Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

'Meanwhile, a large cache of gene variants thought to be unique to humans, because they are found in Homo sapiens but not in the archaic human relatives called Neanderthals and Denisovans, has turned out to be widespread across primates. Almost two-thirds of the variants thought to be solely human were present in at least one other primate species, and more than half were found in two or more.'

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01776-6

"Our investigation reveals that the fetal HSCs respond to T. gondii infection with virulence-dependent changes in proliferation, self-renewal potential, and lineage output. Furthermore, maternal IFNγ crosses the fetal–maternal interface, where it is perceived by fetal HSCs."

#Immunology #Interferon #Toxoplasma

https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embj.2022112693

'It is instructive to recall (as Davis notes) the legendary six-word short story—“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”—attributed by the literary agent Peter Miller to Ernest Hemingway. Miller claimed that Hemingway won a bet from his fellow writers on the strength of the tale. Arthur C. Clarke wrote to a friend that he could not “think of it without crying.”
(via The Browser)

https://hedgehogreview.com/web-features/thr/posts/the-art-of-compression?ref=thebrowser.com

'On the assumption that a human SNP with commonly observed counterparts in primates probably doesn’t cause disease, Farh exonerated many human variants. His team also used the “benign” primate SNPs to train a neural network, called Primate AI-3D. With AlphaFold, a protein-structure prediction tool based on artificial intelligence (AI), as its scaffold, his program builds 3D models of each protein. Based on the benign SNPs, it identifies regions where changes to the protein’s structure would not disrupt its function. Conversely, changes in other regions were more likely to cause problems.'

https://www.science.org/content/article/hundreds-new-primate-genomes-offer-window-human-health-and-our-past

'Além de oportunidades para o desenvolvimento das carreiras científicas, faltam também posições especializadas de apoio à investigação, tais como técnicos laboratoriais, gestores de ciência e tecnologia ou de comunicação de ciência. Estes profissionais são peças fundamentais nas atividades de investigação e desenvolvimento do século XXI.'

https://www.publico.pt/2023/06/04/ciencia/opiniao/necessario-debater-politica-emprego-cientifico-portugal-2051950

'We find that stromal and hematopoietic cells in the mouse thymus express the vitamin D receptor (Vdr) and Cyp27b1, the enzyme that produces hormonal 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D (1,25D). Treatment of cultured thymic slices with 1,25D enhances expression of the critical medullary thymic epithelial cell transcription factor autoimmune regulator (Aire), its colocalization with the Vdr, and enhances tissue-restricted Ag gene expression.'

#Immunology #Thymus #AIRE

https://journals.aai.org/jimmunol/article/doi/10.4049/jimmunol.2300207/263850/Cutting-Edge-Aire-Is-a-Coactivator-of-the-Vitamin

'The cGAS-STING pathway has long been recognized as playing a crucial role in immune surveillance and tumor suppression. Here, we show that when the pathway is activated in a cancer-cell-autonomous response manner, it confers drug resistance.'

https://www.cell.com/cell-chemical-biology/fulltext/S2451-9456(23)00141-1

“There was an exchange on Twitter a while back where someone said, ‘What is artificial intelligence?’ And someone else said, ‘A poor choice of words in 1954’,” he says. “And, you know, they’re right. I think that if we had chosen a different phrase for it, back in the ’50s, we might have avoided a lot of the confusion that we’re having now.”

So if he had to invent a term, what would it be? His answer is instant: applied statistics.'

https://www.ft.com/content/c1f6d948-3dde-405f-924c-09cc0dcf8c84