Category Archives: BioEngineering

Drew Endy, PhD, a Stanford bioengineer, is the kind of brilliant that makes your head spin. His ideas come at a mile a minute, each one a potential mini revolution of standard biology, and his excitement for his work is palpable. But, to me, the best part about Endy is his drive to see a mega-mission through: to use bioengineering to change the world for the better, making contentious efforts to innovate with an eye toward solving social, humanitarian and environmental challenges.

In one of my latest Stanford Medicine magazine stories, "How synthetic biology could save us," I speak to Endy about his lofty vision and the research he's conducting to see it through.

If you ask Endy, synthetic biology is a field that aims to "make the making of things" easier. It's a type of science that expands beyond the natural world, creating tools and techniques to support the development of new biology-based innovations -- like new forms of medicine, or an altered crop that can fight pests on its own.

"We tend to think of biology as something that happens to us," Endy said in the story. "But more and more, we are happening to biology. We're in an era, scientifically, where we can express our intentions into the very kernel of life to allow for possibilities that are simply never going to exist otherwise."

One of Endy's big projects is something he calls "the cleanome," a concept rooted in genetics, but with a twist: In a cleanome, all of an organism's non-crucial genetic elements are removed. (Every living thing contains fundamental genes that support its life, in addition to stretches of DNA that are, essentially, garbage.) The goal is to remove genetic fluff, leaving only the core components that allow an organism to survive.

As Endy said in the story:

If you want to build an organism, you want to definitively know what you're working with, and right now part of what bioengineers are working with is ambiguity."

What bioengineering really needs, according to Endy, is certainty as to which genes are needed for a particular organism to survive along with what each gene is doing. ... Establishing a cleanome for key organisms would allow bioengineers to build and create with more certainty and safety, he said.

Endy and the researchers in his lab have other big ideas percolating too, one of which he's dubbed a "fail-safe" -- basically a built-in self destruct button for an engineered organism. Say, for instance, a scientist creates a type of cancer-fighting cell that runs around the body and gobbles up tumor cells. If that cell started to evolve new cell-gobbling abilities, that would be dangerous. A fail-safe construct built into the cell would notice such a change and kill the rogue cell before it kills its healthy neighbors.

During our interviews, I reflected on the enormity of his proposal: A civilization that not only coexists with bioengineering but also depends on it, harnesses it, continually develops it -- even loves it.

"You'd almost have to be some sort of benevolent dictator to truly see it through," I'd joked to him. He sees it a little differently. "Perhaps more like reluctant philosopher king."

Image by David Plunkert

Link:
Saving the world with synthetic biology - Scope - Scope

USAID animal disease surveillance work in Asia. Credit: Richard Nyberg / USAID. Credit: CC BY-NC 2.0.

In 2011, three top US government scientists penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post arguing why research modifying highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) was a worthy undertaking. At the time, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was facing blowback over having funded experiments that modified the virus to be transmissible among ferrets. The scientists argued that eliciting potentially dangerous mutations in the virus was necessary to protect humanity, should those mutations evolve naturally.

We cannot predict whether or not something will arise naturally, nor when or where it might appear. Given these uncertainties, important information and insights can come from generating a potentially dangerous virus in the laboratory, wrote Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Francis Collins, the head of NIH, and Gary Nabel, then a top official at Faucis institute.

Amid the controversy generated by this influenza research, the US government implemented a pause on federal funding in 2014 for selected research reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility or pathogenicity of influenza, SARS, and MERS viruses. These were experiments that fell within a subset of scientific study called gain-of-function research. In 2017, the government lifted the pause and put in place a requirement that the US Department of Health and Human Services conduct a risk-benefit assessment on research that could confer these attributes to potential pandemic pathogens.

The federal government continues to fund such experimentation, but, as scientists, media, and online sleuths have delved into the origins of COVID-19, they have revealed weaknesses in past and current government oversight of projects modifying viruses. The revelations have underscored the degree to which gain-of-function research in the name of predicting pandemics is an idea that doesnt seem to fade.

