechanism: They recruit a ubiquitin ligase to a certain protein interface (on BRD4 in this case), which orients a degrader protein for covalent modification of another site (on DCAF16). This facilitates the formation of a BRD4-degrader-DCAF16 complex and degradation of BRD4. #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch
Template-assisted covalent modification underlies activity of covalent molecular glues - Nature Chemical Biology
nature.com
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Healthy cells typically carry two copies of our nuclear genome, but up to thousands of copies of our mitochondrial genome (mtDNA) — a number that can vary widely across tissues and cell states. To better understand the scope of that variation, Sneha Rath, Sarah Calvo, Vamsi Mootha, and colleagues cataloged mtDNA copy number (mtCN) variation in 52 human and 20 mouse tissues, as well as 173 cancer cell lines. Writing in PNAS, they noted 50- to 200-fold variation in mtCN, reported associations between mtCN and protein levels, and found that cancer cell lines with high mtCN resist the loss of GPX4, a key regulator of ferroptosis. #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch
Mitochondrial genome copy number variation across tissues in mice and humans | PNAS
pnas.org
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In this #WhyIScience Q&A, meet Yue Qin, a systems biologist who wants to create an in silico cell — a computational model scientists can use to study at scale how external influences such as drug treatments affect cells. “Being at the leading edge of science that intersects with computer science and biology is super exciting,” said Qin. “It opens up new avenues of scientific exploration and pushes the limit of what we are able to do.” 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eBbi_tw8 #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch #ScienceCareer #STEMCareers #SystemsBiologist
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Broad and Ragon Institute of Mass General Brigham, MIT, and Harvard researchers Meilin Zhu, Paul Blainey, Douglas Kwon, and Seth Bloom found that oleic acid, one of the most abundant fatty acids found in the body, may help improve treatment of recurrent bacterial vaginosis infections. The condition, caused by an overabundance of certain vaginal microbes, is treatable with antibiotics, but frequently returns. In laboratory models of bacterial vaginosis, oleic acid simultaneously inhibited bacteria that can lead to recurrent infections and promoted bacteria that promote a healthier microbiome. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/esSv4_h9 #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch
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It can be difficult for researchers to align and interpret image-based profiling data collected by different labs or using different equipment, which can impede scientific discovery. John Arevalo, Anne Carpenter, Shantanu Singh, and colleagues evaluated ten leading techniques for correcting such “batch effects,” applying them to the large Cell Painting dataset recently released by the JUMP consortium. The team tested five scenarios of varying complexity. While Harmony and Seurat methods performed well in simpler cases, all methods struggled in the most complex scenarios. The approach provides a framework to assess new methods and highlights the need for further advancements. Read more in Nature Communications. #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch
Evaluating batch correction methods for image-based cell profiling - Nature Communications
nature.com
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A recently discovered variant of type I CRISPR-Cas systems, HNH-Cascade, lacks a Cas3 catalytic module and instead uses an HNH endonuclease domain to degrade DNA. To explore how HNH-Cascade works, Seiichi Hirano, Feng Z., and colleagues resolved the cryo-EM structure of HNH-Cascade from Selenomonas bacteria together with its target DNA. They observed that this Cascade scaffold adapted to work with the unique HNH insertion by forming a ring-like architecture that enables precise DNA binding and cleavage. The results highlight how these adaptable nuclease domains achieve diverse functions. Read more in Molecular Cell. #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch
Structural determinants of DNA cleavage by a CRISPR HNH-Cascade system
cell.com
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Gene therapy could potentially cure genetic diseases but it remains a challenge to package and deliver new genes to specific cells safely and effectively. Existing methods of engineering gene delivery vehicles such as adeno-associated viruses (AAV) are often slow and inefficient, or only optimize AAVs for one trait at a time. Now, researchers have developed a machine learning approach that promises to speed up AAV engineering for gene therapy. The tool helps researchers engineer the protein shells of AAVs to have multiple desirable traits, such as the ability to deliver cargo to a specific organ but not others or to work in multiple species. https://lnkd.in/eYrDAXnT #BroadInstitute #Science #ScienceNews #Research #ScientificResearch #MachineLearning #GeneTherapy
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