🧬 biology

City Walk: Preliminary Insights into Embodied Immersive VR for Spatial Navigation

This paper introduces "City Walk," a VR serious game for assessing spatial navigation, and reports on a pilot study demonstrating that its Enhanced-Immersive VR configuration (combining a head-mounted display with an omnidirectional treadmill) is feasible, well-received, and yields superior route accuracy and landmark placement compared to Desktop VR, despite longer completion times.

Paolo Boffi, Davide Tonsi, Nermin Mina, Alberto Gallace, Pier Luca Lanzi2026-08-19
🧬 biology

Pilot Study to Determine the Efficacy, Feasibility, and Impact of Storage Conditions on At- Home Blood Collection Kits for Proteomic Studies

This pilot study demonstrates that at-home capillary blood collection using the Tasso+ device yields serum proteome results comparable to standard venous draws when samples are processed immediately, and that minimizing pre-processing delays to under 48 hours and maintaining refrigeration temperatures below 4°C significantly preserves protein stability for large-scale proteomic analyses.

Caroline Scranton, Xiaoxiao Sun, Dominic Rodriguez, Kristen Pogreba Brown, Erika Austhof, Caitlyn M McFadden, Victoria O (…)2026-08-19
🧬 biology

Genome-wide engineering for synthetic auxotrophy biocontainment in yeast

This study establishes a highly stringent biocontainment system for *Saccharomyces cerevisiae* by screening thousands of genomic edits to identify optimal sites for synthetic auxotrophy, ultimately combining multiple TAG codon insertions with a conditional protein stability mechanism to achieve near-wild-type fitness in permissive conditions while reducing escape frequency to 7.5×10⁻¹¹.

Yizhi Cai, Stefan Hoffmann, Tarryn Miller, David Leeming, Mark McCullough, Raymond Wan, Bryan Leland2026-08-19
🧬 biology

A transparent miniscope-integrated ultrasound platform enables concurrent focused neuromodulation and wide-field imaging in freely moving mice

This paper introduces SonoMod, an open-source, transparent miniscope-integrated platform that enables concurrent focused ultrasound neuromodulation and wide-field calcium imaging in freely moving mice by utilizing a novel optically transparent transducer and lens system.

Hyunjoo Lee, Yehhyun Jo, Ho-Jeong Kim, Keonghwan Oh, Yongbin Ko, Jihong Lim, Hong Hanh Nguyen, Subeen Kim, Sohmyung Ha (…)2026-08-18
🧬 biology

CRISPR-based epigenome and genome editing reveal novel roles for PLEC in cartilage biology, mechanobiology, and response to inflammation

This study establishes a novel CRISPR-based pipeline to functionally validate the osteoarthritis-associated SNP rs11780978, demonstrating that epigenetic modulation and subsequent knockout of the PLEC gene in human chondrocytes reveal its critical roles in cartilage development, homeostasis, and the cellular response to mechanical and inflammatory stress.

Antony K Sorial, Zainab Harissa, Nancy Steward, Yulia Kehayova, Alireza Savadipour, Neda Rashidi, Yuseon S. Kim, Jack B. (…)2026-08-18
🧬 biology

Maternal Rbm24a orchestrates temporal organization and maintains homeostasis of germ granules to safeguard germ cell fate

This study reveals that maternal Rbm24a in zebrafish orchestrates the temporal organization and homeostasis of germ granules by anchoring mRNAs in precursors and regulating their subsequent release for translation, thereby preventing germ cell transdifferentiation and ensuring fertility.

Ming Shao, Yizhuang Zhang, Ziping Fu, Jiayi Zhou, Panfeng Li, Ang Li, YE HONG, De-Li Shi, Qianqian Gong2026-08-18
🧬 biology

Spatial transcriptomic profiling of vascular compartments of chronic antibody-mediated rejection in kidney allografts identified compartment-specific signatures: a pilot study

This pilot study utilized spatial transcriptomics to identify compartment-specific molecular signatures in chronic antibody-mediated kidney rejection, revealing that mononuclear phagocytes drive antigen presentation across glomerular and vascular microenvironments.

Sung-Eun Choi, Je-Gun Joung, Sohyun Hwang, Tae Heon Kim, Minseob Eom, Minsun Jung2026-08-18