🧬 AI decodes DNA initiator sequence found in about 60% of human genes

To fully understand specific sequences within DNA that enable gene activation, researchers in University of California San Diego Professor James T. Kadonaga's laboratory set out to decipher an important segment of DNA known as the "initiator." This is the site at which instructions coded in genes are first converted, or expressed, into functional products.

In the new study led by graduate student researcher Torrey Rhyne-Carrigg, scientists used high-throughput DNA sequencing technology to determine the gene expression activity of approximately 500,000 different versions of the initiator.

With this information, they employed machine learning, to create an AI model that decoded the initiator's signature DNA pattern. With the initiator's DNA identity unmasked, the researchers could then search for its telltale sequence, finding that about 60% of human genes contain the initiator.

"These AI models were found to provide, for the first time, strong predictions of the presence or absence of the initiator in human genes and were thus able to decode the DNA base sequence pattern of the initiator," — said Kadonaga, a professor in the UC San Diego Department of Molecular Biology.

The newly uncovered information gives researchers the ability to predict the effects of DNA mutations that can lead to various disorders tied to the initiator. 🚀

@QSIMedia

🤖 A humanoid robot developed by China’s Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, beating the human world record held by Jamaican sprinting great Usain Bolt 🤯

#BRICS

@QSIMedia

📚 FTC urged to investigate AI firms for destroying books

More than a dozen civil society groups are urging the FTC to use its authority to examine what the letter's authors call a "destructive new data acquisition practice by dominant AI companies."

The groups include Demand Progress Education Fund, the Consumer Federation of America and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Anthropic spent millions to acquire and physically remove the spines of books to feed their scanned pages into Claude. Google, Microsoft and OpenAI have faced similar copyright lawsuits, per the Post.

The letter points out that in some cases, rare books could be destroyed forever, with digital firms snagging the last copies.

"We urge the FTC to view this practice not in isolation but rather as the latest escalation in a documented pattern of anticompetitive conduct designed to create an insurmountable systemic moat around AI incumbents," — the groups write.

@QSIMedia

🤑 Brad Garlinghouse: "Seven years later, we STILL need clear rules…."

It was great to join the inaugural CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee (a group I've called "the Olympic roster of crypto.") But for a “crypto” gathering, there were a LOT of TradFi players in the room like Nasdaq, CME Group, Cboe, OCC, NYSE, The DTCC (alphabet soup!)

Everyone was in agreement. Rules written for a different era aren’t good enough. Not for consumers. Not for business. Not for innovation.

I made this case in an open letter to Congress back in 2019. Seven years later, we STILL need clear rules…. Thanks to the Trump administration, appointees like Mike Selig, and a myriad of bold leaders in Congress, we’ve never been closer. 🚀

#Stellar

@QSIMedia

🖥 Nvidia Is Spending $6 Billion to Build a Powerful U.S. Alternative to Chinese AI

Nvidia is planning to use a $6 billion deal it struck this week to build one of the world’s most powerful open-weight AI models, one that would compete with Chinese heavyweights like DeepSeek and Kimi K3. Technology giant has signed a $6 billion deal with AI startup Poolside, gaining the rights to use Poolside’s technology and hire most of the startup’s engineers.

"The deal with Nvidia is designed to prevent AI from becoming a 'closed technology controlled by a small number of people' in the future," the startup's management noted.

@QSIMedia

💊 Experimental compound helps burn fat without muscle loss

Researchers at UC Berkeley are now investigating a very different strategy for treating obesity and diabetes. Instead of reducing the amount of energy a person consumes, their approach is designed to increase the amount of energy the body uses by raising metabolic activity.

📝 In a study published in Science Advances, the team reports that a molecular compound called 5-tetradecyloxy-2-furoic acid (TOFA) can interfere with the production of lipids such as cholesterol and triglycerides. At the same time, it activates genes that encourage cells to use fat for fuel and produce more energy.

🐁 In experiments with mice, TOFA improved insulin sensitivity and glucose control, reduced triglyceride levels, and improved signs of fatty liver disease. Obese mice treated with the compound lost fat while showing no significant reduction in lean muscle mass.

Despite promising results, TOFA has only been tested in animals, and its safety and effectiveness in humans remain unknown.

