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Reprogramming adult cells to a stem cell-like state can provide researchers with tools to help illuminate the role genetic differences play in disease development and potentially regenerate tissue in the wake of injury. However, these induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are difficult to create. In a study published this week in , researchers, including Kevin Eggan, Alexander Tsankov, and Alexander Meissner of the Ó³»­´«Ã½ and Harvard Stem Cell Institute, describe an automated, robotic process that efficiently generates iPSC lines — a new approach that could facilitate studies with these cells.

The human body is governed by complex biochemical circuits. Chemical inputs spur chain reactions that generate new outputs. Understanding how these circuits work—how their components interact to enable life—is critical both to advancing basic biology and to identifying new treatments to disease, which arises when these circuits misfire. But getting to that understanding is no trivial task.

Chemical probes — small molecules that interact with a protein’s function — can be powerful tools to reveal the roles of targeted proteins in health and disease, but probes are sometimes of low quality, and high-quality ones can be misused. , a multi-institutional team, including Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s Stuart Schreiber, Nathanael Gray, and Joanne Kotz, describe plans for a new community-driven wiki-like site, called the , that crowdsources medicinal chemistry and pharmacology expertise to catalog the best chemical probes for a given protein target. The resource aims to support research in basic biology and the pursuit of new therapeutics.

Pontus Skoglund

Native Americans living in the Amazon bear an unexpected genetic connection to indigenous people in Australasia, suggesting a previously unknown wave of migration to the Americas thousands of years ago, a new study has found.

  by researchers from the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital suggests that esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) progresses differently than previously suspected.