Sachin Rawat
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Articles by Sachin Rawat
How Hair Cells in the Ear Actively Respond to Sound
March 31, 2026• Physics 19, 45 Our ability to hear relies on tiny “hair bundles” in the inner ear. A new thermodynamical model offers an explanation for the different ways that bundles oscillate. A new thermodynamical model accounts for the energy flows that underly the perception of sound. A new thermodynamical model accounts for the energy flows that underly the perception of sound. × Tiny hair cells located in the inner ear help us hear and maintain balance.
The brain after blindness: How newly-sighted people build a visual world
Mind and BehaviorNeuroscienceVisionCognitive DevelopmentVisual Processing MIT researcher Sharon Gilad-Gutnick has witnessed many children see for the first time. After having their cataracts surgically removed, the children can see the world but don’t recognize faces well. Even among those who can recognize the faces of their parents or others they know well, most don’t look at the faces of the people they speak with.
A shocking explanation for tape’s distinctive screech
Almost certainly you’ve noticed it: When you peel tape from a roll, it makes a distinctive screeching sound. Now, a team of materials scientists has discovered exactly how the tape sings its signature sound. The findings have uncovered the fundamental nature of the sound produced with the tape, says Anastasiia Krushynska, a materials scientist at the University of Groningen who was not involved in the study.
Ocean sentinels
Christina Schallenberg, a biological oceanographer at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, remembers one of her best moments from a research trip. She was aboard an icebreaker ship anchored somewhere in the icy white expanse of the frozen Southern Ocean. She heard some bird calls and figured there must be penguins around, before happily realizing how routine this had become for her. “You get so immersed in that beautiful environment that it becomes normal to you,” says Schallenberg.
Easy on the eyes is also easy on the brain
One can spend hours looking at a calm sunset or a clear night sky. These scenes are not only effortless on the eyes — they may also be easy on the brain. People tend to like visual stimuli that require little cognitive effort to process, researchers report in the December PNAS Nexus. The brain is the most energy-guzzling organ in the body, and visual processing alone accounts for nearly half of its energy use. Researchers have long studied how the visual system conserves energy.
2025 Roundup: Bats, squid, and icebergs
Another year of quiet on this blog. But elsewhere, I got to write about fascinating stuff ranging from bats and neuroscience to icebergs. Here are five stories that I had the most fun researching and writing in 2025. If you like hot sauce and are expecting a milder sauce, say, because it’s labeled so, your rating of the heat level would likely be lower than that for an unlabeled bottle of the same sauce.
Tracking more than a heartbeat
In May, 24-year-old former Texas A&M collegiate football player Brian Williams died from heat stroke after running a half marathon in Irving, Texas. During marathons and half-marathons, a runner’s body temperature can climb three degrees Celsius higher than normal, which can impair the body’s ability to cool down, even those of conditioned athletes like Williams. In fact, exertional heat stroke is one of the leading causes of athlete deaths during marathons.
Recreating Iceberg Flips in a Lab
September 12, 2025• Physics 18, 159 Experiments with small, floating slabs of ice have revealed melting-induced shape changes that may explain why icebergs sometimes flip over. Icebergs can sometimes lose their stability and suddenly flip over. The exact cause of these capsize events has been unclear. A new experiment recreating iceberg flips in the lab suggests that changes in shape due to melting determine if and how an iceberg tips over [1].
Bats may mistake wind turbines for open sky, causing deadly collisions
Wind turbines get a bad rap for killing birds—but they actually kill far more bats. Scientists estimate that millions of bats die every year after slamming into the giant blades, making turbines one of the top killers of the animals worldwide. But just what exactly lures bats to turbines in the first place is a mystery. New laboratory experiments suggest the key is light. Bats use the brightness of the open sky to navigate—a visual cue replicated by light reflecting off turbine blades.
Diversifying genomics
Africa has a high burden of chronic kidney disease, with prevalence rates much higher than in developed countries. Many patients don’t even realize they are living with the disease. But when Segun Fatumo, head of Non-Communicable Diseases Genomics at MRC Uganda, and his team wanted to look into the genetic drivers behind this high prevalence, they realized that there was insufficient genetic or kidney function data across the entire continent.
