With sequestration-driven budget cuts and waning bipartisan support, the environment for medical research funding in the US is looking bleak and could turn bleaker still unless researchers work to turn things around, the University of Pennsylvania's Ezekiel Emanuel writes in a commentary published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Emanuel is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and former chief of staff for President Barack Obama.)

Emanuel attributes this fall-off in support for medical research to four factors: the increased politicization of science; the current lack of strong Congressional champions for agencies like the National Institutes of Health; the increased scrutiny large NIH budgets have drawn; and, in an irony worthy of Alanis Morissette herself, the role of medical advances have played in increasing healthcare costs.

Of that last factor, Emanuel writes that roughly half the increase in healthcare costs can be attributed to "technology, that is, advances in biomedical science."

"And a main source — if not the main source — of advances in biomedical technology is the NIH," he notes.

So what's a person to do? Go back to bleeding patients with leeches?

Well, no. But, Emanuel says, NIH and the larger medical research community would be well served by focusing more seriously on developing "technologies that are not just 'incredibly exciting' but also cost lowering and value enhancing."

"Focusing research on cost-lowering, quality-improving interventions has not been an NIH priority," he writes. "This change in focus is vital to the future of both the country and the NIH."

The field of long non-coding RNAs is moving from the fringe into mainstream research, bringing a number of young researchers with it, writes Amy Maxmen at Nature. While there is enthusiasm for the field, she adds, lncRNA studies can still be difficult to tackle. "There are no optimized experimental protocols and few clues to the habits of individual lncRNAs, so experiments often fail," she says. "And when they do work, investigators need to go the extra mile to convince reviewers that their results are real."

"I have had so many conversations where people think I'm just full of crap," Kevin Morris, from the Scripps Research Institute tells Nature. "You need a thick skin to be in this field. You need to do it because you love it."

And researchers who are taking on the problem are in demand, Maxmen says. Case Western Reserve University's Saba Valadkhan "was consumed with curiosity about the possibility that long RNA sequences that do not encode proteins nevertheless have a function — enhancing or suppressing gene expression," and more senior researchers noticed. Valadkhan says that before she even began to look for a job, she was hearing about job openings.

Further, there are funding opportunities for lncRNA studies. Maxmen notes that 28 grant applications for lncRNA studies were approved in 2012, and that more a announcements are specifically targeted at lncRNA studies.

In Science this week, researchers from the University of Massachusetts and the University of Oxford report on the discovery that transposons are more mobile in certain neurons than others in the Drosophila brain. Fly cells typically use the piwi-interacting proteins Aubergine and Argonaute 3 to suppress transposable elements. However, in mushroom body neurons, where transposon expression is more abundant, these two proteins are less abundant. The team suggests that the greater level of transposons in this part of the brain helps ensure genomic heterogeneity.

Also in Science, investigators from the UK's Medical Research Council present a paper indicating that translational inhibition is the primary event required for microRNA-mediated mRNA degradation, and that the process relies on impairing the function of the eIF4F initiation complex. Additionally, the scientists report a "correlation between the presence of miRNA target sites in the 3' untranslated region of mRNAs and secondary structure in the 5' UTR and show that mRNAs with unstructured 5' UTRs are refractory to miRNA repression."

Pains wrought by the sequestration of the US federal budget have already begun to put the hurt on biomedical and genomics research communities, as had been predicted, but also it is directly affecting cancer clinics and patients, which was not expected.

It was expected, predicted, and widely announced that the 5 percent hunk that has been hewn from the National Institutes of Health budget would have a swift impact on biomedical research, and that appears to be happening now, according to the Huffington Post's Howard Fineman.

It is particularly ironic that the budget cuts are hitting human genomics research, a rapidly growing field that was largely launched with the NIH's Human Genome Project, Fineman writes.

Academic research centers that are some of the biggest drivers of genome science may lose "a big chunk" of their funding, including Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Washington University in St. Louis, he notes.

According to Fineman, Washington University, which houses the Genome Institute at Washington University, could lose about $40 million in funding over the next eight months.

"Our genomics progress will be substantially slowed," Larry Shapiro, dean of the medical school there, tells the Huffington Post.

"Shapiro and others worry about any pause in their drive to attract top scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs to one of the most advanced programs of its kind in the world," Fineman writes.

According to Washington Post Wonkblog reporter Sarah Kliff, US cancer clinics have been forced to turn away thousands of Medicare patients, because the sequester has triggered a two percent slash in the amount the program provides to doctors . Although relatively small, that cut has hit private cancer clinics uniquely hard, because of the way Medicare pays oncologists for cancer drugs.

While most meds for seniors generally fall under the optional Medicare Part D, which was excluded from the sequester cut, cancer drugs must be administered by doctors and therefore are under Part B, which covers doctor visits and was subject to the cut, Kliff notes.

This 2 percent slice is magnified because it is being cut from the 6 percent reimbursement oncologists receive for storing and administering medications, she writes.

"If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we'd be out of business in six months to a year," Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York, tells the Washington Post.

"The drugs we're going to lose money on we're not going to administer right now."

This post has been updated to reflect that the flu virus is an RNA, not DNA, virus.

Flu researchers are examining the genes of the new bird flu strain that has sickened a handful of people in China, Reuters reports. The new flu strain, H7N9, has infected nine people in China, killing three of them. While Reuters notes that the flu does not appear to be able to pass from person to person, flu researchers are examining its genes, obtained from patient samples, to gauge its potential as a threat. The flu virus is an RNA virus.

"The virus has to a certain extent already adapted to mammalian species and to humans, so from that point of view it's worrisome," Ab Osterhaus, from the Erasmus Medical Centre in The Netherlands, tells Reuters. "Really we should keep a very close eye on this."

A Dutch design studio is putting on an exhibition of DNA-inspired furniture and jewelry, Wired reports. The studio, called Tjep., is working in conjunction with Eric Wolthuis at DutchDNA to obtain genetic profiles which they then map using 3D imaging and turn into a furniture design that "literally capture a person's essence and stand as unique pieces of art," Wired says.

Frank Tjepkema from Tjep. starts with saliva sample that is analyzed at 16 variable markers that he feeds into a design program he created to develop a visual depiction of the DNA pattern, Wired writes. Both a 3D and 2D image of the DNA is used to inform his design of the piece.

"When I was asked to work with an abstract series of numbers I was thrown back into a world without cultural references and this was actually quite liberating," Tjepkema tells Wired. "I had an excuse to make something abstract within a given conceptual framework. The resulting designs are either completely abstract, in which case the data itself was source of inspiration or a combination of a symbolic reference."

NPR's The Two-Way adds that Tjep. is to exhibit this line in Milan, Italy, later this month and after then, it will be taking commissioned projects. "[I]f Ikea isn't cutting it and you want a genetically inspired bed, table or desk, this is your chance," NPR adds. Prices, it notes, have not been set.