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Pandemics involve the high transmission of a disease that impacts global and local health and economic patterns. Epidemiological models help propose pandemic control strategies based on non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing, curfews, and lockdowns, reducing the economic impact of these restrictions. In this research, we utilized an epidemiological Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Recovered, Deceased (SEIRD) model – a compartmental model for virtually simulating a pandemic day by day.

Enzyme chemotaxis is a thermodynamic phenomenon in which enzymes move along a substrate concentration gradient towards regions with higher substrate concentrations and can be used to steer nanovehicles towards targets along natural substrate concentrations. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a gradient of tau protein forms in the bloodstream. Tau protein is a substrate of the enzyme CDK5, which catalyzes the phosphorylation of tau protein and can travel using chemotaxis along tau protein gradients to increasing concentrations of tau and amyloid-beta proteins. The authors hypothesized that CDK5 would be able to overcome these barriers of Brownian motion and developed a quantitative model using Michaelis-Menten kinetics to define the necessary parameters to confirm and characterize CDK5’s chemotactic behavior to establish its utility in drug delivery and other applications.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease caused by mutations in the CFTR gene. In this paper, the authors attempt to identify variations in stretches of up to 8 nucleotides in the protein-coding portions of the CFTR gene that are associated with disease development. This would allow screening of newborns or even fetuses in utero to determine the likelihood they develop cystic fibrosis.

The diagnosis of malaria remains one of the major hurdles to eradicating the disease, especially among poorer populations. Here, the authors use machine learning to improve the accuracy of deep learning algorithms that automate the diagnosis of malaria using images of blood smears from patients, which could make diagnosis easier and faster for many.

Alcohol use disorder is a chronic, relapsing disease that affects millions of Americans every day. There are limited treatment options for alcohol dependence and alcohol withdrawal symptoms, including depression and anxiety. Previous studies have shown that probiotics can decrease depression in rodents during maternal separation and anxiety in humans. Therefore, we hypothesized that the ethanol-withdrawn planaria who consumed probiotics would have decreased withdrawal symptoms as measured by increased motility compared to the ethanol-withdrawn planaria that were not fed probiotics. The ethanol-withdrawn planaria had a statistically significant decrease in motility compared to the control group, while the planaria that consumed probiotics had no statistically significant change in motility compared to the control group.

Cellular senescence plays a key role in aging cells and is attributed to a number of disease and pathology. These authors find that genetic editing of both RPS6KB1 and PPARGC1A revitalizes a human skin fibroblast cell line.

The degeneration of nerve cells in the brain can lead to pathologies such as Parkinson’s disease. It has been suggested that neurons in humans may regenerate. In this study, the effect of different doses of caffeine on regeneration was explored in the planeria model. Caffeine has been shown to enhance dopamine production, and dopamine is found in high concentrations in regenerating planeria tissues. Higher doses of caffeine accelerated planeria regeneration following decapitation, indicating a potential role for caffeine as a treatment to stimulate regeneration.

Kalirin is a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for the GTPase RAC1, linked to schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s Disease. It plays a crucial role in synaptic plasticity by regulating dendritic spine formation and actin cytoskeleton remodeling, which are essential for creating new synapses. Authors developed two novel compounds targeting kalirin, confirming that predictive modeling can indicate biological activity.

The authors looked at the effects of commonly used anesthetics in rodents on brain activity (specifically quasi-periodic patterns). Understanding effects on brain activity is important for researchers to understand when choosing rodent models for disease.

According to the World Health Organization, cancer is a leading cause of death globally. The disease’s prevalence is rapidly increasing in association with factors including the increased use of pesticides and herbicides, such as glyphosate, which is one of the most widely used herbicide ingredients. Natural antioxidants and phytochemicals are being tested as anti-cancer agents due to their antiproliferative, antioxidative, and pro-apoptotic properties. Thus, we aimed to investigate the potential role of S. amara extract as a therapeutic agent against glyphosate-induced toxicity and tumor-like morphologies in regenerating and homeostatic planaria (Dugesia dorotocephala).