AI and the World's Hard Problems · Life sciences · MIT · 2026-10-15
AI model decodes the language cells use to communicate
During embryonic development, cells receive chemical signals that switch genes on or off and determine their roles. Tracing the sequence of signals a cell has received has been hard, because signaling pathways were assumed to differ widely across cell types. MIT and Whitehead Institute researchers developed a computational framework to address this, which could help accelerate stem cell engineering, improve disease models, and inform cancer treatments.