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At least 559 records · Page 31

CRISPR-COPIES: an in silico platform for discovery of neutral integration sites for CRISPR/Cas-facilitated gene integration

Abstract The CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a powerful tool for genome editing in metabolic engineering and human gene therapy. However, locating the optimal site on the chromosome to integrate heterologous genes using the CRISPR/Cas system remains an open question. Selecting a suitable site for gene integration involves considering multiple complex criteria, including factors related to CRISPR/Cas-mediated integration, genetic stability, and gene expression. Consequently, identifying such sites on specific or different chromosomal locations typically requires extensive characterization efforts. To address these challenges, we have developed CRISPR-COPIES, a COmputational Pipeline for the Identification of CRISPR/Cas-facilitated intEgration Sites. This tool leverages ScaNN, a state-of-the-art model on the embedding-based nearest neighbor search for fast and accurate off-target search, and can identify genome-wide intergenic sites for most bacterial and fungal genomes within minutes. As a proof of concept, we utilized CRISPR-COPIES to characterize neutral integration sites in three diverse species: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Cupriavidus necator, and HEK293T cells. In addition, we developed a user-friendly web interface for CRISPR-COPIES (https://biofoundry.web.illinois.edu/copies/). We anticipate that CRISPR-COPIES will serve as a valuable tool for targeted DNA integration and aid in the characterization of synthetic biology toolkits, enable rapid strain construction to produce valuable biochemicals, and support human gene and cell therapy applications.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

STRIDES: automated uniform models for 30 quadruply imaged quasars

ABSTRACT Gravitational time delays provide a powerful one-step measurement of H0, independent of all other probes. One key ingredient in time-delay cosmography are high-accuracy lens models. Those are currently expensive to obtain, both, in terms of computing and investigator time (105–106 CPU hours and ∼0.5–1 yr, respectively). Major improvements in modelling speed are therefore necessary to exploit the large number of lenses that are forecast to be discovered over the current decade. In order to bypass this roadblock, we develop an automated modelling pipeline and apply it to a sample of 31 lens systems, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope in multiple bands. Our automated pipeline can derive models for 30/31 lenses with few hours of human time and <100 CPU hours of computing time for a typical system. For each lens, we provide measurements of key parameters and predictions of magnification as well as time delays for the multiple images. We characterize the cosmography-readiness of our models using the stability of differences in the Fermat potential (proportional to time delay) with respect to modelling choices. We find that for 10/30 lenses, our models are cosmography or nearly cosmography grade (<3 per cent and 3–5 per cent variations). For 6/30 lenses, the models are close to cosmography grade (5–10 per cent). These results utilize informative priors and will need to be confirmed by further analysis. However, they are also likely to improve by extending the pipeline modelling sequence and options. In conclusion, we show that uniform cosmography grade modelling of large strong lens samples is within reach.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Two human antibodies to a meningococcal serogroup B vaccine antigen enhance binding of complement Factor H by stabilizing the Factor H binding site

Microbial pathogens bind host complement regulatory proteins to evade the immune system. The bacterial pathogen Neisseria meningitidis, or meningococcus, binds several complement regulators, including human Factor H (FH). FH binding protein (FHbp) is a component of two licensed meningococcal vaccines and in mice FHbp elicits antibodies that inhibit binding of FH to FHbp, which defeat the bacterial evasion mechanism. However, humans vaccinated with FHbp develop antibodies that enhance binding of FH to the bacteria, which could limit the effectiveness of the vaccines. In the present study, we show that two vaccine-elicited antibody fragments (Fabs) isolated from different human subjects increase binding of complement FH to meningococcal FHbp by ELISA. The two Fabs have different effects on the kinetics of FH binding to immobilized FHbp as measured by surface plasmon resonance. The 1.7- and 2.0-Å resolution X-ray crystal structures of the Fabs in complexes with FHbp illustrate that the two Fabs bind to similar epitopes on the amino-terminal domain of FHbp, adjacent to the FH binding site. Superposition models of ternary complexes of each Fab with FHbp and FH show that there is likely minimal contact between the Fabs and FH. Collectively, the structures reveal that the Fabs enhance binding of FH to FHbp by altering the conformations and mobilities of two loops adjacent to the FH binding site of FHbp. In addition, the 1.5 Å-resolution structure of one of the isolated Fabs defines the structural rearrangements associated with binding to FHbp. The FH-enhancing human Fabs, which are mirrored in the human polyclonal antibody responses, have important implications for tuning the effectiveness of FHbp-based vaccines.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Analysis of ionizing radiation induced DNA damage response in human adult stem cells and differentiated neurons

