Many traditional metapopulation models often overlook the spread of infectious disease through commuting, because they are designed primarily for migration, so in the journal Chaos, researchers from South Korea introduce a Commuter Metapopulation Model to include daily mobility patterns. The model was used to simulate the spread of COVID-19 with actual commuting data, revealing it could better capture spatial variety in outbreak patterns.

MIT engineers designed a control mechanism, known as DIAL, that allows them to establish a desired protein level, or set point, for any synthetic gene circuit.

Researchers from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will partner with investigators from industrial and academic institutions, including Ginkgo Bioworks, Baylor University, University of Minnesota, Oregon State University, and Oregon Health & Science University, on a five-year initiative funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and overseen by Program Manager Andrew Brack, PhD. The project, “Microbe/phage Investigation for Generalized Health TherapY (MIGHTY),” aims to harness the natural predators of bacteria – known as phages – as precision tools to shape the human microbiome and promote health.