2024 Roundup: Rare, sleep, and heat
Like all years, 2024 flew by fast. Like all years before, and for everyone, it flew by faster than every year before. Neuroscience suggests that's because our brains process fewer moments, and less vividly, as we age. In other words, we make fewer memories per unit time and it may seem that little happened more recently, even when that is not the case. Although there's no way to fight this phenomenon, intentionally seeking new experiences helps.
Cool new ways to store and retrieve data in DNA
The world today generates mind-bogglingly insane amounts of data. Think of all of us on the internet, science experiments with a gazillion digital files, and connected devices that constantly talk to each other. And as we generate more data every year than the year before, we could run out of both space and energy for data centres to store this data. Storing data in DNA, in principle, is an incredible alternative.
Game-Theory Paradox Inspires Cancer Therapy
August 6, 2025• Physics 18, 144 Simulations suggest that the combination of two cancer-therapy strategies, which individually deliver poor outcomes, might produce optimal results. × Often, two losing strategies can be combined into a winning one. Described in game theory as Parrondo’s paradox, this counterintuitive phenomenon shows up in physics, finance, and biology, among other fields. For example, organisms like jellyfish switch between solitary and communal lifestyles.
The Secret Disorder of Squids
July 7, 2025• Physics 18, 128 A structural phenomenon traditionally confined to inanimate systems has now been observed in biology. × Many densely packed systems in nature have a hidden structure. Their constituent components appear to be randomly arranged on small scales, but upon zooming out, these patterns become more uniform. This phenomenon is known as hyperuniformity. For example, the Universe becomes uniform on larger scales (see Research News: The Cosmos as a Colloid).
Change of Heart—Literally: Engineered Cells Flip the Script on Organ Failure - SynBioBeta
In a study published this year, the failing hearts of rhesus macaques and a human patient were reinvigorated with cells derived from them. Heart cells extracted from the patient were engineered and grown into a patch. When grafted into the patient, the patch promoted new muscle growth and improved the heart’s pumping ability. As we age, heart muscle cells thicken and lose elasticity.
Galactic Gastronomy: The Science of Producing Food Beyond Earth
In 2026, NASA’s Artemis program will send astronauts to the moon after five decades. Plans for later phases include setting up a space station orbiting the moon and a permanent base on the lunar south pole. Producing food on-site will be essential for long-term space travel. It would allow space missions to take off with far less weight, which lowers fuel usage and eliminates the need for resupply missions. However, producing food in space is incredibly difficult.
Decentralized Platforms Upending How Synthetic Biology is Done
Towards the end of her four-decade academic career, public health researcher Maria Goreti Freitas was invited to author a book chapter. However, she was disappointed to realize that she wouldn't be earning royalties and would have to forfeit her intellectual rights to the work. This is a familiar scene in academic research. While inherently collaborative, science is often exploitative and involves unpaid work.
Engineering Roots for Climate-Resilient Crops
Climate change poses a severe threat to agricultural productivity globally. Unpredictable weather patterns, such as more frequent floods and droughts, disrupt crop production and growth. Ensuring sustainable and reliable food production in the future requires climate-resilient crops. Engineering plant root ecosystems is one approach that could improve crop resilience to climate change. Plants use roots to find water and nutrients, interact with soil microbes, and withstand environmental stresses.
How Having Extra Chromosome Sets Shapes Evolution
January 21, 2025• Physics 18, 14 Researchers predict that having extra sets of chromosomes can both speed up and slow down the evolution of an organism, depending on the organism’s “fitness landscape.” × Crop plants such as wheat and oats, bacteria that live in extreme environments, and some species of salamanders and frogs are polyploid, meaning they have more than two sets of chromosomes.
Your mind shapes how food tastes before the first bite
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people I recently ate frog for the first time. If you haven’t had frogs before, the thought of eating them may cause you some revulsion. I felt some myself admittedly when I ordered the salt-roasted legs off the menu, but I had read reviews that said frog meat tastes like chicken, tender and buttery.