Findings of neurodegenerative features associated with human radiosensitive syndromes such as Ataxia telangiectasia suggest that DNA repair efficiency is crucial for maintaining the functional integrity of central nervous system. To gain a better understanding of ionizing radiation (IR) induced DNA damage response in undifferentiated and differentiated neural cell types and to evaluate the role of ATM in DNA double strand break (DSB) repair, an in vitro human neural cell differentiation model system was utilized in this study. As compared to adult stem cells, differentiated neurons displayed an attenuated DSB repair response (as judged by the persistence of 53BP1 foci) after IR exposure and the attenuation was even more pronounced in stem cells and neurons after suppression of ATM (Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated) gene product suggesting the importance of ATM for an optimal DSB repair efficiency in human neural cell types. In corroboration with an attenuated DNA damage response, a sharp decline in the expression levels of several DSB repair genes was observed in neurons. Furthermore, our results suggest that cellular differentiation modulates the expression of several genes thereby compromising the DSB repair fidelity in post mitotic neurons. Further studies are required to verify whether or not ATM mediated exacerbation of DNA repair deficiency in differentiated neurons leads to neurodegeneration.

53 binding protein 1↗

An agent-based approach to study the diffusion rate and the effect of policies on joint placement of photovoltaic panels and green roof under climate change uncertainty

As two of the highest trending green technologies, photovoltaic panels and green roofs are proven to be effective practices for energy generation and energy saving. The achievable impact from the widespread installation of such technologies is, however, not clearly established. This is mainly because the degree of this impact highly depends on the inherently uncertain environmental and climate factors, as well as the unknown adoption rates of these technologies, which in turn depend on different characteristics of decision makers and interactions among them. To that end, this study aims to investigate the diffusion rate of these green technologies under uncertainties caused by climate change, characteristics of adopters, and their interactions. An integrated framework is developed to capture the interplay between financial and attitudinal aspects, as well as the uncertainties due to both the stochastic nature of system parameters and the interactions among agents involving human beings. Specifically, this framework consists of a integer programming model to optimize the green roof and/or photovoltaic panel installation settings for a given building under climate change uncertainty, and an agent-based model to factor in the role of human behavior and interactions. A case study for the city of Knoxville, TN, is presented to evaluate the effects of different policies on the diffusion rate of the green technologies of interest. The results show that the affordability of green technologies and public awareness are the key drivers of the adoption of these technologies, which highlight the important role of the decision makers in impacting the diffusion rate.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Divergent viral phosphodiesterases for immune signaling evasion

Cyclic dinucleotides (CDNs) and other short oligonucleotides play fundamental roles in immune system activation in organisms ranging from bacteria to humans. In response, viruses use phosphodiesterase (PDE)-mediated oligonucleotide cleavage for immune evasion, a strategy whose diversity has not yet been explored. Here, we use a canonical 2H PDE (2H PDE) structure-based search of prokaryotic and eukaryotic viral sequences to identify an exceptional diversity of 2H PDEs across the virome, including enzymes not detectable with sequence search methods alone. Despite active site conservation, biochemical experiments reveal remarkable substrate specificity of these PDEs that corresponds to variations in the core 2H fold. This nuanced specificity allows 2H PDEs to selectively degrade oligonucleotide messengers to avoid interfering with host nucleotide signaling. Together, these findings nominate viral 2H PDEs as key regulators of CDN signaling across the tree of life.

