Machine Learning: A Titanium Heart and a basketball-playing chatbot
The first patient with an artificial heart in Australia has successfully waited for a donor organ for transplantation. For 100 days, his life was supported by a titanium analogue. Google DeepMind specialists installed the Gimini language model, which is now considered the most advanced, on a robot that thought of hitting a basketball into a basketball basket without ever seeing another robot do it. The developers consider this an important step towards creating universal robotic machines capable of performing any task. And Tomsk scientists have discovered a previously unknown gene responsible for brain pathology. Read about the most interesting news from the world of science in the Izvestia collection.
Spider venom helped create a promising painkiller
A Russian company has completed preclinical trials of an innovative painkiller based on a substance derived from the venom of the spider Thomisus onustus. It is a crab spider that is found in Europe, North Africa, as well as parts of the Middle East and Asia.
The new drug was named Purotoxin-6. The estimated market launch date is 2029, with potential coverage of more than 8 million patients with neuropathic pain, the developers said. The principle of action of the substance is the inhibition of special receptors (P2X3). They play a key role in causing pain in conditions such as osteoarthritis, cystitis, trigeminal neuralgia and migraines, as well as in chronic coughing.
— Natural poisons are unique combinatorial libraries of pharmacologically active substances targeting neuroreceptors. They resemble the artificial libraries that pharmaceutical companies use when searching for new drugs. Our peptide exhibits exceptional selectivity for P2X3 receptors and acts effectively on them," said Alexander Vasilevsky, founder of the Skolkovo resident company Analgesics of the Future, head of the laboratory at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of research.
According to the developers, currently there is only one drug that affects P2X3 receptors, which is registered in the EU, Switzerland and Japan. However, this drug has a side effect, which is expressed in a disorder of taste sensations (dysgeusia).
Scientists will increase the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines
Scientists from the Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), together with colleagues from the Research Institute of Systems Biology and Medicine (Moscow), studied the S-protein receptor-binding domains of five coronavirus strains: wuhan-hu-1 (the initial version of the virus), alpha, Delta, gamma, and omicron. When the virus enters the body, it is the S protein that first interacts with human cells, and antibodies are also produced to it when most vaccines are administered.
When viral particles infect a human cell, protective processes are triggered in it, the researchers explained to Izvestia. Inside the proteasomes, the intracellular complexes responsible for protein breakdown, the virus proteins are broken down into small fragments. These fragments are then transported to MHC I molecules (related to the major histocompatibility complex, which plays an important role in immune responses), which expose them to the cell surface. There they are recognized by T-lymphocytes, which trigger an immune response.
This process allows the body to find infected cells and destroy them, preventing the spread of infection. The study of viral proteins and the interaction of their fragments with MHC I opens up new opportunities for improving the effectiveness of vaccines, the scientists emphasized.
"Our study not only helps to better understand the mechanisms of interaction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, with the human immune system, but also provides specific guidelines for creating new—generation vaccines," the project leader, Candidate of Chemical Sciences, senior researcher at the M.M. Shemyakin Institute of Biological Sciences and Y.A. Ovchinnikova, Russian Academy of Sciences, Anna Kudryaeva.
In the future, scientists will continue to investigate socially significant viral infections, including other respiratory infections, in order to identify the universal components of the immune response and develop strategies for their prevention, the specialist added.
Russian scientists have found a pathogenic gene variant in brain malformations
Scientists at the Tomsk Scientific Research Center have discovered a previously undescribed variant of the MACF1 gene. This mutation causes a congenital abnormality of the human brain, which can lead to developmental delays and drug-resistant epilepsy.
Thanks to the work done, scientists have managed to obtain new data on various signs of a congenital malformation of the cerebral cortex called "lissencephaly." Currently, 16 genetic forms of this pathology are known, which are associated with changes in 31 genes. Six variants of the MACF1 gene lead to the development of type nine lissencephaly. Tomsk specialists described the case of a new patient with a previously unknown seventh variant.
— The pathogenic variant we discovered in the MACF1 gene leads to a dominant disease, for which damage to just one copy of the gene is sufficient. Moreover, this option has emerged de novo. For the family, this means that the cause of the disease occurred by accident and was not inherited from one of the parents. With this information, parents have a high chance of having subsequent children without an identified genetic disorder," said Elizaveta Fonova, a researcher at the Laboratory of Orphan Disease Genomics at the Tomsk Scientific Research Institute of Medical Genetics, Candidate of Medical Sciences.
Thanks to the new data, parents have a high chance of having subsequent children without an identified genetic disorder, the specialist added.
Titanium heart helped the patient to wait for a transplant in 100 days
An Australian medical patient has become the first person to leave the hospital with an artificial heart made of titanium. The 40-year-old patient lived with him for 100 days while waiting for a donor organ transplant. After that, he had a successful operation. The patient is feeling well now. The device was originally conceived as a temporary device that would allow everyone in need of a donor heart to wait their turn.
— This is a truly significant result in innovation. However, there are still many unresolved questions about the level of functionality that people with such a device can afford, as well as its ultimate cost. Further research is needed, which is very expensive and carries high risks for patients," said Sarah Aitken, a vascular surgeon at the University of Sydney.
The Australian became the sixth person to have this titanium device installed. However, this is the first time its use has lasted so long.
AI has learned how to score in basketball with an overhead shot
Google DeepMind specialists installed the Gimini language model, which is now considered the most advanced, on a robot that managed to score a ball into a miniature basketball basket with a throw from above. At the same time, the AI has never seen another robot do this before. Thus, the company has taken another step towards creating universal robots that can perform any task, the developers are confident.
—We hope to create machines that will be intuitive to operate and will be able to solve a number of physical tasks without relying on human supervision or pre—programming," said Karolina Parada, head of the robotics team at Google DeepMind.
By connecting to Gemini, any developer will be able to improve their robot so that it understands natural language and the physical world in much more detail than before, the specialist added.
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