A new test that measures the quantity and quality of inactive HIV viruses in the genes of people living with HIV may eventually give researchers a better idea of what drugs work best at curing the disease. Currently no cure exists for HIV and AIDS. But antiretroviral therapy drugs, or ARTs, effectively suppress the virus to undetectable levels, but when…
When you were very, very small, something went wrong in your cells. Not very wrong, just a little bit wrong. Before you were born, when you were a bundle of a few cells, one of those cells made a small mistake copying its DNA as it divided into two. The mistake was so minor as to be inconsequential. If it…
This publication reports the first complete sequence of a human autosome: chromosome 8. The authors leveraged the strengths of two long-read sequencing technologies to resolve five previously long-standing gaps in chromosome 8, including both telomeres, a structurally dynamic segmental duplication on the p-arm (known as β-defensin), the centromere, and a neocentromeric variable number tandem repeat on the q-arm.
Naomi Nkinsi grew up in Yaoundé, Cameroon, speaking French, wearing brightly colored clothes, and her name was pronounced “Now-me.” Her parents were from the Democratic Republic of Congo and she grew up with a rich history of African culture. But when she moved to a suburb of Atlanta when she was 6, she changed her name to “Nay-o-me” and ditched…
After 38 years with the department, Joseph M. Czerniecki, MD, MS, has retired from his regular faculty appointment in the Department of Rehabiliation Medicine and begun work in his new appointment as an active professor emeritus. Czerniecki began his career at VA Puget Sound Health Care System and as an acting assistant professor in the UW Department of Rehabilitation Medicine in 1986, following completion of…
Just like a human immune system, the forms of immunity found in bacteria that defend them against foreign invaders must be able to distinguish between ’self’ and ’nonself’, and also must be able to rapidly adapt towards new infectious threats. One particularly well-known form of bacterial anti-viral immune system is referred to as a ‘restriction-modification (‘RM’) system; such systems destroy invading viral DNA while protecting bacterial DNA from the same fate.
With COVID-19 cases on the rise again in many parts of the country — including Washington state where three counties were pushed back to Phase 2 effective Friday — there’s a growing debate between continuing to give both doses of Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines close together, or giving them months apart in order to get first shots in more shoulders…
On April 15, anyone in Washington state who is 16 or older can roll up their sleeve and get a shot of COVID-19 vaccine. And once two weeks have passed after either one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, or a second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, that person is now considered fully vaccinated. And then what?…
Targeted therapies have transformed outcomes for lung cancer patients. After reduced smoking rates, drugs that take aim at signature alterations in tumor cells are the main reason that the death rate has dropped for people diagnosed with lung cancer. Recently, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center lung cancer researcher Dr. Alice Berger received a National Institutes of Health MERIT Award that will support her efforts to extend these…
The neurons in our brains and bodies do amazing things: sense the outside world, transmit information, guide our behavior. But they don’t do it alone. Using tiny worms with well-mapped nervous systems, scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center answered a longstanding question about the role of accessory brain cells called glial cells in supporting neuron function. Their study was published…