CBASS↗

Analysis of water–energy nexus and trends in support of the sustainable development goals: A study using longitudinal water–energy use data

Water and energy are two critical natural resources necessary for human activities and socioeconomic development. Water and energy systems are highly interdependent, and water efficiency and energy efficiency are two related indicators for the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. It is critical to improve energy–water use efficiency to sustain socioeconomic development while reducing adverse effects on natural resources, society and the environment. By using longitudinal energy–water use data for China over the past 21 years, this paper develops a temporo-spatial study to address key issues and introduce analytical approaches needed to understand the water–energy nexus and support integrated resource planning and management to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Decomposition analysis indicates that the production effect was the dominating factor contributing the increase in the country's energy–water use, while energy–water efficiency is the major factor slowing the growth of the country's energy–water use. Changes and trends analyses show that the country's energy intensity, water intensity, and water/energy ratio significantly decreased from 1999 to 2019, but the rate of decline has slowed. The disparities of the country's provincial energy intensities, water intensities, and water/energy ratios significantly decreased with economic growth. Results suggest that improving energy–water efficiency is critical for the country to curb increasing energy and water use and achieve resource and environmental protection targets with rapid economic development. Furthermore, the disparities between regional energy-water efficiencies can be reduced along with economic growth, while an overheated economy can widen the disparities and result in unsustainable and inefficient utilization of resources. Government coordination, targets and policy as part of the efficiency governance system are critical for continuous energy–water efficiency improvement and directly influence the implementation and effectiveness of energy–water efficiency policy.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

BioTransformer 3.0 – A Web Server for Accurately Predicting Metabolic Transformation Products

BioTransformer 3.0 is a freely available web server that supports accurate, rapid and comprehensive in silico metabolism prediction. It combines machine learning approaches with a rule-based system to predict small-molecule metabolism in human tissues, the human gut as well as the external environment (soil and water microbiota). Simply stated, BioTransformer takes a molecular structure as input (SMILES or SDF) and outputs an interactively viewable/sortable table of the predicted metabolites or transformation products (SMILES, PNG images) along with the enzymes that are predicted to be responsible for those reactions and richly annotated downloadable files (CSV and JSON). The entire process typically takes a few seconds. Previous versions of BioTransformer focused exclusively on predicting the metabolism of xenobiotics (such as plant natural products, drugs, cosmetics and other synthetic compounds) using a limited number of pre-defined steps and somewhat limited rule-based methods. BioTransformer 3.0, uses much more sophisticated methods and incorporates new databases, new constraints and new prediction modules to not only more accurately predict the metabolic transformation products of exogenous xenobiotics but also the transformation products of endogenous metabolites, such as amino acids, peptides, carbohydrates, organic acids, and lipids. BioTransformer 3.0 can also support customized sequential combinations of these transformations along with multiple iterations to simulate multi-step human and/or environmental biotransformation events. Performance tests indicate that BioTransformer 3.0 is 40-50% more accurate, much less prone to combinatorial “explosions” and far more comprehensive in terms of metabolite coverage/capabilities than previous versions of BioTransformer.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Generalized analytical and numerical modeling of optical second harmonic generation in anisotropic crystals and complex heterostructures using #SHAARP package

Optical second harmonic generation (SHG) is a nonlinear optical effect widely used for nonlinear optical microscopy and laser frequency conversion. The closed-form analytical solution of the nonlinear optical responses is essential for evaluating the optical responses of new materials whose optical properties are unknown a priori. Many approximations have therefore been employed in the existing analytical approaches, such as slowly varying approximation, weak reflection of the nonlinear polarization, transparent medium, high crystallographic symmetry, Kleinman symmetry, easy crystal orientation along a high-symmetry direction, phase matching conditions and negligible interference among nonlinear waves, which may lead to large errors in the reported material properties. To avoid these approximations, here we have developed an open-source package named Second Harmonic Analysis of Anisotropic Rotational Polarimetry (#SHAARP) for single interface (si) and in multilayers (ml) for homogeneous crystals. The reliability and accuracy are established by experimentally benchmarking with both the SHG polarimetry and Maker fringes predicted from the package using standard materials. SHAARP.si and SHAARP.ml are available through GitHub https://github.com/Rui-Zu/SHAARP and https://github.com/bzw133/SHAARP.ml, respectively.