Fabricating Nanostructures with RNA Origami
A piece of RNA dynamically folds into a secondary structure determined by its sequence. Interactions between nucleotides mold stretches of RNA into hairpin loops, triplexes, and switches, among other forms. The predictability of the folding and the range of geometries possible with different folds are not unlike the art of origami. This idea underlies RNA origami, a technique for folding RNA into custom nanostructures.
Flexible Semiconductor Made from Hydrogel
November 22, 2024• Physics 17, 167 A new recipe for making hydrogels delivers a material that is both flexible and semiconducting—desired properties for interfaces in implantable medical devices. × A bioelectronic interface forms a connection between living tissue and implantable devices such as glucose monitors for diabetics and pacemakers for heart patients.
Purchasing Considerations for Water Purification Systems
Understanding the demands of your application is key to purchasing the best water purifier byRachel Brown, MScandSachin Rawat | 4 min read Register for free to listen to this article Most labs rely on purified water across their operations, making water purifiers integral to a lab’s design, but selecting the best purifier for your lab can be a challenge because of all the factors involved. Water purification methods vary in their technology, output, flow rates, and designs, among other details.
From Sequence to Function with Protein Language Models - SynBioBeta
Artificial intelligence is having its moment in protein research. The protein folding tool AlphaFold won its developers, John Jumper and Demis Hassabis, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The other half of the prize, awarded for computational protein design, went to University of Washington biochemist David Baker, whose research group has also contributed to AI-based protein structure prediction with RosettaFold. Input a protein sequence and these models use deep learning to predict how it folds.
Decoding bird flu: New research reveals potential route for human infection
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people A highly contagious bird flu epidemic has spread from continent to continent since 2020. It has killed hundreds of millions of wild birds and caused sporadic outbreaks among poultry. In recent months, the avian influenza strain that causes the disease (H5N1) has jumped to dairy cows, domestic cats, and even humans.
Diverse Genomes Make Medicine More Equitable
Home Topics Drug Discovery Diverse Genomes Make Medicine More Equitable Credit: Darryl Leja, NHGRI Credit: Darryl Leja, NHGRI Africa has a high burden of chronic kidney disease, with prevalence rates much higher than in developed countries. Many patients don’t even realize they are living with the disease.
Synthetic Biology in the Open
Synthetic biology is rooted in the idea that engineering principles of standardization, modularity, and abstraction can be applied to biology. Despite the messy reality of biological systems, the field has advanced these principles. Open source is another principle more commonly seen in engineering that can significantly impact how synthetic biology is done.
Glucose monitoring wearables for type 1 diabetes sufferers are a fad for athletes, and others are following. Let’s weigh the benefits-and dangers
Blood sugar monitors (aka continuous glucose monitors or CGMs) have been ubiquitous for people with diabetes. But now they are a fad for elite athletes and even some weekend warriors without the disease. Endurance athletes in particular have been quick to adopt this new technology to improve training and racing performance. They monitor their glucose levels with a small sensor attached to the arm or belly. They are now widely used for training and are ubiquitous in triathlon competitions.
Diverse Genomes Make Medicine More Equitable
Genomic datasets are not representative of global diversity. Changing that will enable researchers to better serve underrepresented groups and advance our understanding of diseases. Africa has a high burden of chronic kidney disease, with prevalence rates much higher than in developed countries. Many patients don’t even realize they are living with the disease.
Analysis of @sachinxr FOLLOWERS
The top three countries where sachinxr's Twitter followers are from include USA(35%)India(34%)and UK.(12%). Whearas the top three states/provinces where sachinxr's Twitter followers come from are England, UK.(10%), California, USA(9%) and Karnataka, India(8%). Finally the 3 cities where sachinxr's Twitter followers are the most from are England, UK.(10%), California, USA(9%) and Karnataka, India(8%) About @sachinxr (Sachin Rawat): Freelance science writer.
