Stories about discoveries, advancements, and forward-thinking ideas from WID’s research areas, hubs, and key collaborators.
New research from the David Baum Lab at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery sheds light on how autocatalysis, a key process, played a role in the origins and evolution of life on Earth. The study introduces a new mathematical tool that makes it easier to identify Minimal Autocatalytic Sets (MASs) in Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs), representing a big step forward in understanding this complex process.
Cells treated with “metabolic priming” retained their stem cell-like qualities, thus enhancing their ability to kill cancer cells, transform into durable memory cells, and survive longer in the body.
A new study from the Krishanu Saha lab suggests using CRISPR technology to optimize natural immune responses by bioengineering and remodeling T cells. Using a multiplexing technique, the team addresses key challenges in current cancer therapies that could significantly improve treatment outcomes. “We have developed a new way to engineer immune cells to fight cancer more safely and effectively. Think of it as reprogramming the body’s own soldiers (T cells) to recognize and attack cancer cells,” says Cappabianca.
Scientists at WID, University of Wisconsin–Madison, find that ‘stickiness’ helps some soil microbes thrive by aiding surface colonization. What makes them sticky?
From the Inverse: Krishanu Saha, a bioengineer at the University of Wisconsin–Madison whose lab is working on gene therapies for treating blindness, says the precision allowed by CRISPR-Cas9’s programmability is its singular selling point.
New computation tools described in a recent study published in Nature Communications, may provide key insights that will aid researchers to construct a more precise view of what drives cellular identity. “We are trying to understand the causal mechanisms of how cells transition from one state, e.g., a pluripotent state to a more differentiated state, e.g. a skin or nerve cell and vice versa. We want to know how different normal cell types emerge and what might lead to cells becoming aberrant.” says Sushmita Roy. To gain such an understanding “we are developing computational tools that can integrate large-scale molecular profiles measured for each individual cell in a population of thousands of cells to define these GRNs” says Roy.
Discovery Fellow, Federico Rey and colleagues identified bacteria able to break down uric acid in the low-oxygen environment of the intestines and the specific genes that enable the process.
Research led by researchers at UW–Madison will leverage new ways of delivering drug therapies through nanotechnology with advanced genome CRISPR technology to innovate new treatments for two hereditary diseases that cause blindness.
Shaoqin “Sarah” Gong and her lab have developed a way to move therapies across the brain’s protective membrane to deliver brain-wide therapy with a range of biological medications and treatments.
PhD student Hayley Boigenzahn and professor John Yin can explain how one of the potentially crucial early steps on the path of life could have happened. They published their findings in the Dec. 2022 issue of the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are developing the means to turn stem cells into a wide range of specific types of spinal cord neurons and cells in the hindbrain — the critical nexus between the spinal cord and the brain — paving the way for improved prevention and treatment of spinal cord disease.
UW–Madison researchers from Handelsman Lab have learned that a drastically scaled-down model of a microbial community makes it possible to observe some of the complex interactions.
Dr. Krishanu Saha along with Dr. Christian Capitini, is working to produce CAR T cells that could deliver results in solid tumors, using gene editing rather than a viral method to manufacture them.
Incomplete viral genomes can quell disease and, with further research, could be turned into treatments. An opinion by John Yin for Scientific American.
In new research published today, UW–Madison WID researcher Shaoqin “Sarah” Gong, reported a new nanoparticle-based treatment for sepsis that delivers anti-inflammatory molecules and antibiotics.
Krishanu Saha and Melissa Skala have devised an innovative method for reprogramming cells that leverages micropatterning, label-free imaging and machine learning to enable real-time, noninvasive monitoring of reprogramming. This method can be used to develop cutting-edge personalized therapies and disease models.
While looking at a graph about fruit, it may seem intuitive to associate a bar of blue to blueberries and yellow to bananas, but are there connections between color and abstract concepts such as driving, comfort, efficiency, or reliability? Understanding how people absorb meaning from visual features, and predicting the meaning they attribute to color in any context is filled with possibility.
Claudia Solís-Lemus’ has been awarded a coveted five-year research grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. Solís-Lemus’ NSF grant will support her research, which combines statistical theory and biology to help understand how the biodiversity that we see on Earth evolved from single-cell organisms.
Through a series of lab studies between 2010 and 2017, Karen Schloss, PhD and her collaborator, Stephen Palmer PhD, a researcher at UC Berkeley, set out to find out why we like certain colors more than others.
They hypothesized the Ecological Valence Theory (EVT), which they describe in their 2017 paper as the theory that “…people like/dislike a given color to the degree that they like/dislike all of the objects and entities that they associate with that color.”
In a new study, the John Denu lab has learned that the fatty acids butyrate and propionate also activate p300, a crucial human enzyme that promotes the unspooling of DNA. This unwound DNA allows more genes to become active and expressed, which ultimately affects human health.
While studying the three-member model microbial community, nicknamed The Hitchhikers of the Rhizosphere (THOR), researchers from professor of plant pathology and director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Jo Handelsman and professor of biomedical engineering and Discovery Fellow David Beebe’s labs noticed cells moving in unexpected, unique ways under the microscope.
Researchers from the Neuroimaging Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) and Dr. Karen Schloss from Wisconsin Institute for the Discovery at University Wisconsin-Madison have developed the UW Virtual Brain Project, producing unique, interactive, 3D narrated diagrams to help students learn about the structure and function of perceptual systems in the human brain.
Claudia Solís-Lemus reveals a clearer picture of the evolutionary interconnectedness of organisms by modeling data, both big and small
A new publication from the Xuehua Zhong’s group at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery and the genetics department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison clarifies an important epigenetic mechanism in plants that will help researchers better understand the epigenomes of both plants and animals.
WID’s Sarah Gong is part of a team that developed a micro-molded scaffolding photoreceptor “patch” to be implanted under damaged or diseased retinas, the next step in restoring sight.