complex systems↗

2021 GeoAI Workshop Report: The Trillion Pixel Challenge

The convergence of geospatial big data with advancements from artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and high-performance computing continues to revolutionize mapping and analysis of Earth's surface in unprecedented detail. Rapid innovations in sensing technologies will soon collect geospatial data in even higher resolution and throughput. These developments offer the potential for breakthroughs in science, policy, and national security via end-to-end GeoAI systems that can provide fresh insights into how humans occupy and alter their environment over time. At the 2021 GeoAI Trillion Pixel workshop, international subject matter experts from government, academia, industry, and nonprofit organizations gathered virtually to discuss the Trillion Pixel GeoAI Challenge. The event focused on six major themes currently influencing scientific innovation and breakthroughs. Particular focus was paid to societal impacts. As an additional takeaway message, the gathering identified remaining application gaps and challenges that are in need of stronger community partnerships and collaborations.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Safety in Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities for the U.S. National Labs and Beyond

This report discusses the importance of the critical and underexplored topic of artificial intelligence (AI) safety, as highlighted during the “Strategy Alignment on AI Safety” workshop convened at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in April 2024. Through a summary of keynote talks, panel discussions, and breakout sessions, world-leading AI safety experts from academic, industry, national labs, and government agencies clearly agree on the need for and importance of large-scale investments for research and capabilities in AI safety. With the field innovating at unprecedented rates, there is increasing urgency to develop novel evaluation methodologies that allow full considerations of risks/threats of AI technologies in different domains. Quantitative metrics and effective methodologies that can evaluate and audit the “safeness” of how a given AI technology is trained, deployed, or regulated are, at best, nascent for certain scenarios or, more commonly, nonexistent. This maturation gap presents the possibility of serious threats to national security, and further inaction may have serious consequences. Additionally, the gap between the public’s and research community’s perceptions of AI risks/rewards is significant. While numerous voices from the AI community have expressed concern that the risks could be so high that future AI systems could inflict extinction-level damage to humanity if deployed incorrectly, the public largely is aware only of risk in low-impact scenarios. This discrepancy highlights the crucial need for researchers to articulate to governmental bodies what, why, and when various AI risks matter as part of motivating funding requests. Thus, the call to action for this community is to pursue AI safety as a “Big Science” project on a scale comparable to the Manhattan Project. High risks and high payoffs are on the table, but safe AI is a fast-moving target, and large-scale investments are needed to guide development of this technology in a responsible way. We highlight the need for a multilayered solution combining the development of new methods and algorithmic approaches to mitigate threats with an active participation of the government(s) in setting high industry standards and regulations based on state-of-the-art technology. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories have served as leading institutions for scientific innovation in the U.S. for more than 70 years. Drawing on their expertise in the AI community and their history of safeguarding critical and sensitive information, and as we look to the future, national labs are the best choice for evaluating and safeguarding AI technologies.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Water balance model (WBM) v.1.0.0: a scalable gridded global hydrologic model with water-tracking functionality

Abstract. This paper describes the University of New Hampshire Water Balance Model, WBM, a process-based gridded global hydrologic model that simulates the land surface components of the global water cycle and includes water extraction for use in agriculture and domestic sectors. The WBM was first published in 1989; here, we describe the first fully open-source WBM version (v.1.0.0). Earlier descriptions of WBM methods provide the foundation for the most recent model version that is detailed here. We present an overview of the model functionality, utility, and evaluation of simulated global river discharge and irrigation water use. This new version adds a novel suite of water source tracking modules that enable the analysis of flow-path histories on water supply. A key feature of WBM v.1.0.0 is the ability to identify the partitioning of sources for each stock or flux within the model. Three different categories of tracking are available: (1) primary inputs of water to the surface of the terrestrial hydrologic cycle (liquid precipitation, snowmelt, glacier melt, and unsustainable groundwater); (2) water that has been extracted for human use and returned to the terrestrial hydrologic system; and (3) runoff originating from user-defined spatial land units. Such component tracking provides a more fully transparent model in that users can identify the underlying mechanisms generating the simulated behavior. We find that WBM v.1.0.0 simulates global river discharge and irrigation water withdrawals well, even with default parameter settings, and for the first time, we are able to show how the simulation arrives at these fluxes by using the novel tracking functions.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Transforming Energy Through Computational Excellence: Advanced Scientific Visualization Reveals Energy Insights

