Asimov Press

A single injection of a drug, called lenacapavir, protects 96-100 percent of recipients from HIV for up to six months. Lenacapavir is the best HIV preventive ever made. It is so good, in fact, that Science Magazine dubbed it their 2024 Breakthrough of the Year. To close out Issue 05, Kamal Nahas explains how Gilead made the drug, how it works, and why getting it to those who need it will not be simple.?? Read the article and subscribe! https://lnkd.in/eyZn3fXG

Just now: Arc Institute and NVIDIA release Evo 2, the largest AI model for biology. Evo 2 can predict which mutations in a gene are likely to be pathogenic, or even design entire eukaryotic genomes. The new model has 40 billion parameters and trained on 9.3 trillion nucleotides of genetic information scraped from 128,000 different organisms. It is fully open-source. We covered it in Asimov Press! Check it out. Read & subscribe: https://lnkd.in/eVaxPdU5

How to "program" living cells. ?? In 2000, two physicists (including Michael Elowitz) made bacteria blink on-and-off every 150 minutes. Their experiment, which blended mathematics and wet-lab methods, launched the field of synthetic biology. In our first interactive article for Asimov Press, Nehal Udyavar and I explain how the repressilator was made. The article also features a "simulator" that allows readers to play around with the repressilator's dynamics by tuning parameters. Read & subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/ejcAzj3N

Exciting news from the Institute for Protein Design is out today in Science. The team reports a computationally-designed, multi-step enzyme. Learn how they did it in Asimov Press. Written by Abhishaike Mahajan and Eryney Marrogi Read & subscribe: https://lnkd.in/giSvpJAr

Can we treat brain disorders by restoring neural connections? For centuries, neuroscientists could only guess. But connectomics—a method seeking to create a 3D model of every neural connection in the brain—is moving closer to providing answers. E11 Bio (Convergent Research) is at the forefront... If we could build a human connectome, we might finally understand how neural circuits shape consciousness and predict various disorders relating to the brain's wiring. This idea isn’t new. Mapping the brain began accidentally in 1848 when a metal rod blasted through Phineas Gage’s skull—turning him from hardworking to erratic. Gage's injury launched lesion studies, a method of linking structure to function by studying people with damaged brains. Today, neuroscience is moving past lesions. Tools like: ? Electron microscopy (EM)?to see neurons at nanometer resolution ? fMRI?to track brain activity in real time ? Diffusion MRI?to trace neuron wiring in living people are all widely available, but still slow & imprecise. The first connectome was built in the 1970s, mapping 302 neurons in C. elegans, a microscopic worm. It took over 10 years. In 2024, after decades of work, scientists also mapped the fruit fly’s connectome — 140,000 neurons.?The human brain has 100 billion neurons. Mapping a mouse brain would take 15 years and cost $10 billion—a daunting task. But new tools could make it 100x cheaper and faster. This is where research nonprofit E11 Bio comes in.?Their goal is to map an entire mouse brain in 5 years for $100 million—a 100x improvement. Their technology, called PRISM, has three key parts: 1. Expansion microscopy?(literally swelling tissue to make neurons more visible) 2. Molecular barcoding?(tagging each neuron with unique protein “barcodes”) 3. AI-assisted image reconstruction?(to assemble the map faster) We explain their full technology stack in the article. But briefly, if they succeed, it could have big implications for neuroscience, including: ? Faster human brain mapping ? Better treatments for neurological disorders ? Advances in brain-computer interfaces When E11 succeeds, the final connectome will be static; not dynamic.? And wiring alone will not tell us everything about a brain's function, or how it works. But still, history suggests structure matters. The Human Genome Project didn’t reveal everything about the cell, but it led to surprising tech that slowly transformed medicine.?A brain map could do the same for neuroscience. Read & subscribe: https://lnkd.in/eVBwYWqS

Today we're announcing our first partnership of 2025! This year, we're partnering with Convergent Research to publish seven deep articles about nonprofit, focused research organizations. Our first article, an inside look at E11 Bio, comes out tomorrow.

