genomics – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Fri, 21 Feb 2025 21:18:44 -0500 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.2 The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-poetry-fan-who-taught-an-llm-to-read-and-write-dna-20250205/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-poetry-fan-who-taught-an-llm-to-read-and-write-dna-20250205/#respond Wed, 05 Feb 2025 15:58:11 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=146267 The post The Poetry Fan Who Taught an LLM to Read and Write DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> DNA is often compared to a written language. The metaphor leaps out: Like letters of the alphabet, molecules (the nucleotide bases A, T, C and G, for adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) are arranged into sequences — words, paragraphs, chapters, perhaps — in every organism, from bacteria to humans. Like a language, they encode information. But humans can’t easily read or interpret these…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-poetry-fan-who-taught-an-llm-to-read-and-write-dna-20250205/feed/ 0 He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It https://www.quantamagazine.org/hes-gleaning-the-design-rules-of-life-to-re-create-it-20241104/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/hes-gleaning-the-design-rules-of-life-to-re-create-it-20241104/#respond Mon, 04 Nov 2024 15:19:46 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=143501 The post He’s Gleaning the Design Rules of Life to Re-Create It first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Say you live in an old house, and you want to make a slew of renovations; at some point, the most efficient way forward is to build a new house altogether. A similar clean-slate approach is the guiding principle behind an international effort to create the world’s first synthetic eukaryotic genome — the set of molecular instructions that govern complex life on Earth, including humans. At present…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/hes-gleaning-the-design-rules-of-life-to-re-create-it-20241104/feed/ 0 The Viral Paleontologist Who Unearths Pathogens’ Deep Histories https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-viral-paleontologist-who-unearths-pathogens-deep-histories-20240816/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-viral-paleontologist-who-unearths-pathogens-deep-histories-20240816/#respond Fri, 16 Aug 2024 13:06:13 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=139856 The post The Viral Paleontologist Who Unearths Pathogens’ Deep Histories first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Like many children of his generation, raised on a steady diet of Jurassic Park and its sequels, Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer wanted to be a paleontologist when he grew up. Unlike most, he came close. Rather than digging for fossilized bones in the dirt, however, he paws through objects in natural history museums and medical collections for old biological specimens from which he can extract the…

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-viral-paleontologist-who-unearths-pathogens-deep-histories-20240816/feed/ 0 The Quest for Simple Rules to Build a Microbial Community https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-quest-for-simple-rules-to-build-a-microbial-community-20240117/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-quest-for-simple-rules-to-build-a-microbial-community-20240117/#respond Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:26:05 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=134092 The post The Quest for Simple Rules to Build a Microbial Community first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Bacteria don’t throw dinner parties or tell jokes, but they are social in their own way. When the presence of food gives them an opportunity to grow, reproduce and evolve, they will rapidly, even eagerly, form communities. Like a port city springing up along a waterway, a diverse community of bacteria and other microbes will recognize a good situation for growth and build itself up.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-quest-for-simple-rules-to-build-a-microbial-community-20240117/feed/ 0 To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-defend-the-genome-these-cells-destroy-their-own-dna-20230926/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-defend-the-genome-these-cells-destroy-their-own-dna-20230926/#respond Tue, 26 Sep 2023 14:00:45 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=130623 The post To Defend the Genome, These Cells Destroy Their Own DNA first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Marie Delattre was studying the sexual reproduction practices of microscopic worms when she noticed something unexpected. Under the microscope, an embryo of the nematode Mesorhabditis belari was dividing as it should, progressing from one cell to two to four. But inside a few cells she saw an inexplicable spray of DNA fragments floating around where they didn’t belong. “There was DNA everywhere…

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