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's world-class researchers and analysts, along with the Insight Center (our state-of-the-art scientific visualization facility) make data immersion a reality, allowing users to step into and explore their data. With the rise of large, diverse, and distributed data sets, scientific visualization is now critical to the process of scientific discovery and to managing and analyzing data and extracting insights. NREL provides visualization capabilities and facilities that are supported by state-of-the-art equipment, leading-edge techniques, and expert staff.

data science↗

BioSecure Digital Twin: Manufacturing Innovation and Cybersecurity Resilience

U.S. national security, prosperity, economy, and well-being require secure, flexible, and resilient Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing. The COVID-19 pandemic reaffirmed that the biomedical production value-chain is vulnerable to disruption and has been under attack from sophisticated nation-state adversaries. Current cyber defenses are inadequate, and the integrity of critical production systems and processes are inherently vulnerable to cyber-attacks, human error, and supply chain disruptions. The following chapter explores how a BioSecure Digital Twin will improve U.S. manufacturing resilience and preparedness to respond to these hazards by significantly improving monitoring, integrity, security, and agility of our manufacturing infrastructure and systems. The BioSecure Digital Twin combines a scalable manufacturing framework with a robust platform for monitoring and control to increase U.S. biopharma manufacturing resilience. Then, the chapter discusses some of the inherent vulnerabilities and challenges at the nexus of health and advanced manufacturing. Next, the chapter highlights that as the Pandemic evolves, we need agility and resilience to overcome significant obstacles. This section highlights an innovative application of Cyber Informed Engineering to developing and deploying a BioSecure Digital Twin to improve the resilience and security of the biopharma industrial supply chain and production processes. Finally, the chapter concludes with a process framework to complement the Digital Twin platform, called the Biopharma (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) OODA Loop Framework (BOLF), a four-step approach to decision-making outputs from the Digital Twin. The BOLF will help end users leverage twin technology by distilling the available information, focusing the data on context, and rapidly making the best decision while remaining cognizant of changes that can be made as more data becomes available.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Machine Learning for Optimized Polarization at Jefferson Lab

Polarized cryo-targets and polarized photon beams are widely used in experiments at Jefferson Lab. Traditional methods for maintaining the optimal polarization involve manual adjustments throughout data taking by human shift takers. This may introduce some level of inconsistency simply due to the wide variety of experience and expertise of the shift takers themselves. Implementing machine learning-based control systems can improve the stability of the polarization without relying on human intervention. The cryo-target polarization is influenced by temperature, microwave energy, the distribution of paramagnetic radicals, as well as operational conditions including the radiation dose. Diamond radiators are used to generate linearly polarized photons from a primary electron beam. The energy spectrum of these photons can drift over time due to changes in the primary electron beam conditions and diamond degradation. As a first step towards automating the continuous optimization and control processes, uncertainty aware surrogate models have been developed to predict the polarization based on historical data. This talk will provide an overview of the use cases and models developed, highlighting the collaboration between data scientists and physicists at Jefferson Lab.

