Microbial communities are thought to contain keystone species, which can disproportionately affect the stability of the communities, even if only present in low abundances. Identifying these keystone species can be challenging, especially in the human gut, since it is not feasible to isolate them through systematic elimination. Researchers have designed a new data-driven keystone species identification (DKI) framework that uses machine learning to resolve this difficulty.
Read more …Study proposes new framework to identify keystone microbial species
Researchers have discovered a 'genomic tug of war' in animal studies that could influence how well certain patients -- or certain cancers -- respond to decitabine, a drug used to treat myelodysplastic syndromes that is plagued by drug resistance issues. For the first time, researchers show that decitabine causes coding and non-coding regions of DNA to engage in a tug of war for a gene activator, called H2A.Z. Typically, deticabine draws this gene activator away from coding DNA, causing gene expression to grind to a halt and cells to die. However, many types of cancer have very high levels of H2A.Z, which may help them overcome this decitabine-induced tug of war, allowing the cancer to grow.
Read more …Genomic tug of war could boost cancer therapy