US-funded coronavirus bioengineering. In 2018, EcoHealth Alliance, a US-based nonprofit research organization, submitted a grant proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called DEFUSE: Defusing the Threat of Bat-borne Coronaviruses asking for over $14 million for a three-and-a-half year project to, as the name suggests, prevent a bat coronavirus from spilling over into people and seeding an outbreak. The team would study viral evolution and spillover risk[s] of SARS-related bat coronaviruses by collecting viruses from caves in Yunnan, China and doing experiments that included testing hybrid, lab-created bat coronaviruses on mice engineered to have human receptors.

One eye popping segment in the 2018 EcoHealth proposal to DARPA dealt with finding so-called furin cleavage sites. In SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, a furin cleavage site allows its spike protein to be cut by the furin enzyme present in human airway tissues, making the virus better able to infect cells than others without the feature. The furin cleavage site represents a crucial difference between the COVID-19 virus and its relatives, including SARS-CoV, the virus responsible for the 2003 outbreak of that respiratory disease.

The process by which viruses hijack the cellular machinery of their hosts to reproduce themselves is sloppy, and the viruses that a cell produces arent always identical to the ones that infected the cell to begin with. This sloppiness helps the virus to evolve and adapt to new hostssuch as us. The furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 could have evolved in this way.

Some proponents of the idea that the pandemic began with a lab accident in Wuhan, however, wonder whether the furin cleavage sites presence in the COVID-19 virus is simply a mark of natural viral evolutionan artifact of sloppy viral reproductionor rather is something else entirely: a sign of human bioengineering.

DARPA did not approve EcoHealths 2018 proposal, and its unknown whether the project received other funding. But the EcoHealth proposal, like another of the organizations collaborations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology that did get government funding, show the enduring interest scientists have in modifying viruses in the name of predicting pandemic pathogens. (NIH officials have denied that EcoHealths NIH-funded research is gain of function research, although NIH documents show that the organization failed to adhere to terms related to enhanced viral growth in its hybrid bat coronavirus studies. There is significant debate on what the definition of a dangerous gain-of-function experiment is.)

Predicting pandemics through gain-of-function research. An overarching goal of EcoHealths workas documented in the DARPA proposal and in other projectswas to learn which viruses were poised to spill over, in other words, to predict pandemics. Predicting how and when the next pandemic could arise is important, but tampering with viruses to do so is the wrong way to go about it. Predicting pandemics isnt like predicting the weather.

Weather prediction is a purely observational exercise. We have satellites and other tools to track weather to predict hurricanes. The forecast process begins with observations. Scientists use this data to develop hurricane forecast models. Geophysical fluid dynamics are well understood, based on the laws of physics (i.e. density, flow velocity, pressure, and temperature) enabling scientists to develop atmospheric and climate models.

Scientists do not experiment on clouds to see if they can cause hurricanes.

In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences published its seminal report, Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism. It listed seven experiments of concern that should not be done.

Bioengineering SARS-related coronaviruses in ways that could increase efficient infection of human cells and that increase viral load, pathogenicity, and lethality in mice genetically engineered to have respiratory cells with human features, i.e., humanized mice, as NIH documents show was done by EcoHealth Alliance and its Wuhan partners, would conceivably implicate points 3, 4, and 5 of the 2004 report. Whether the Wuhan experimentation was gain of function is a matter of debate, but some scientists disagree with NIHs assessment that it wasnt.

Ideally, Congress should hold a hearing to debate what kind of research should not be done and do more to investigate the origins of the pandemic. Certainly, there have been calls to do so.

There are other less risky ways of preventing pandemics than conducting gain-of-function research on pathogens. Many pathogens capable of causing human outbreaks originate in animals, and surveillance of wild and domestic animals for signs of illness makes sense. This is the One Health approach. With One Health, the goal is to prevent the spread of deadly zoonotic microbes into humans through improved communication and collaboration between human and veterinary medicine.

Preventing pandemics through rapid identification and response is an important goal; the One Health approach that emphasizes animal and human health and disease surveillance is the key to doing this, not risky gain-of-function research.