Jeske, Torri [Thomas Jefferson National Accelerato↗

Modeling of hepatitis B virus infection spread in primary human hepatocytes

ABSTRACT Chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection poses a significant global health threat, causing severe liver diseases including cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. We characterized HBV DNA kinetics in primary human hepatocytes (PHHs) over 32 days post-inoculation (p.i.) and modified ourin-vivoagent-based modeling (ABM) to gain insights into the HBV lifecycle and spreadin vitro. Parallel PHH cultures were mock-treated or treated with HBV entry inhibitor Myr-preS1 (6.25 µg/mL) was initiated 24 h p.i. In untreated PHH, three viral DNA kinetic patterns were identified: (i) an initial decline, followed by (ii) rapid amplification and (iii) slower amplification/accumulation. In the presence of Myr-preS1, viral DNA and infected cell numbers in phase 3 were effectively blocked, with minimal to no increase. This suggests that phase 2 represents viral amplification in initially infected cells, while phase 3 corresponds to viral spread to naïve cells. The ABM reproduced well the HBV kinetic patterns observed and predicted that the viral eclipse phase lasts between 18 and 38 h. After the eclipse phase, the viral production rate increased over time, starting with a slow production cycle of 1 virion per day, which gradually accelerated to 1 virion per hour after 3 days. Approximately 4 days later, virion production reached a steady state production rate of 4 virions/h. The estimated median efficacy of Myr-preS1 in blocking HBV spread was 91% (range: 90–92%). The HBV kinetics and the predicted estimates of the HBV eclipse phase duration and HBV production cycles in PHH are similar to those predicted in uPA/SCID mice with human livers. IMPORTANCE While primary human hepatocytes (PHHs) are the most physiologically relevant culture system for studying HBV infectionin vitro, a comprehensive understanding of HBV infection kinetics and spread in PHH is lacking. In this study, we characterize HBV viral kinetics and modify ourin vivoagent-based modeling (ABM) to provide quantitative insights into the HBV production cycle and viral spread in PHH. The ABM provides an estimate of the HBV eclipse phase duration, HBV production cycles, and Myr-preS1 efficacy in blocking HBV spread in PHH. The results resemble those predicted in uPA/SCID mice with human livers, demonstrating that estimated HBV infection kinetic parameters in PHHin vitromirror those observed in thein vivoHBV infection chimeric mouse model.

Virology↗

A Prospective Design Method for Nuclear Power: The Evaluation, Requirements, and Goals Outline for Nuclear (ERGON) Method

Human factors researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have worked on projects spanning control room modernization, operator support systems, visualization design, and novel system creation. These projects demonstrated the need for an explicit design method for nuclear power. Human factors teams found a high standard in the Human Factors Engineering Program Review Model (NUREG-0711) and needed a design methodology which could be successful in gaining approval. Previous work has been synthesized as the Evaluation, Requirements, and Goals Outline for Nuclear (ERGON) method here. Design tasks are broken into four phases: Context and Orientation, Human Factors Review, Prototyping and Evaluation, Iteration and Improvement. ERGON is intended as a flexible and direct design method for many applications in nuclear power. ERGON has been vetted through collaborative research and development with nuclear utilities and as such, the ERGON method can assist utilities to achieve approval from a NUREG-0711 summative evaluation for HSI implementations.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Sentinel Devices LLC (CRADA Final Report)

Industrial equipment is a critical component of virtually all at-scale manufacturing and infrastructure. Broadly speaking, modern equipment is predominantly controlled using hardened digital controllers – computers designed to be able to operate continuously for sometimes extremely long periods of time, with little to no maintenance. Due to the nature of how these digital controllers have evolved, they are solely optimized to execute a single task, and do not have the capabilities or resources to monitor or analyze their internal state beyond simple execution of their program. As a result, for many “common sense” situations where individual data points can be easily determined to be out-of-normal, the controllers are unable to identify these incorrect operational modes unless a human has explicitly programmed in detection of this degradation. This project seeks to develop an AI/ML system which can identify incorrect or anomalous trends in industrial data streams, of exactly the kind that would be produced and seen by these digital controllers, with a minimal amount of computing resources. The benefits produced by developing this system would ultimately be self-monitoring and self-reporting infrastructure, capable of identifying and alerting humans to issues as soon as they happen, potentially long before they have the chance to impact the industrial process.

42 ENGINEERING↗