Luis Ferreira Moita @lferreiramoita@qoto.org

New @NEJM
Interferon λ, a new way to cut hospitalizations by 50% after Covid, in a randomized, placebo-controlled trial >2,000 patients age 50+ or high risk
@dr_gilmarreis and colleagues
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2209760

'Approximately 4 in 10 early-career clinician-investigators with full-time faculty appointments leave academia within 10 years due in part to time conflicts driven by caregiving (5). Underrepresented groups and women leave at higher rates than White people and men. This represents an astonishing loss of highly educated professionals from the biomedical research workforce, and reinforces inequity gaps across gender, race, and ethnicity.'

https://www.jci.org/articles/view/166075

New #preprint from Ardem Patapoutian's lab:

'Here, we show that humans lacking PIEZO2 exhibit impaired bowel sensation and motility. Piezo2 in mouse dorsal root but not nodose ganglia is required to sense gut content, and this activity slows down food transit rates in the stomach, small intestine, and colon. Indeed, Piezo2 is directly required to detect colon distension in vivo. Our study unveils the mechanosensory mechanisms that regulate the transit of luminal contents throughout the gut, which is a critical process to ensure proper digestion, nutrient absorption, and waste removal.'

#Mechanosensing #MucosalImmunology
#Piezo

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.27.518109v1?med=mas

I always wondered how Bell Labs, a private lab, could be so successful and win 9 (!) Nobel Prizes. The answer seems to be a continuous stream of funding and an environment that valued longterm research goals and scientific discovery over progress reports.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-022-00426-6

Today in #Science (@sciencemagazine), Claudia Arevalo, Scott Hensley, & al develop an #mRNA–#LipidNanoparticle #vaccine encoding #hemagglutinin antigens from all 20 known #influenza A & B virus subtypes/lineages! #Vaccination protected animals challenged w/ matched & mismatched viral strains!

In the same issue,
Alyson Kelvin & Darryl Falzarano write a wonderful Perspective on this important next step towards a #UniversalFluVaccine!

Article: bit.ly/Sci_abm0271
PS: bit.ly/Sci_adf0900

#IAV #IBV

"The endothelium is a vertebrate specific specialization of the circulatory system that enabled a critical new level of vasoregulation. The evolutionary origin of these endothelial cells is unclear. We hypothesized that Mir-126, an endothelial cell-specific microRNA may be informative."

#Preprint #Evolution #Development #endothelium

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.23.517662v1

Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of RNA sequencing, but what if you can't analyze the data? We (mostly Guy) created a software to make your life easy! Read our NEW preprint & REBLOG. Please try it (follow the detailed tutorial) and give us feedback! 🤟🙏

"RNAlysis: analyze your RNA sequencing data without writing a single line of code"
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.11.25.517851v1

Here's Guy's thread with all the details:

https://twitter.com/GuyTeichman/status/1596193414885810180?s=20&t=25MH4VPG-6PcqObk04bjVA

Enjoying holiday weekend reading of this fascinating new book by Siddhartha Mukhergee, which is filled with historical nuggets about the foundations of Cell Biology. For example, in the 1820s, when cells had been observed but functions not yet formulated, the brilliant French scientist François-Vincent Raspail speculated that “A cell is a kind of laboratory” where some sort of fantastic chemistry must be occurring, and “From cells come cells,” all long before fields of biochemistry and molecular biology emerged.