transcriptome

Four old maps were lying in different desk drawers. Each one marked genes linked to cellular aging, but the maps did not match: different names, different scales, different legends. A scientist hunting for a gene to test had to cross-check them by hand, at the risk of missing an important mark. SenSASP stitched those maps into one.

Inside a cell there is an orchestra, with every molecule playing its part. But sometimes a conductor walks in who doesn't just change the tempo, but rewrites the notes right on the music stands. That conductor turned out to be LINE-1, a mobile element capable of copying itself into the genome.

A fish that grows old in six months has become a precise map for studying vision. The African killifish lives only 4-6 months, and its retina goes through the same journey as the human one over decades: DNA damage accumulates, visual acuity declines.

In a print shop, every page of a book used to be set by hand. One mistake, and the whole print run is at risk. RNA sequencing of the brain looked much the same until recently: each sample demanded hours of manual work, and short reads, like torn scraps of pages, could not be pieced together into the full text of a gene. Now there is a production line that reads every page from start to finish.