Bioengineering

Development of CRISPR as a prophylactic strategy to combat novel coronavirus and influenza

1. Timothy R. Abbott
2. Girija Dhamdhere
3. Yanxia Liu
4. Xueqiu Lin
5. Laine Goudy
6. Leiping Zeng
7. Augustine Chemparathy
8. Stephen Chmura
9. Nicholas S. Heaton
10. Robert Debs
11. Tara Pande
12. Drew Endy
13. Marie La Russa
14. David B. Lewis
15. Lei S. Qi

Reviewed by ScreenIT

Potent neutralization of 2019 novel coronavirus by recombinant ACE2-Ig

1. Changhai Lei
2. Wenyan Fu
3. Kewen Qian
4. Tian Li
5. Sheng Zhang
6. Min Ding
7. Shi Hu

Reviewed by ScreenIT

Development and biophysical characterization of a humanized FSH–blocking monoclonal antibody therapeutic formulated at an ultra-high concentration

1. Satish Rojekar
2. Anusha R Pallapati
3. Judit Gimenez-Roig
4. Funda Korkmaz
5. Farhath Sultana
6. Damini Sant
7. Clement M Haeck
8. Anne Macdonald
9. Se-Min Kim
10. Clifford J Rosen
11. Orly Barak
12. Marcia Meseck
13. John Caminis
14. Daria Lizneva
15. Tony Yuen
16. Mone Zaidi

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This development of a highly concentrated and potentially clinically valuable antibody formulation for MS-Hu6, a first-in-class FSH-blocking humanized antibody is of potential translational importance in the management of osteoporosis, obesity, and Alzheimer's disease. The meticulous methodology is thorough and compelling in its range of techniques examining the stability and physiochemical properties of the formulated MS-Hu6.

Reviewed by eLife

RaMALDI: Enabling simultaneous Raman and MALDI imaging of the same tissue section

1. Ethan Yang
2. Jeong Hee Kim
3. Caitlin M. Tressler
4. Xinyi Elaine Shen
5. Dalton R. Brown
6. Cole C. Johnson
7. Tae-Hun Hahm
8. Ishan Barman
9. Kristine Glunde

Reviewed by PREreview, Arcadia Science

Improved isolation of extracellular vesicles by removal of both free proteins and lipoproteins

1. Dmitry Ter-Ovanesyan
2. Tal Gilboa
3. Bogdan Budnik
4. Adele Nikitina
5. Sara Whiteman
6. Roey Lazarovits
7. Wendy Trieu
8. David Kalish
9. George M Church
10. David R Walt

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study will be of interest and valuable to scientists of many different subareas in the study of eukaryotic extracellular vesicles. The authors' efforts to improve the way we analyze EVs are highly appreciated and their results are convincing: they not only used appropriate and validated methodologies in line with current state-of-the-art but also presented alternatives to improve these approaches.

Reviewed by eLife

Aggregating in vitro-grown adipocytes to produce macroscale cell-cultured fat tissue with tunable lipid compositions for food applications

1. John Se Kit Yuen Jr
2. Michael K Saad
3. Ning Xiang
4. Brigid M Barrick
5. Hailey DiCindio
6. Chunmei Li
7. Sabrina W Zhang
8. Miriam Rittenberg
9. Emily T Lew
10. Kevin Lin Zhang
11. Glenn Leung
12. Jaymie A Pietropinto
13. David L Kaplan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This manuscript describes an approach to creating fat tissue in culture for food applications. Specifically, the efforts of growing cultivated meat focus mostly on growing skeletal muscle. However, the taste component of such artificial meat would be determined by fat content. There is a significant desire and motivation to cultivate fat tissues in vitro for the purpose of the replacement of animal products. This paper provides new technological approaches to expand adipocytes and aggregate them into structures that resemble fat.

Reviewed by eLife

PhysiCOOL: A generalized framework for model Calibration and Optimization Of modeLing projects

1. Inês G. Gonçalves
2. David A. Hormuth
3. Sandhya Prabhakaran
4. Caleb M. Phillips
5. José Manuel García-Aznar

Reviewed by GigaByte

Cryo-EM reveals an unprecedented binding site for NaV1.7 inhibitors enabling rational design of potent hybrid inhibitors

1. Marc Kschonsak
2. Christine C Jao
3. Christopher P Arthur
4. Alexis L Rohou
5. Philippe Bergeron
6. Daniel F Ortwine
7. Steven J McKerrall
8. David H Hackos
9. Lunbin Deng
10. Jun Chen
11. Tianbo Li
12. Peter S Dragovich
13. Matthew Volgraf
14. Matthew R Wright
15. Jian Payandeh
16. Claudio Ciferri
17. John C Tellis

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This fundamental study describes the structure-based design of novel hybrid inhibitors targeting a human sodium channel which is a pain target. Exceptionally strong evidence for key claims was produced with a structural biological pipeline for iterative structural determination of drugs complexed with an engineered sodium channel. This work is expected to be of interest to biophysicists, drug developers, neurobiologist, and pain researchers.

Reviewed by eLife

Optimization of energy and time predicts dynamic speeds for human walking

1. Rebecca Elizabeth Carlisle
2. Arthur D Kuo

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This valuable study presents a new optimal control cost framework to predict features of walking bouts, adding a cost function term proportional to the duration of the walking bout in addition to the conventional energetic term. While predicted optimal trajectories from simulations qualitatively matched walking data from human subjects, the evidence supporting these claims is incomplete, as some methodological choices raise questions about the strength of the authors' claims.

Reviewed by eLife

A general approach for stabilizing nanobodies for intracellular expression

1. John G Dingus
2. Jonathan CY Tang
3. Ryoji Amamoto
4. Grace K Wallick
5. Constance L Cepko

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Dingus et al. have developed an innovative approach for improving the intracellular stability of nanobodies. Working with a set of 75 nanobodies, the authors have identified key amino acid changes that can improve the stability of nanobodies expressed within the cell that might be generalized to other nanobodies.

Reviewed by eLife