Authors note: Many thanks to Richard Ebright, Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Waksman Institute, Rutgers University for his invaluable comments and links to technical references.

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Creating dangerous viruses in the lab is a bad way to guard against future pandemics - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

November 18, 2021

The insidiousness of pancreatic cancer is how it develops without showing any definitive symptoms. In most cases, by the time it is diagnosed, it is beyond cure.

And yet, for 10 to 20 percent of patients, pancreatic cancer is caught soon enough, before it has metastasized. This provides surgeons a narrow window of time to try to treat the tumors, shrinking them enough to safely remove them.

University of Rochester engineers, imaging scientists, surgeons, and immunologists are working together on a novel imaging technology to help surgeons make the most of that narrow time frame before the cancer spreads.

Led by Marvin Doyley, professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering at the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the collaborators have received a $2.4 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to look at pancreatic cancer tumors in a different waymeasuring not just their size, but also their elasticity and ability to be perfused, or permeated, with blood and other fluids.

Standard imaging modalities such as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) or CT (computed tomography) have been used to see if a tumor is shrinking, Doyley says. But there is a lot of data that suggests just looking at size reduction by itself is not necessarily the best marker to judge whether patients are responding to therapy. Were basically trying to fix that.

The ultimate goal is to develop an endoscopic device that surgeons could use to look inside the body in order to determine whether a patient is responding to treatment and, if so, when they are ready to undergo tumor removal.

The first step is to demonstrate whether increases in tumor elasticity and perfusion are indeed valid biomarkers to more quickly determine that a tumor is responding to treatment in ways that will help ensure a successful surgical outcome. And if not, to switch to a different treatment.

Pancreatic cancer tumors typically have a stiff barrier around them, which can pinch off the ability of blood vessels to perfuse the tumor with chemotherapy drugs designed to shrink the tumor, Doyley explains.

To address the specific challenges of pancreatic cancer tumors, the researchers will use a combination of two imaging modalities:

This will enable the team to measure whether tumor elasticity and perfusion change in mice models as they respond to various tumor-shrinking therapiesand if so, to fine tune the ability of the imaging technology to detect the changes.

These images from magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance elastography are from a patient with pancreatic cancer. Arrows point to tumors. (Images courtesy of the Doyley lab)

Then, the researchers will use analogous forms of MRI imaging to see how the same properties change in actual patients undergoing treatment.

Once a patient is initially diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, well track how those biomarkers vary as they have their different treatments, Doyley says. We cant do a full clinical trial, but we can retrospectively see, in patients who have responded, if there is a corresponding change in the biomarkers we are looking at.

And if there is indeed a link between the biomarkers and treatments, continues Doyley, we will apply for a bigger grant to create an endoscopic device and do a bigger study with more patients.

Collaborators include Brian Pogue, recently appointed chair of the Department of Medical Physics at the University of WisconsinMadison, and, at Rochester, David Lenihan, professor and chair of surgery; Scott Gerber, associate professor of surgery and of microbiology and immunology; Aram Hezel, associate professor of hematology/oncology; Tanzy Love, associate professor of biostatistics; Jonathan Kallas, assistant professor of imaging sciences, and David Dombroski, associate professor of imaging sciences.

Tags: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, health care, Marvin Doyley, medical center, research funding

Category: Science & Technology

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New imaging technology could buy time for pancreatic cancer patients - University of Rochester

Jurassic World Evolution launched in the same year as the second film in the rebooted blockbuster series and gave fans the opportunity to live out their own dreams of opening a theme park full of dinosaurs. Three years later, the games sequel looks to double down on that promise, putting even more tools and options in the hands of players. Jurassic World Evolution 2 cleverly expands upon what was built in the first game, delivering the definitive Jurassic experience.

In Jurassic World 2, players can build their own dinosaur theme park using enclosures, facilities, and scientists. Theres a lot of systems at play, and the core game is a balancing act of making sure your dinosaurs are taken care of and happy, guests are happy, and that your park is turning a profit.