Artificial Intelligence Reveals Protein-DNA Interactions
Protein-DNA interactions are vital in regulating cellular processes such as DNA replication, repair, and gene expression. Many diseases attributed to dysfunctional cellular processes or signaling pathways are essentially failures of these interactions. Mapping protein-DNA interactions, therefore, has substantial therapeutic implications.
Successfully Maintaining Automated Liquid Handlers
Most operations in a laboratory involve moving around various amounts of liquids. While manually doing this is practical for smaller experiments, biology is increasingly high throughput. Experiments in fields like omics, pharma, and systems biology involve parallel handling of hundreds or thousands of samples. Unlike manual pipetting, automated liquid handling systems can do this quickly, allowing researchers to spend more time on other tasks.
Non-Model Organisms Expand the Repertoire of Synthetic Biology
Of the over 450,000 land plant species, only a few thousand are studied, and fewer have been sequenced. “There’s a huge trough of plants in completely different families and phyla that are not as close in terms of relationship to Arabidopsis,” explained Sebastian Cocioba, an independent plant bioengineer. And that’s just the untapped plant diversity.
How sleep deprivation helps some animals outperform the competition
Antechinus, a mouse-like marsupial found in Australia, is a rarity among mammals. At the end of each mating season, the males all die at once. This fate means they only get to breed once in their lifetimes, while the females may survive a couple of additional mating seasons. Naturally, the males make the most of their mortal Mardi Gras. In a paper published in Current Biology, researchers found that male antechinuses will sacrifice sleep to out-mate each other.
Harnessing Biofilms for Biomanufacturing and as Living Materials
Early in the history of life on Earth, microbes learned a neat trick. They aggregated on surfaces into clusters to either capture new niches or improve survival. Most bacteria and many microalgae, fungi, and archaea can produce these structures called biofilms. And they are incredibly robust. “That’s what makes them difficult to combat when they are not wanted,“ said Katja Bühler, a Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research microbiologist.
The Oceans Are Running A Fever
AsianScientist (Apr. 26, 2024) – In 2023, many Asian countries including India, Malaysia, Nepal and Japan witnessed severe heatwaves. These heatwaves melted road surfaces, lowered air quality and caused deaths from heatstroke. But the impact of heatwaves was not just limited to land, they impacted marine biodiversity too. Although researchers are still figuring out what exactly qualifies as marine heatwave, it is broadly understood as periods of unusually high sea surface temperature.
Enabling Psychedelics Research with Precision Fermentation
Mental health disorders affect over a billion people, with depression and anxiety being the most prevalent conditions. Commonly prescribed antidepressants don’t work for many people. Tackling the growing mental health problem requires other pharmacological approaches. One of these is the use of psychedelics, a class of mind-altering compounds with a history that dates back to antiquity.
Halting Cellular Aging with Senotherapeutics
In the longevity space, there is a search for ways to extend lifespan or at least improve the quality of life in later years. One way biotechnology is poised to make this possible is through the development of senotherapeutics, drugs that target cellular senescence or cell aging. Insights from advances like regenerative therapies, precision medicine, and high-throughput omics are pushing research into senotherapeutic drug discovery and screening. However, there is a major bottleneck.
Designing Programmable Cancer Therapies with Synthetic Gene Circuits
Cancers are incredibly complex, primarily because there is a lot of crosstalk between cancer, host cells, and the environment. This complexity often limits the success of small molecule or antibody-based therapeutics in cancer treatment. These therapeutics usually target a single antigen and are better suited to diseases with simple mechanisms. “There are multiple targets you have to address for most cancers,” said Tim Lu, CEO of Senti Bio, a biotech company based in South San Francisco.
Rethinking the clinical trial for rare diseases
29th February 2024 Clinical trials traditionally test new treatments on large cohorts of patients. But what if the treatment is for a condition which affects a very small number of people? In the UK, a disease is considered rare if it affects less than one person in 2,000. The low prevalence of these diseases often makes it challenging to conduct conventional randomised clinical trials. It can be difficult to recruit rare disease patients for multiple reasons.
