In a major breakthrough, a team at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found a new way to acccelerate plant bioengineering using robots. Researchers deployed a biofoundry – a laboratory integrating robotics, computer-aided design, and informatics – to make genetically engineered plants and used it to boost oil production in plant cells and whole plants. This fast, automated, scalable, high-throughput pipeline for plant bioengineering, or FAST-PB, can help scientists quickly improve valuable plant traits, such as increased oil production or photosynthesis, to build better bioenergy crops.

Students in the inaugural Invention Convention Florida at the University of South Florida competed for top honors in various grade-level categories, with more than 80 standout projects earning the opportunity to advance to the Invention Convention U.S. Nationals later this year.

With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), predictive medicine is becoming an important part of healthcare, especially in cancer treatment. Predictive medicine uses algorithms and data to help doctors understand how a cancer might continue to grow or react to specific drugs—making it easier to target precision treatment for individual patients. Now, researchers at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine set a foundation in two commentaries out this week for going beyond AI to find the best treatments for patients, as well as ethically data sharing to promote reproducible science.

 

New bat cell lines and reagents help to study bat antiviral immune responses against hantaviruses and coronaviruses

Barrier islands, which cover a majority of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, protect coastal infrastructure, beach towns and ecosystems — such as marshes, mangroves and seagrass meadows — from damaging storms and high-energy waves. In a recent study, researchers from Texas A&M University led by Dr. Orencio Duran Vinent gained a better understanding of what makes a barrier island a “barrier.”