Players are introduced to the games mechanics in Campaign mode. Set after the events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, players will work with the DFW (Department of Fish and Wildlife) to control, conserve, and contain the wild dinosaurs that now roam the planet. Each chapter of the Campaign has players in different locations looking to build a functioning park or conservation area. From Arizona, to Washington, California and more, it was neat to have a diverse offering of environments, rather than the jungle settings that we always see in Jurassic Park adaptations.

The Campaign is brief, easily beatable in a couple of sittings. That said, its a satisfying experience that eases players into the different systems that they will have to juggle. As someone who can sometimes feel overwhelmed in management sims, I felt equipped to deal with just about everything Jurassic World Evolution 2 threw at me. It was also cool having Jeff Goldblum and Bryce Dallas Howard reprise their roles from the films and serve as mentors throughout the story.

When building a successful park, theres a lot that players will need to take into account. Enclosures need to be built for every dinosaur, as to keep both the guests and creatures safe. Each species of dinosaur has its own unique needs that inform the player how to design their enclosure. For example, Velociraptors desire a lot of open space, as well as live prey to hunt down. The Carnotaurus wanted to be in a sandy environment, so I had to whip out the brush tool and make their enclosure look like a desert.

Theres over 75 species of dinosaurs featured in Jurassic World Evolution 2, and each one feels distinct from the next. This game also adds flying and marine creatures, adding more variety to what players can do with their parks.

Players can get a full read of everything they need to know about a dinosaur by pulling up its information page. This tells the player a dinosaurs comfort level, health status, genetic makeup, and even a stats page that will show you everything from a dinos age and dollar value, to how many creatures its killed and how many times it broke out of its enclosure. The amount of information the game gives makes each creature feel unique. I found myself growing attachments to some of the dinosaurs I had long term and I was genuinely saddened when they died or became unwell.

One of my favorite things to do in Jurassic World Evolution 2 was to hop into a ranger truck, and then drive around an enclosure in first-person. Seeing dinosaurs like the T-Rex and Brontosaurus up close, scaled to actual size, was incredible.

In addition to having cool dinosaurs and making sure theyre taken care of, players still need to manage a theme park. Buildings like viewing centers, restaurants, gift shops, and hotels make the guests happy, increasing profits. On the business side of things, operation facilities like the Control Center, Medical Facility, and Response Facility are integral to maintaining your park. Scientists can be hired to carry out tasks such as healing dinosaurs, going on expeditions to acquire new creatures, and conducting research in order to unlock new structures and perks. Each scientist has their own advantages and disadvantages, as well as a salary to match.

Theres a deep level of strategy and management just on the business side of things. Having to properly budget my income so that I could afford scientists, managing their time so that they didnt become fatigued or disgruntled. Fostering an environment that made my guests feel safe and excited to spend money was a good deal of fun on its own.

My only frustration with Jurassic World 2 comes in the repetitiveness of its gameplay loop, particularly early on in a playthrough. From random weather conditions, to illnesses and dinosaurs deciding to break fences and escape their enclosure, it can feel like youre in a constant state of panic, frequently pausing time to play an endless game of whack-a-mole. As more perks are unlocked, this becomes a bit less stressful.

One of the most fascinating mechanics in Jurassic World Evolution 2 is its bioengineering system, which lets players create their own dinosaurs just as Dr. Henry Wu and his team of scientists did in the films. Using a Hatchery, players can combine genomes from different species of reptiles in order to create a dinosaur thats wholly unique. These dinosaurs can have special behavioral traits, colors, and patterns. I spent a considerable amount of time just screwing around in Sandbox mode seeing what wild abominations I could come up with.

Chaos Theory is a new mode in Jurassic World Evolution 2 and puts players in scenarios from the Jurassic Park/World series, giving them a chance to rewrite history. These what if scenarios include realizing John Hammonds dream of building a Jurassic Park in San Diego, or maintaining Jurassic World on Isla Nublar without the incident in 2015. These missions offered a fresh challenge and are an excellent way to revisit major turning points in the franchise.

