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?My ultimate career goal is to impact the world with my code.? In a #WhyIScience Q&A, Marianie Simeon, a computer scientist with the Data Sciences Platform, talks about her passion for coding, STEM education, and advocacy for the Black community at Broad.
Seven physician-scientists from the Broad community share their experiences caring for COVID-19 patients. The researchers discuss the importance of COVID-19 research and pandemic preparedness, the value of teamwork, and the fragility of life.
In June, the Broad launched a pilot with Bright Horizons in Kendall Square to offer childcare for children of Broad employees. The center, with regular COVID-19 testing of parents and staff, gives Broadies a childcare option while schools and some summer camps remain closed. Since its June 8 launch, the childcare center has filled to capacity of 40 children, five days a week. The pilot was so popular that the Broad’s Bright Horizons program was extended through the end of the summer.
The precision editing technologies that have revolutionized DNA editing in the cell nucleus have, thus far, been unable to reach the mitochondrial genome. Now, a team at the Broad, including David R. Liu and Vamsi Mootha, and the University of Washington - School of Medicine has broken this barrier with a new type of molecular editor that can make precise C•G-to-T•A nucleotide changes in mitochondrial DNA. The editor, engineered from a bacterial toxin, enables modeling of disease-associated mitochondrial DNA mutations, opening the door to a better understanding of genetic changes associated with cancer, aging, and more.
Researchers at the Broad, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women's Hospital have uncovered a key genetic mechanism that helps drive clonal hematopoiesis (CH), a common, age-related condition in which some blood stem cells acquire a mutation and then give rise to cells, or clones, that outgrow normal blood cells. CH is known to increase the risk of blood cancer and cardiovascular disease later in life.
Researchers have developed many new and improved versions of base editors, but this ever-growing toolbox comes with a challenge: Scientists can sink huge amounts of time into searching for the best editor to make a specific genetic change. Now, a new machine learning tool called BE-Hive can tell which base editors perform best to repair thousands of disease-causing mutations. The tool is available publicly as a web app.
A new study shows that a group of gut bacteria can metabolize enough cholesterol to potentially affect people’s metabolism. The discovery suggests a possible reason why some people can consume more cholesterol in their diet with minimal effect on their blood cholesterol levels. It also hints that boosting populations of these bacteria, through diet, probiotics, or another kind of treatment, may one day be an effective way to help lower cholesterol levels.
For eight years, the gnomAD consortium has patiently worked to compile & analyze more than 125,000 human exomes and 15,000 genomes from around the world. In seven papers across three Nature journals, they reveal what they've learned so far about the landscape of human genetic variation, structural variation, clinical genetics & drug target assessment.
Broad and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists led a team looking for relationships between ancestry and molecular variations seen in patients' cancers. They found links in hundreds of genes, especially in specific tissues and organs. Read more:
The Broad’s Center for the Development of Therapeutics (CDoT) is making copies of its Drug Repurposing Hub — a collection of nearly 7,000 compounds that are either FDA-approved or proven safe in clinical trials — and sharing them with collaborators in Boston and around the world to help them hunt for existing compounds that might prove effective against COVID-19. Learn more in this Q&A with Florence Wagner, director of medicinal chemistry at CDoT.
