Engineers and scientists, as well as artists, have long been inspired by the beauty and functionality of nature’s designs. Japan designed high-speed trains to cut through the air as smoothly as the kingfisher cuts through water, for example, but useful designs can also be found at a microscopic level. The study of biology in combination with materials science is called biomateriomics. An Italian research team sees great potential in the application of generative artificial intelligence to this already interdisciplinary field. They have described this potential, and the associated limitations and challenges, in an open access review article titled “Generative Artificial Intelligence for Advancing Discovery and Design in Biomateriomics,” published May 1 in Intelligent Computing, a Science Partner Journal.

Scientists have developed a highly sensitive single-cell tool that can help uncover links to complex diseases. Known as single-cell DNA-RNA-sequencing (SDR-seq), this tool created by scientists from EMBL's Genome Biology Unit can study both DNA and RNA simultaneously inside the same cell – a critical element in understanding how genetic variants impact gene expression in what’s called the non-coding region of the genome.

With SDR-seq, the scientists found that even small changes in DNA can change how genes are regulated in stem cells, and in a type of blood cancer called B-cell lymphoma.   

SDR-seq offers genome biologists scale, precision, and speed to help understand and eventually treat a broad range of diseases.