Jurassic World Evolution 2 is endless fun for a fan of the blockbuster franchise. A large library of species to unlock and study, bioengineering, and the ability to revisit iconic moments from the movies makes it an easy recommendation for anyone looking for their fix of Jurassic content. Even as a park manager, the game is quite satisfying, aside from some light frustrations here or there.

This review is based on a digital download code provided by the publisher. Jurassic World Evolution 2 is available now for $59.99 USD on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and PC.

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokmon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Star Wars nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_

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Jurassic World Evolution 2 review: When dinosaurs ruled the Earth - Shacknews

Newswise Among the many devastating impacts of Alzheimers disease and other types of dementia is the risk that patients will wander and become lost. Indeed, according to the Alzheimers Association, six in 10 people with the disease will wander at least once over the course of their illness and many do so repeatedly.

For researchers who study and treat people with neurodegenerative disorders, understanding the human neural circuitry that leads to such behavior is among the highest-priority goals. But to better study these and other neurological conditions, the work needs to begin with effective, accessible animal models.

Thats where researchers at the NeuroBat lab led by Michael Yartsev, assistant professor of bioengineering and of neurobiology come in. Their studies of the neural circuitry of navigation in Egyptian fruit bats are yielding insights that might one day help explain and prevent dangerous situations for humans.

Egyptian fruit bats are one of the most superior navigators that exist on our planet, Yartsev says. He describes how these diminutive, highly social creatures in the wild will travel tens of kilometers, even through dark and stormy nights, seldom if ever getting lost in their search for food. The bats complex travel through 3D space, he says, could shed light on the complexity of human behavior in navigating from place to place.

But understanding the neuronal processes at the root of behavior in appropriate animal models goes well beyond studies of navigation. We have a huge number of questions that we want to understand about the brain, Yartsev says. And one of his goals as a neuroscientist is to advocate for an expansion of the diversity of animal models researchers have available for their work.

In the current landscape of neuroscience research, Yartsev says, 75% or more of the work focuses on a handful of standard organisms, such as rats and mice. The reasons often come down to accessibility of tools and ease of maintenance in laboratory environments. But this overwhelming convergence is not without cost, as it limits the type of questions asked, the discoveries made and the degree to which scientific findings can be generalized beyond those species.

With bats, Yartsev says, their ability to fly, complex social behaviors, patterns of vocalization, long lives and more set them apart as animal models for studying a specific set of basic research problems in neuroscience such as how the brain processes skills like navigation, sociality and language.

Yartsevs first encounter with bats as a subject for neuroscience took place some 15 years ago during his Ph.D. studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Yartsev says it was a risky move, then, to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience by studying a non-traditional animal. But this work helped establish bats as an important model system for a variety of new research topics.

As befits Yartsevs biomedical engineering background, the work has included the opportunity to develop new research tools for neuroscience for example, the first wireless electrophysiology system for recording and studying a bats brain activity during flight.

This was the first single-cell neural recording from a freely flying animal, Yartsev says, referring to experimental work behind a 2013 Science paper on navigation-related bat neural activity. Bats obviously cannot fly around freely with a cable attached, so we had to develop the tools needed to do this work we still do, he adds, citing, as another example, a piezoelectric device for recording vocalizations that is lightweight enough for the bats to wear as a necklace while communicating with one another.

In 2015, Yartsev brought his pioneering research with Egyptian fruit bats to UC Berkeley, where he has established his own group, the NeuroBat Lab. Studying the neural circuitry of these diminutive creatures, the group continues to build and publish a rich trove of basic research data and neuroscience insight with more to come.

In a continuation of his research work on navigation using bats, the NeuroBat Lab has recently focused on neural mechanisms that could underlie goal-directed navigation, which Alzheimer patients often struggle with. To carry out the study, the Yartsev team used a specialized facility they created called the fully automated flight room. It is a human-free space used to obtain detailed, quantitative understanding of bat navigation and flight behavior by recording activity in relevant neural circuits.

Bioengineering graduate student Madeleine Snyder, one of Yartsevs team members who also studies the neural mechanisms of navigation in bats, says bats make a good research subject because theyre both highly social and highly navigationally adept, and thats very similar to humans in many ways. They will go kilometers and kilometers to forage in a specific tree and then come home together.