Parkinson’s disease is thought by many to be a uniquely human disease. But in 2020, researchers in China claimed they found a macaque with naturally occurring Parkinson’s. If true, their finding could drastically change how we study and treat the disease. The question is: Why haven't the findings been duplicated, and what will it take to find more “natural” animal models? Read our latest column by Trevor Klee: https://lnkd.in/d-wi7Vvc

Indoor air quality has been a problem for most of human history. From Viking longhouses to 19th-century London, the struggle to breathe clean air has shaped how we build, live, and even govern. This is the BATTLE FOR BETTER AIR. Viking longhouses were filled with carbon monoxide and fine particulates. Most ancient homes were positively filled with carcinogens. In 2017, a replica home from ?atalh?yük (9000 years old) had indoor particulate levels of 30,000 μg/m3. The WHO recommends < 5 μg/m3. Chimneys only became common in the 16th century. Before that, homes had a simple hole in the roof to let out smoke. It didn’t work well. The air inside was thick with soot and fumes. After London’s Great Fire of 1666, the city banned wooden buildings and timber chimneys. By the early 1900s, lawmakers were starting to take air quality seriously. By 1850, London legally required homes to have a minimum number of windows. Before that, many people bricked theirs up to avoid the window tax. Big Ben originally had a ventilation shaft to suck bad air out of the UK House of Commons. It didn't work well. In 1903, a scientist tested it by reciting Shakespeare to an empty room—then checking how many germs landed in petri dishes. More germs circulated with the system on. Air conditioning & filtration changed everything. By 1902, Willis Carrier designed the first modern AC system. It not only cooled the air but controlled humidity—which made buildings far more comfortable (and less stuffy). That same year, the New York Stock Exchange installed a similar system designed by Alfred Wolff. It actually helped stock market returns. Before 1903, hot days were significantly associated with lower Dow Jones Average returns; post-AC, the correlation weakened. In the post-COVID era, there is once again lots of attention directed toward ventilation and air quality. The next leap in air quality may be far-UVC light, which can kill airborne viruses without harming human skin... A 2024 study found that far-UVC light reduced airborne viruses by 99.8% in a controlled room. This tech could work alongside HEPA filters and ventilation to make indoor air much safer. The lights are also silent and low-maintenance. The catch? Cost. Each far-UVC fixture costs ~$1,000 right now, making widespread adoption difficult. But new tech usually starts expensive—think of how LED lights or solar panels got cheaper over time. Berkeley, CA, recently proposed Measure HH, a law that would have mandated improved indoor air quality in public buildings. It failed at the polls (43.45% voted yes), but indicated that public awareness of indoor air quality is growing. To learn more about how air quality has shaped our built environment over the last 1,000 years or more, check out our latest article by Larissa Schiavo. Read & subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/eVeRXcpV

More than *half* of all studies performed with mice use the C57Bl/6 strain. >250,000 published papers have relied upon this animal. The strain originated, perhaps surprisingly, from mice bred by ABBIE LATHROP on a tiny farm in Granby, Massachusetts in the early 20th century. Lathrop bred mice and sold them to local "fanciers;" essentially hobbyists who bred mice for fun (similar to dog breeders today.) She was unafraid of rats and mice, character traits that made her something of an eccentric... Lathrop’s farm was a mouse melting pot, home to mice from local farmers, as well as more exotic varieties imported from abroad, including Japan. At one point, she had 10,000 mice stored in cages inside her home. She kept detailed records on all of these animals. In 1902, a Harvard geneticist named William E. Castle purchased some mice from Lathrop. He trained a colleague, C.C. Little, to breed more "stable" mouse lines from Lathrop's animals. The result was C57Bl/6J; the most frequently studied mouse strain on Earth. Little once attacked Lathrop, calling her a "talented pet-shop owner," according to Wikipedia, even though his own breeding lines were derived from her very animals. Lathrop died in 1918. All of her notes and records are housed, to this day, in the Jackson Laboratory library. Learn more about Abbie Lathrop and the history of mouse breeding in our article by Alex Telford: https://lnkd.in/epzV5DbR

Synthetic biology began with a blinking bacterium. In 2000, Michael Elowitz & Stainlas Leibler reported one of the first synthetic gene circuits, an oscillator that made cells "glow" in regular rhythms. We interviewed Elowitz to learn more. Archives: https://lnkd.in/dn3jnNy5