How the “powerhouse of the cell” could be cancer’s Achilles heel
A relatively new way to attack cancer, called immunotherapy, is revolutionizing cancer treatment by enabling patients’ own immune systems to attack cancer cells. It hasn’t worked for many kinds of cancers, though — evading the immune system is one of the first tricks that cancer learns. As it turns out, many cancers are also pretty good at hiding from immunotherapies.
The Versatility and Precision of DNA Origami
DNA origami provides subnanometer precision for a versatile range of applications, including drug delivery, biosensing, and plasmonics. “I was always excited to create new things that weren't there before,” said Christian Sigl, CEO of German startup, capsitec. Sigl was fascinated by the idea of creating completely new structures for applications that were not possible before. DNA origami provided that outlet, leading him to transition from physics to manipulating DNA structures.
Can Biology Address the Microplastics Problem?
Everywhere scientists look, they find microplastics. This teeny-tiny plastic debris appears in the air, waterways, oceans, soil, and even our bodies. Early studies show that in humans, they could be disrupting the immune system and causing DNA damage. They adversely impact a wide range of ecosystems and facilitate the accumulation of toxic chemicals. For these reasons, removing microplastics, and plastics in general, from the environment is critical for both planetary and human health.
Out-Musseled by Microplastics
If you eat seafood, microplastics are likely in your diet. Seafoods that are consumed whole, like mussels, have higher levels of microplastics. This is because since marine organisms ingest microplastics, it’s their guts where the microplastics’ journey in the food chain begins. We don’t know for sure how bad that is for us: most studies of the impact of microplastics on human health are still early. Microplastics don't impact individual mussels. That’s because they poop most of it out.
The Numerous Uses of Lab Evaporators
Evaporators play a pivotal role in laboratories. There are numerous types of evaporators, each optimized for different applications and scales. This article breaks down how evaporators of different kinds are used across industries. Cooling Evaporators are heat-exchanging devices: they take heat from the environment to evaporate some liquid. In air conditioners, for instance, evaporator coils are filled with a refrigerant that absorbs heat before expelling it outside over multiple cycles.
How Smoking Bans Prevented Heart Attacks In Singapore
Asian Scientist Magazine (Jan. 13, 2023) —Smoking is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases like hypertension and stroke. Even second-hand smoke elevates the risk of developing these diseases. Conversely, stopping smoking or being around smokers less reduces the risk of heart-related diseases, even bringing it down to the same level as that for non-smokers over time. This is why many countries have smoking-free laws in place.
Climate’s impact on agriculture worsens gender inequities
Asian Scientist Magazine (Jan. 10, 2023) — Climate change has a disproportionate impact on women. In communities where the women must fetch water, they are traveling longer distances. Women often eat less than men in some cultures; climate-induced natural disasters are exacerbating this disparity. Follow-on effects of climate change also make women more prone to gender-based violence and exploitation.
Can Synthetic Biology Aid in The Race Against Rare Infectious Diseases?
Over the last two decades, India and Bangladesh have witnessed frequent outbreaks of Nipah—a viral infection that can cause severe encephalitis and death—including one as recently as September 2023. In the same period, monkeypox, another rare viral infection, appeared in the US, Nigeria, and Europe. While these outbreaks were contained, there are still no approved therapeutics for either disease. Nipah and monkeypox are two of the many rare infectious diseases.
New Blog and 2023 Roundup
Stress in the city September 11th 2023 The new field of urban endocrinology is exploring how animals use hormones to adapt to life in city environments, writes Sachin Rawat On a spring afternoon in 2021, Carl, an infamous coyote at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, was walking past oblivious picnic-goers. His eyes were fixed on something and he had a prowling gait. The subject of Carl’s interest was a small child sitting with his father. With teeth bared he lunged for the boy.
Asia’s Rising Scientists: Mayuko Yamashita
Mayuko Yamashita Associate Professor Department of Mathematics, Kyoto University Japan Asian Scientist Magazine (Dec. 21, 2023) —When people think of mathematics and physics together, it’s often about applied mathematics enabling something practical, such as engineering. However, there is a deep connection between pure mathematics and fundamental physics. Japanese mathematician Mayuko Yamashita is passionate about exploring this connection.
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