She describes the flight room as about the size of a large living room that is outfitted with cameras and other recording devices. Researchers can situate perches for the bats at various places in the room. The perches might be outfitted with beam breakers that, when triggered by a bat alighting on the perch, will trigger some action like the introduction of food. Lights can be programmed to turn on and off, sounds can be introduced and researchers can simply step back, watch and record how the bats interact with their environment.

In comparison to studies with other animal models, she says, with bats in the human-free flight room, were not constraining the animal but just letting them do what they want to do and seeing what happens.

As with many animal-model studies, Yartsev says, subtracting humans from the study environment can heighten fidelity of results. Thats because the presence of human investigators may introduce experimental biases, reduce reproducibility of the experiment, prevent the animals from engaging freely in self-paced navigational behavior and limit the complexity of tasks that could be utilized to study neural circuits.

For the navigation study, the team looked at the activity of place cells, specialized cells in the brain that act as a sort of internal global positioning system. Studies of place cells in rats had indicated that the cells primarily encode the animals location at the time the cell is firing.

What we are showing in this paper is that if you align all the place cells that you are recording as they are firing in the hippocampus, there is a continuum of space and time, Yartsev says, referring to their paperpublished in Scienceearlier this year. The cells are representing where the animal has been, where it will be a half a second into the future, a second into the future and so on.

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimers disease, Yartsev notes, is that people get lost all the time, even in their own neighborhoods. Understanding how the brain represents the environment, how a person knows the route to take to get from one place to another remains unknown, he says. The NeuroBat Lab study suggests that the reason a person might get lost is that their brain somehow loses that continuum of space and time the ability to hold and follow a planned trajectory.

He says the data from their fast-moving bat animal model reveals dynamics of neuronal activity that would be difficult to observe so cleanly by only studying, for example, a slower-moving rodent in a 2D maze.

We can sometimes make very significant progress with just one experiment with bats, no matter that it can at times be very difficult, Yartsev says. Thats because the animals can be a highly relevant model system for a specific scientific question that could also be important for humans. For example, bats are specialized for communication at the group level. They have developed behavioral capacities for group living and the underlying neural circuits that serve those capacities.

In another recent study from the lab, the team became the first to observe synchronized brain activity in a nonhuman species engaging in natural social interactions like grooming, fighting or sniffing each other.

For the study,published in Cell,Yartsev and postdoctoral fellow Wujie Zhang used simultaneous wireless neural recording devices to measure brain activity while multiple bats freely interacted. The specialized recording devices allowed them to capture what modalities like functional MRI and EEG cannot the full scope of neural activity from brain oscillations to the firing of individual neurons, all at the same time.

The researchers found surprisingly strong correlations between the bats brains. That is, as they engaged with one another in social behaviors in the same environment, their brain wave and neuronal electrical activity began to look the same in each bat, even when the bats performed very different actions. The correlations were present whenever the bats shared a social environment and increased before and during their social interactions, Yartsev says.

Their detailed analysis of social interactions allowed them to rule out other possible explanations for the synced-up brain activity, such as that bats were simply reacting to the same environment or engaging in the same activity. For example, bats placed in identical but separate chambers and that were both busy grooming did not show the same synchronization.

This study is really laying the groundwork for studying inter-brain correlation in animals, Zhang says. We didnt know if this is something thats only observed in humans. If we have the same phenomenon in animals, then theres a lot more experimental techniques we can use to really understand the mechanisms of this phenomenon, including its function.

This is a very core phenomenon that, for two decades, people have been excited about in humans, Yartsev says. Now that weve observed it in an animal model, it opens the door to very detailed research of it. Importantly, this phenomenon also relates to how humans socialize with one another in social groups and is impacted during diseases such as autism and other neurological disorders. Understanding the neural mechanisms behind it and how it mediates natural group social behavior could lead to future therapeutics in humans.