@QSIMedia

🤑 Why Stellar for MGUSD? Anthony Soohoo, CEO at MoneyGram, breaks down the answer:

We've worked with Stellar for five plus years. And then, you know, I think on our side, when we were thinking about, to the consumer, what was the most flexible, best way in terms of doing transaction at the lowest cost, most efficient on our network, the answer was clear for us in terms of consumer products we were building was going to be Stellar. And so we made that decision to work with them in our.

#Stellar

@QSIMedia

🤖 Around 80 Booster T2 humanoid robots marched and ran in synchronized formation at the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games opening ceremony in Beijing

#BRICS

@QSIMedia

😀 'Star Wars vibes:' Chainlink's McCormick sees AI agents, robots driving blockchain transactions

Chainlink Labs Head of Institutional Strategy Andrew McCormick expects AI agents and robots to become a growing source of blockchain activity as autonomous systems increasingly need ways to transact and communicate.

McCormick pointed to agentic AI as one area where crypto infrastructure could play a role. He also expects advances in AI to make blockchain development cheaper, supporting what he described as a future with many different networks.

"We believe that we will live in a world of many chains," — McCormick said. "I think especially with AI, the price of chain creation and engineering and tech makes it easier and cheaper."

"There's a lot of Star Wars vibes, but it's happening," — he said. ❤️

@QSIMedia

🤑 Evernorth eyes DeFi opportunities as XRP Ledger weighs native lending

Evernorth is looking to deploy its XRP holdings across the XRP Ledger ecosystem as proposed lending functionality moves through the network's review process, according to Chief Business Officer Sagar Shah.

❗️Shah said Evernorth was built as an XRP-focused digital asset treasury with the aim of putting its holdings to use rather than simply holding them. The company is also in the process of going public.

Shah is particularly excited about XLS-66, a proposal designed to bring native lending functionality to the XRP Ledger. Shah argued that implementing XLS-66 at the ledger level could offer greater protections than DeFi applications built through smart contracts on top of other networks.

"Because it's natively built into the ledger, I think a lot of the protections that exist, smart contract exploits might exist with other chains, are almost non-existent on the XRP Ledger," — Shah said.

Validators are currently reviewing the code and assessing its robustness as the proposal moves forward. 🚀

#Stellar

@QSIMedia

🚗 Binance Launches AI Trading Platform Agent OS

Binance has launched Agent OS, a developer platform that lets AI agents connect to its trading, market data, wallet, and payment infrastructure. Agent OS brings together Binance APIs, the Binance Wallet Agentic Hub, Binance x402, Binance Skill Hub, and support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) into a broader platform for agentic crypto applications.

These tools can allow developers to build workflows involving on-chain activity, wallet interactions, machine-to-machine payments and DeFi data. Binance said payment and on-chain capabilities are not yet part of the MCP server itself and can instead be accessed through other Agent OS integrations. The company also offers a Skill Hub with ready-made capabilities for tasks such as trading, Web3 wallet tracking and DeFi interactions.

Crypto platforms are shifting toward AI agents that can execute financial actions. 🚀

@QSIMedia

🤖 Micron commits $10 billion to new US-based Research Labs

Micron announced a plan to establish the Micron Research Lab, which will explore memory, computing, packaging, and semiconductor manufacturing technologies that could be used commercially more than a decade from now.

The facility will bring together expertise from Micron itself as well as its customers, government organizations, startups, universities, and partners in a bid to develop pre-competitive IP that will be required years away. The company plans to invest $10 billion over the next 10 years in the initiative.

@QSIMedia

🤖 These Transistors Engineered With Bacteria Are Literally Alive

In electrical circuits, transistors switch or amplify electric signals, but researchers at the MIT have swapped in electrical signals for biological ones, using three strains of the bacteria Pantoea agglomerans to “carry” signals across circuits. It takes the cells a lengthy 8 hours to perform each calculation, but the findings, published in Nature Chemical Biology, demonstrate the potential of biotechnology in unexpected ways.

“We’re not trying to replace computers, but rather put computational control into biology,” — Christopher Voigt, head of MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering and the study’s senior author, said.

“If you have bacteria on the root of a plant, or the plant itself is doing the computing, running a simple calculation overnight is fast enough relative to a growth season.”

Using this approach, the researchers hope to develop circuits that one day could coat plant leaves or roots, where they could compute to sense and respond to environmental conditions such as drought or attack by pests.

@QSIMedia