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New ways to modulate cell activity remotely
3D rendering of cells on a blue backdrop

Cells are dynamic, fast-changing, complex, tiny, and often hard-to-see in environments that don’t always behave in predictable ways when exposed to external stimuli. Now, researchers led by Lukasz Bugaj of the School of Engineering and Applied Science have found new ways to modulate cell activity remotely.

(Image: iStock/Maksim Tkachenko)

New ways to modulate cell activity remotely

Penn researchers use temperature to guide cellular behavior, promising better diagnostics and targeted therapies.
Breakthroughs in gene editing and expression control with mvGPT
Tyler Daniel using a pipette in a bioengineering lab.

Sherry Gao, Tyler Daniel (pictured), and their coauthors have developed a new tool that can simultaneously and independently edit multiple genes and regulate their expression.

(Image: Bella Ciervo)

Breakthroughs in gene editing and expression control with mvGPT

Penn Engineers have created a gene editing tool that can address different genetic diseases in the same cell.

Ian Scheffler

A less clumpy, more complex universe?
Dark energy telescope with star trails

A less clumpy, more complex universe?

Researchers combined cosmological data from two major surveys of the universe’s evolutionary history and found that it may have become “messier and complicated” than expected in recent years.
How fungi make a key medicinal molecule
A petri dish of fungal matter in a lab.

Image: Bella Ciervo

How fungi make a key medicinal molecule

New research from Penn Medicine has uncovered the catalyst that creates a compound in fungi whose derivatives are applied to treatments for cancer and inflammation.

Ian Scheffler

Robert Gifford’s breakthroughs in real-time system safety
Flight control panel on a plane.

Image: iStock/Razvan Dimitriu

Robert Gifford’s breakthroughs in real-time system safety

The doctoral candidate with the Penn Research in Embedded Computing and Integrated Systems Engineering Center at Penn Engineering is revolutionizing real-time systems on modern multicore computers.

From Penn Engineering

Q&A: Dean Kumar and the ‘drone’ sightings
Picture of a drone flying lit nighttime cityscape

For more than a month, residents in New Jersey, parts of Pennsylvania, and New York have spotted unidentified flying objects, which local residents refer to as “drones,” hovering over neighborhoods, critical infrastructure and even restricted sites. To learn more about the mysterious flying objects, Penn Today spoke with local expert Dean Vijay Kumar of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

(Image: Courtesy of iStock/Naypong)

Q&A: Dean Kumar and the ‘drone’ sightings

Penn Engineering Dean Vijay Kumar discusses the mysterious flying objects, or “drones,” hovering around parts of the East Coast.
A lipid nanoparticle delivers an mRNA cure for preeclampsia
Kelsey Swingle working in a lab.

Kelsey Swingle at work in the lab of Michael Mitchell.

(Image: Kevin Monko)

A lipid nanoparticle delivers an mRNA cure for preeclampsia

Doctoral student Kelsey Swingle developed a lipid nanoparticle that delivers an mRNA therapeutic that reduces maternal blood pressure through the end of gestation and improves fetal health and blood circulation in the placenta.

Melissa Pappas