And this is exactly where we are going with this, Yartsev says. In another paper,published in Sciencethis fall, the lab studied social communication among groups of bats for the first time. Led by graduate student Maimon Rose and postdoctoral fellow Boaz Styr, the researchers discovered a rich repertoire of neural signals that represent key components in group communication, findings that could also have significant implications for understanding aspects of human mental health.

Another future area of research interest, Yartsev says, is language the crown jewel of humanity. Humans are the only mammals capable of learning and using language, but they are joined by bats, elephants and cetaceans (whales, dolphins) out of some 5,400 species of mammals in the ability to learn new sounds. This process, also known as vocal learning, is the basis for language learning.

First of all, just understanding that fact about learning language is really important, he says. How does our brain allow us to learn a language? It becomes even more important when we think that about 10 percent of the people in the world suffer from language disorders. And this affects them dramatically. These disorders relate to autism, dyslexia and a whole variety of problems related to brain functioning.

Unfortunately, in the world of neuroscience today, Yartsev says, we still do not understand the detailed neurobiological mechanisms that allow us to learn a language.

And beyond biology and human health, the research into complex neurobiological processes in bats might also power new technology development, Yartsev says. For example, insights from the bats might aid development of new machine learning algorithms and sensing technologies critical to the development of fully self-driving cars. Such autonomous vehicles must be able to safely maneuver roadways by sensing and reacting to other moving vehicles, random obstacles and constantly changing environmental conditions. For some questions, the bats provide us very unique advantages that you simply cant find in other animal model system and these are the questions we focus on, Yartsev says.

Articleby William Schulz

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Right off the bats - Newswise

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SWOT Analysis on COVID-19 Outbreak- Cysteine Players

In additional Market Share analysis of players, in-depth profiling, product/service and business overview, the study also concentrates on BCG matrix, heat map analysis, FPNV positioning along with SWOT analysis to better correlate market competitiveness.

Demand from top notch companies and government agencies is expected to rise as they seek more information on latest scenario. Check Demand Determinants section for more information.

Reasons for buying this report:

* It offers an analysis of changing competitive scenarios.* For making informed decisions in the businesses, it offers analytical data with strategic planning methodologies.* It offers a six-year assessment of Cysteine Market.* It helps in understanding the major key product segments.* Researchers throw light on the dynamics of the market such as drivers, restraints, trends, and opportunities.* It offers a regional analysis of Cysteine Market along with the business profiles of several stakeholders.* It offers massive data about trending factors that will influence the progress of the Cysteine Market.

Table of Content:

1 Scope of the Report1.1 Market Introduction1.2 Research Objectives1.3 Years Considered1.4 Market Research Methodology1.5 Economic Indicators1.6 Currency Considered2 Executive Summary3 Global Cysteine by Players4 Cysteine by Regions4.1 Cysteine Market Size by Regions4.2 Americas Cysteine Market Size Growth4.3 APAC Cysteine Market Size Growth4.4 Europe Cysteine Market Size Growth4.5 Middle East & Africa Cysteine Market Size Growth5 Americas6 APAC7 Europe8 Middle East & Africa9 Market Drivers, Challenges and Trends9.1 Market Drivers and Impact9.1.1 Growing Demand from Key Regions9.1.2 Growing Demand from Key Applications and Potential Industries9.2 Market Challenges and Impact9.3 Market Trends10 Global Cysteine Market Forecast11 Key Players Analysis12 Research Findings and Conclusion

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ABOUT US:

Adroit Market Research is an India-based business analytics and consulting company. Our target audience is a wide range of corporations, manufacturing companies, product/technology development institutions and industry associations that require understanding of a markets size, key trends, participants and future outlook of an industry. We intend to become our clients knowledge partner and provide them with valuable market insights to help create opportunities that increase their revenues. We follow a code Explore, Learn and Transform. At our core, we are curious people who love to identify and understand industry patterns, create an insightful study around our findings and churn out money-making roadmaps.

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Cysteine Market Technological Innovations and Pandemic Analysis Till 2026: Wacker Chemie AG, Ajinomoto Pte.Ltd, Donboo Amino Acid Co. Ltd, Wuxi Bikang...