Dengue disease remains a significant global health threat, with current vaccines exhibiting variable efficacy and safety concerns. Virus-like particles (VLPs) offer a promising alternative by mimicking native virus structures without infectious genomes. We engineered a mammalian expression plasmid encoding Dengue-1 prM and E proteins, optimized for secretion using Japanese Encephalitis virus signal sequences, and transiently […]
PES-8 is required for Cytoskeletal Organization and Contractility in the C. elegans Spermatheca
Proper regulation of contraction and relaxation in biological tubes is essential for organismal function. In C. elegans, the spermatheca, composed of smooth muscle-like cells, undergoes repeated stretching and contraction as oocytes pass through. Here we describe PES-8, a previously uncharacterized protein, as a regulator of spermatheca contractility. PES-8 contains a predicted extracellular zona pellucida-like domain […]
Automated Extraction and Meta-Analysis of a Century of Motor-Unit Research with NeuromechaniX
The scientific literature on human motor units and electromyography (EMG) spans over a century (1925-2025), comprising research impossible to synthesize manually. We introduce NeuromechaniX, a domain-specific platform for automated extraction and meta-analysis of this literature. The core component, MUscraper, is a large language model pipeline that extracts approximately 200 structured metadata fields, organized into 17 […]
Dual Recognition Drives Site-Directed G-Quadruplex Stabilization: Exploring Oligonucleotide Design in G4 Ligand-Oligonucleotide Conjugates
G-quadruplex (G4) DNA structures are increasingly recognized for their roles in key cellular processes, including transcriptional regulation and genome stability, making them attractive therapeutic targets. Selective recognition of individual G4s remains challenging due to the high structural similarity among human G4 motifs. The G4 Ligand-conjugated Oligonucleotide strategy addresses this need by combining the G4-binding capabilities […]
Mothers face immediate, but family-size dependent, costs of sons in preindustrial Finland
The expensive son hypothesis posits that mothers incur higher fitness costs when caring for sons versus daughters in species with male-biased size dimorphism. Evidence for maternal survival costs of sons in humans is limited to shortened overall lifespans; whether having more sons reduces short-term survival during reproductive years is unknown. Here, we utilised life-history data […]
Pursuit of biomarkers of brain diseases: beyond cohort comparisons
npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02614-5 Pursuit of biomarkers of brain diseases: beyond cohort comparisons
The landscape of artificial intelligence-enabled medical devices in the EU and the US intended for intensive care units
npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02609-2 The landscape of artificial intelligence-enabled medical devices in the EU and the US intended for intensive care units
Generation of Infectious Prions Amenable to Site-specific Click Chemistry
Prion diseases are a group of fatal neurodegenerative diseases that proceed through the templated conversion of the normal PrPC protein to a self-propagating and infectious form, termed PrPSc. This conversion process is central to disease progression. However, due to difficulties in producing functional PrPSc molecules that can be selectively modified with chemical probes, many aspects […]
Predicting bilingual aphasia treatment outcomes using digital twins: a double-blind randomized controlled trial
npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 10 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02583-9 Predicting bilingual aphasia treatment outcomes using digital twins: a double-blind randomized controlled trial
Ex Vivo Expansion of Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells from Human Mobilized Peripheral Blood for Gene Therapy Applications
Ex vivo expansion of mobilized peripheral blood (mPB) hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) represents a promising approach to advance cell and gene therapy strategies yet is hampered by loss of stem cell function when applying commonly used culture protocols. We performed in-depth characterization of mPB expansion cultures by single cell RNA sequencing, which highlighted differentiation trajectories […]
Phagocytic Clearance of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid- and RNA-Containing Immune Complexes Drives Inflammatory Cytokine Production and Endothelial Dysfunction
The aberrant inflammation that characterizes severe COVID-19 is incompletely understood. Given the persistence of SARS-Cov-2 RNA and nucleocapsid protein (N) and the presence of anti-N antibody during the course of severe infection, we investigated the role of RNA-containing immune complexes (ICs) in driving inflammation. We found that ICs consisting of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, N, and anti-N […]
PERREO: An integrated pipeline for repetitive elements analysis enables the repeatome expression profiling in cancer
Transcriptome-wide profiling of repetitive elements expression reveals transposable element-derived transcripts that are deregulated in diverse biological contexts including cancer. However, most RNA-seq pipelines are optimized for annotated genes and substantially undercount repeat RNA molecules, limiting their discovery and characterization. Here we present PERREO, a comprehensive, user-friendly pipeline for analyzing repetitive RNA elements from short- and […]