Cells

Using prime editing, Prof. Jonathan Weissman led a team of MIT researchers that “built lineage maps for embryos between 7.5 days and 10 days old,” writes Science’s Mitch Leslie. “The ultimate goal,” writes Leslie, “a family tree tracing the ancestry of every cell in the mammalian body, could help researchers delve into how organs arise, probe the origins of birth defects, grow better replacement cells for patients, and study evolution.” 

MIT researchers have developed a paper-thin biohybrid robot “capable of swimming that is powered by living muscle cells instead of a traditional motor,” writes Forbes’ Conor Murray. The muscle cells are engineered to respond to flashes of light, allowing the robot to swim through mazes. The researchers believe that in the future biohybrid robots could eventually be used for everything from precision microsurgery to exploring fragile environments.  

MIT researchers have found that colon cancer cells can “change their identity, allowing them to travel through the body and form new tumors,” reports Daniella Gray for Newsweek. The findings could point to future treatments that can prevent metastasis—the leading cause of death for colorectal cancer patients, Gray explains. 

New York Times reporters Gina Kolata and Rebecca Robbins highlight how university researchers at MIT and Harvard laid the groundwork for the development of a new treatment for pancreatic cancer that “could wind up being the most significant advance in cancer treatment in 15 years, since the arrival of immunotherapy.” They write: “In 1982, Robert Weinberg, a scientist at MIT, made one of the seminal discoveries about how RAS genes fuel some cancers.” 

Nature reporter Rachel Fieldhouse spotlights graduate student Lauren 'Ren' Ramlan’s work integrating the video game Doom into her research. Ramlan used “Escherichia coli bacteria to display a few frames of Doom,” explains Fieldhouse. “She attached a fluorescent protein to the bacterial cells that could be turned on or off, making them act like black and white pixels on a screen. She then translated and compressed the first few frames of Doom into black-and-white versions that matched the plate growing the cells. Ramlan says the project shows what living things can be engineered to do, and that bacteria are probably not suitable for computing or displaying images.” 

Researchers at MIT have developed microscopic devices that “can travel autonomously through the blood and provide electrical stimulation to precise brain regions,” and could one day be used to treat brain diseases, mental illness, or other parts of the body, reports Zoe Kriegler for Medical Design & Outsourcing. The development of microscopic wireless electronic devices (SWEDs) could “eliminate the need for brain surgery in some cases, decreasing the risk to the patient and the expense of the procedure by hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Kriegler explains. 

Prof. Deblina Sarkar speaks with Forbes reporter William A. Haseltine about her work developing “circulatronics,” microscopic electronics devices that could one day be used to help treat brain diseases. “What we have developed are tiny electronic devices that can travel through body fluids and autonomously find their target regions, with no external guidance or imaging,” explains Sarkar. “They provide very precise electrical stimulation of neurons without the need for surgery.” 

MIT researchers have developed a deep-learning model “capable of predicting the precise movements, divisions, and restructuring of thousands of cells during the embryo’s transition from a simple cluster to a complex organism,” reports Mrigakshi Dixit for Interesting Engineering. “This model currently provides a sneak peek into the fruit fly’s earliest developmental stage,” explains Dixit. “In the future, it could be used to predict how more complex tissues, organs, and organisms develop.” 

Prof. Deblina Sarkar speaks with Bloomberg Businessweek Daily reporters Carol Massar and David Gura about her work using microscopic technology to treat and identify health issues. We are building “tiny nanoelectronics chips which can seamlessly integrate with our body and brain,” says Sarkar. “This can diagnose disease or treat diseases which even drugs cannot fix.” 

Using molecular evidence buried in rocks, researchers at MIT suggest that some of the Earth’s first living creatures are ancestors of the modern sea sponge, reports Ashley Fike for Vice. “The discovery suggests the earliest animals were simple, filter-feeding organisms that slowly cleaned the seas while the rest of the evolution was still figuring itself out,” says Fike. “These early sponges likely had no skeletons, nerves, or eyes – just porous bodies that absorbed water and nutrients. Yet they paved the way for everything that came next, from insects to mammals to us.” 

A new study by MIT researchers suggests sea sponges may have been the “first animals to inhabit the Earth,” reports Maria Azzura Volpe for Newsweek. “In their work, the researchers linked so-called ‘chemical fossils’ found in ancient rocks to the ancestors of a class of modern-day sea sponges known as demosponges,” explains Volpe. “These chemical fossils—the molecular remnants of once-living organisms that have been buried, transformed, and preserved in sediment over time—were discovered in rocks that date back to more than 541 million years ago, during the Ediacaran Period.” 

MIT researchers have uncovered new evidence that suggests some of Earth’s first living creatures are ancestors of the modern sea sponge, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. The researchers identified 541 million-year-old chemical fossils embedded in sediment that they believe may indicate that some of Earth’s earliest creatures were the ancient relatives of today’s sea sponges. 

Strand Therapeutics, co-founded Jake Becraft PhD '19, has developed a programmable drug that could one day shrink tumors in cancer patients, reports Amy Feldman for Forbes. “It shocked even us,” says Becraft. “You hope something happens, but you don’t expect to see a huge response because these patients have already proven to have cancers so resistant to treatment.” 

A study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere has proposed an alternative scenario to how life survived “Snowball Earth,” a “super ice age that froze the entire planet from poles to the equator” during the Cryogenian period, reports David Bressan for Forbes. “The scientists found that lifeforms could have survived the global freeze by thriving in watery oases on the surface,” explains Bressan.

MIT researchers have developed a method to grow artificial muscle tissue that twitches and flexes in multiple, coordinated directions, and could be useful for building “biohybrid” robots, reports Andrew Corselli for Tech Briefs. Prof. Ritu Raman explains that her lab is focused on creating “artificial muscle tissues that can be used to understand and treat muscle diseases that impact healthy human mobility,” and making “safe muscle-powered robots that can perform complex tasks in dangerous environments that are not suitable for humans.”