Monthly Archives: October 2024

Our future health: A new UK health research programme

Last week I walked into Boots  and, after giving some physical measurements, including my blood pressure and cholesterol levels, I gave a blood sample to be part of the Our Future Health initiative. Our Future Health (https://ourfuturehealth.org.uk/)  is set to become the UK’s largest health research programme ever. With the aim of recruiting five million volunteers across the country, it aims to revolutionise the way we detect, prevent and treat disease.

The breadth, depth and detail of Our Future Health makes it a world-leading resource. The data collected could hold the key to a wide range of health discoveries, such as:

  • Identifying early signals to detect disease much earlier.
  • Accurately predicting who is at higher risk of disease.
  • Developing better interventions and more effective treatments and technologies.

How’s it going so far?

Since the start of recruitment in July 2022 (delyed because of Covid), the programme has recruited over one million participants where:

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Walk through a cell

In 2022, Maritan et al. released the first ever macromolecular model of an entire cell. The cell in question is a bacterial cell from the genus Mycoplasma. If you’re a biologist, you likely know Mycoplasma as a common cell culture contaminant.

Now, through the work of app developer Timothy Davison, you can interactively explore this cell model from the comfort of your iPhone or Apple Vision Pro. Here are three reasons why I like CellWalk:

1. It’s pretty

The visuals of CellWalk are striking. The app offers a rich depiction of the cell, allowing the user to zoom from the whole cell to individual atoms. I spent a while clicking through each protein I could see to see if I could guess what it was or what it did. Zooming out, CellWalk offers a beautiful tripartite cross section of the cell, showing first the lipid membrane, then a colourful jumble-bag of all its cellular proteins, and then finally the spaghetti-like polynucleic acids.

Tripartite cross section of a Mycoplasma cell. Screengrab taken from the CellWalk app on my phone.
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