#1 Industry roundup!

RESEARCH and industry are closely connected. Research is partly driven by industry and the basis of industry is research. So to maintain relevance with the practical applications of research, this will be a part of a series of blogs on the industry- new companies, interesting insights, and relevance, how they work.

 

Today's spotlight will be occupied by: *drumroll please* --- Vizgen, Metagenomi, Nucleix

FIELD: Spatial transcriptomics are methods designed for assigning cell types identified by the mRNA readouts to their locations in the histological sections or to determine sub-cellular localisation of mRNA molecules ʷᶦᵏᶦᵖᵉᵈᶦᵃ (The importance being helping decipher sub-cellular and cellular architecture,  providing insights in embryology, oncology, immunology and histology. Another application is to connect gene expression to the spatial organisation of cells.) 

PRODUCT:  MERFISH- Multiplexed Error- Robust Florescence in situ Hybridisation- is an integration of "single- molecule imaging technology capable of measuring the copy number and spatial distribution of 10s- 1000s of RNA species in individual cells." Which means you can map the coordinates of mRNA and figure out how it looks and how it impacts the cell! Pretty sweet. 

FIELD: CRISPR and evolutionary genomics. 

PRODUCT: Seeks to gain insights by reconstruction of microbial genomes! CRISPR- systems changed biology and is easily one of the profound breakthroughs in genetic study. Metagenomi seeks to map out microbial evolution over billions of years, identifying new gene editing systems. AI based cloud computing makes an entry to "rapidly find and analyse natural enzyme systems." The discovery of new techniques could develop our understanding of genes, genetics and biological code, which is still a partial mystery to us. Cool! 

FIELD: Lung and Bladder cancer detection (Lung cancer being one of the leading causes of death around the world, and bladder cancer being the 5th most common cancer in the West) 

PRODUCT: Bladder EpiCheck: an objective urine test to detect the presence of tumours; and Lung EpiCheck: a blood test that detects lung tumour circulating in the blood and identifying its risk. The tech used is quite interesting- one being liquid biopsy which is analysing body fluids for tumour material going round the body, and is effective when combined with the right genome sequencing tools; the other is DNA methylation, which is a layer of epigenetic¹ information on the sequence of DNA. DNA methylation² is literally when methyl groups are added to DNA which can change the activity of a segment without changing the sequence, and can also repress certain gene transcriptions. In cancer there are changes in methylation patterns, which makes it a good marker for cancer. Combining these two techniques makes it a nice area for cancer breakthroughs. 

So hopefully that gives you a good idea as to how industry is keeping up with research.
Visit their sites to know more! The links are below:
Vizgen

Metagenomi

Nucleix

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Disclaimer: Information regarding these companies has been sourced from their websites, no copyright infringement intended. Visit their websites to know more. 

¹ For those who didn't know, epigenetics is the study of phenotype changes which involve looking at factors other than the A-T G-C stuff, which can be the effect of environment, looking relevant changes apart from the nucleotides.
² Its an interesting phenomena which I might address in a post, but I recommend you checking it out.