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Category: biotech/medical

Researchers have found a simple way to eliminate almost all sequencing errors produced by a widely used portable DNA sequencer, potentially enabling scientists working outside the lab to study and track microorganisms like the SARS-CoV-2 virus more efficiently.

Using special molecular tags, the team was able to reduce the five-to-15 percent error rate of Oxford Nanopore Technologies’ MinION device to less than 0.005 percent—even when sequencing many long stretches of DNA at a time.

“The MinION has revolutionized the field of genomics by freeing DNA sequencing from the confines of large laboratories,” says Ryan Ziels, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of British Columbia and the co-lead author of the study, which was published this week in Nature Methods. “But until now, researchers haven’t been able to rely on the device in many settings because of its fairly high out-of-the-box error rate.”

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Invasive round goby fish have impacted fisheries in the Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes by competing with native species and eating the eggs of some species of game fish.

But the camouflaged bottom dwellers can be difficult to find and collect—especially when they first enter a new body of water and their numbers are low and they might be easier to remove.

In a proof-of-principle study, Cornell researchers describe a new technique in which they analyzed environmental DNA—or eDNA—from in Cayuga Lake to gather nuanced information about the presence of these invasive fish.

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ABC News: German authorities accuse Australian man of running DarkMarket, the world’s largest illegal online marketplace.

An Australian is allegedly at the centre of what German authorities believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet where more than $220 million was transacted over sales of drugs, forged money, SIM cards and bogus credit cards.

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A major risk of being hospitalised is catching a bacterial infection.

Hospitals, especially areas including intensive care units and surgical wards, are teeming with bacteria, some of which are resistant to —they are infamously known as ‘superbugs’.

Superbug infections are difficult and expensive to treat, and can often lead to dire consequences for the patient.

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Summary: 20% of glioblastoma brain cancers are fueled by overactive mitochondria. Researchers say these cases may be treatable by drugs currently under trial.

Source: Columbia University.

A new study has found that up to 20% of glioblastomas–an aggressive brain cancer–are fueled by overactive mitochondria and may be treatable with drugs currently in clinical trials.

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UC San Francisco scientists have discovered a new way to control the immune system’s “natural killer” (NK) cells, a finding with implications for novel cell therapies and tissue implants that can evade immune rejection. The findings could also be used to enhance the ability of cancer immunotherapies to detect and destroy lurking tumors.

The study, published today (January 82021) in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, addresses a major challenge for the field of regenerative medicine, said lead author Tobias Deuse, MD, the Julien I.E. Hoffman, MD, Endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery in the UCSF Department of Surgery.

“As a cardiac surgeon, I would love to put myself out of business by being able to implant healthy cardiac cells to repair heart disease,” said Deuse, who is interim chair and director of minimally invasive cardiac surgery in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery. “And there are tremendous hopes to one day have the ability to implant insulin-producing cells in patients with diabetes or to inject cancer patients with immune cells engineered to seek and destroy tumors. The major obstacle is how to do this in a way that avoids immediate rejection by the immune system.”

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