Biology Weekly Brief: June 3–9, 2025
From groundbreaking advancements in gene-editing therapies and cancer research to critical insights into climate change’s impact on marine ecosystems and the transformative role of AI, here’s the most relevant biology news from the past week:
2025-06-09 – Weekly Biology News & Trends: What You Missed!
This section highlights five pivotal U.S.-based news items published this week, offering a snapshot of the dynamic landscape of biological research and its real-world implications.
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Epigenome Editing: A New Frontier in Medicine
A new era of epigenetic medicines is emerging, as highlighted in a June 3, 2025, article by The Scientist. Researchers are now leveraging epigenome editing to fine-tune gene expression without altering the fundamental DNA code, offering a novel approach to treating various diseases. This technology builds on decades of epigenetic research, which has revealed a surprising finding from Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS): approximately 90% of genetic risk or protection for common diseases like sickle cell disease, coronary artery disease, and inflammatory bowel disease lies not within the genes themselves, but in regulatory DNA regions that control gene activation. Companies like UC Berkeley’s Tune Therapeutics are actively exploring epi-editing to treat viral infections, manage chronic pain, improve immune function, and lower cardiac disease risk, with delivery via harmless viruses or lipid nanoparticles.
Published: June 3, 2025
A New Era of Epigenetic Medicines | The Scientist -
Coral Reefs’ Slow Migration: A Call for Urgent Climate Action
A groundbreaking study published on June 6, 2025, by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) reveals a critical challenge for coral reefs worldwide. Utilizing the University of Hawaiʻi’s Koa supercomputer and sophisticated simulation models, the study found that while coral reefs are indeed migrating poleward in response to warming oceans, this pace is far too slow to outrun the rapid rate of climate change. The research, published in Science Advances, predicts significant coral losses in the next 50 years, as it takes centuries for tropical-type coral reefs to expand significantly beyond their current distribution. However, the study offers a hopeful alternative: adhering to ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions, like those outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement, could dramatically limit coral loss from an anticipated 70% to around 30%.
Published: June 6, 2025
https://www.himb.hawaii.edu/2025/06/06/uh-supercomputer-study-shows-coral-cant-flee-warming-but-urgent-action-can-still-protect-them/ -
New Insights into a Protein Pivotal for B-Cell Cancers
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have made a significant discovery regarding midnolin, a protein crucial for the survival of malignant cells in certain leukemias, lymphomas, and multiple myelomas. Published on June 9, 2025, their study utilized cutting-edge cryo-electron microscopy to reveal midnolin’s unique structure and its role in ferrying proteins to proteasomes for degradation, a process vital for cancer cell survival. Unlike most proteins destined for proteasomal degradation, midnolin achieves this without the typical ubiquitin tag, presenting a novel mechanism. This understanding, spearheaded by Dr. Nagesh Peddada and Nobel laureate Dr. Bruce Beutler, provides a blueprint for developing more targeted cancer therapies that could avoid the severe side effects associated with current proteasome inhibitors.
Published: June 9, 2025
Protein pivotal for B-cell cancers gets a closer look: Newsroom - UT Southwestern, Dallas, Texas -
AI Unlocks Key Gene Sets for Complex Disease Understanding
Northwestern University biophysicists have developed a new generative AI tool, TWAVE, that promises to revolutionize our understanding of complex diseases like diabetes, cancer, and asthma. As reported on June 9, 2025, TWAVE identifies combinations of genes that collectively cause these illnesses, moving beyond the limitations of single-gene analysis. Current methods often fall short because they lack the statistical power to detect the collective effects of gene groups. By amplifying limited gene expression data, this AI model can resolve intricate patterns of gene activity, revealing that different gene sets can lead to the same disease in different individuals. This breakthrough, supported by the National Cancer Institute and NSF, paves the way for truly personalized multi-target therapies, tailored to an individual’s unique genetic drivers of disease.
Published: June 9, 2025
AI identifies key gene sets that cause complex disease - Northwestern Now
Tools & Tips
The rapid evolution of biological research is increasingly powered by advanced computational tools. This week, we highlight two innovative AI-driven platforms that are transforming how biologists approach complex problems.
- Evo 2: Generative AI for Genetic Discovery Stanford University, in collaboration with NVIDIA and the Arc Institute, recently unveiled Evo 2, an open-source generative AI tool that can predict the form and function of proteins and generate novel genetic sequences. Released on February 19, 2025, Evo 2 was trained on nearly 9 trillion nucleotides from over 15,000 plant and animal genomes, significantly expanding on its predecessor, Evo 1, which focused on prokaryotic genomes. This tool functions much like ChatGPT for genetic code, able to “write” new genetic sequences, identify mutations leading to pathogenicity, and accelerate the discovery of useful biological molecules.
Generative AI tool marks a milestone in biology | Stanford Report - AlphaFold 3: Revolutionizing Protein Structure Prediction DeepMind’s AlphaFold 3 continues to set new benchmarks in structural biology, offering unprecedented accuracy in predicting protein structures, including interactions with other molecules like DNA, RNA, and ligands. This AI model, highlighted as a high-demand tool for 2025, is revolutionizing drug design and fundamental biological research by providing critical insights into molecular mechanisms. Its ability to predict multi-protein complexes and interactions with small molecules significantly accelerates the rational design of new therapeutics and deepens our understanding of cellular processes.
AI ML Tools in Biology That Are In High Demand in 2025
Fun Fact
Did you know? The information stored in the DNA of a single human cell is so incredibly dense that it could fill a million-page book! This highlights the astonishing efficiency and complexity of biological information storage, a marvel that continues to inspire and challenge biologists worldwide.
Facts About Biology - GeeksforGeeks
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