Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

Weight gain has often been noted as a side effect of quitting smoking, and research has well established that nicotine can function as an appetite suppressant. A new study has now uncovered a novel mechanism showing how nicotine directly activates a protein that signals a type of fat cell to start burning energy.

A few years ago, scientists discovered a new, third type of fat cell called beige fat. This important discovery revealed an entirely new metabolic target for obesity research. Along with brown fat cells, beige fat was found to rapidly burn calories and generate heat.

Now, new research from the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute has revealed a novel metabolic mechanism explaining how a protein called CHRNA2 specifically stimulates beige fat cells to burn energy. The study found that CHRNA2 receptor proteins are activated by two molecules – nicotine and acetylcholine.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1x8Yhvrd7E4

Amazing how quickly things are changing in brain health and mental health — see the news about Interaxon, Akili, NeuraMetrix, Apple, Calm, Halo Neuroscience, Mindstrong Health, Calm, Novartis, Pear Therapeutics, in the last 6 months alone, and consider joining the discussion in December smile (link opens 2-minute video)

Imagine a videogame cleared by the FDA to treat ADHD, depression, or substance abuse — how will doctors prescribe it, patients access it, and insurers pay for it?

Imagine a free “annual brain check-up” — what may it look like, and how can it lead into personalized interventions to improve function and prevent/ delay/ treat cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s Disease?

Imagine being responsible for the health & wellness of a million people — how will you educate them to navigate most-likely-to-help interventions, such as breathing/ exercise/ meditation/ apps/ biofeedback/ tDCS to regulate stress?

Imagine investing $100 million in startups developing noninvasive, digital neurotechnologies — where, and how, will you find great opportunities to generate financial and social returns?

The 2018 SharpBrains Virtual Summit (December 4–6th, 2018) will feature over forty of the world’s top experts, innovators and investors aiming to improve brain health and performance for all in light of growing neuroscience and digital tech.

https://sharpbrains.com/summit-2018/

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An interesting interview with one of the Dog Aging Project’s lead scientists, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein.

As we discussed in a recent article about Prof. George Church’s new startup, endeavors to undo aging aren’t directed exclusively toward human aging; extending the healthy lifespan of our pet dogs and cats is also currently being researched. The Dog Aging Project (DAP) has been around quite a bit longer than Prof. Church’s startup, and today, we have the pleasure to bring you an interview with one of the lead scientists behind it, Dr. Matt Kaeberlein.

In much the same way that other projects are aiming to extend healthy human lifespan, the DAP team intends to do the same, targeting the aging processes directly. Given the rate of progress in geroscience over the past years, Dr. Kaeberlein and his team are optimistic that, in the near future, the interventions that have been shown to slow down aging in mice and rats could do the same in our furry companions.

Besides Dr. Kaeberlein—who is a Professor of Pathology and an Adjunct Professor of both Genome Sciences and Oral Health Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle—the DAP team is comprised of Dr. Daniel Promislow, Professor of the Departments of Pathology and Biology at the University of Washington; Dr. Kate Crevy, Associate Professor of Small Animal Internal Medicine at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary Medicine; Dr. Tammi Kaeberlein, a research scientist at the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington; Dr. Silvan Urfer, a veterinarian and Senior Fellow of Washington University’s Department of Pathology; and Kelly Jin, a doctoral student currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine and Mechanisms of Disease at the University of Washington.

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Scientists from Purdue University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences report the use of CRISPR/Cas9 to develop a variety of rice producing 25–31% more grain than traditional breeding methods.

crispr future technology

The team, led by Jian-Kang Zhu, a distinguished professor in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Purdue and director of the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, made mutations to 13 genes associated with the plant hormone abscisic acid – known to play roles in plant stress tolerance and suppression of growth. Of several varieties created, one produced a plant that had little change in stress tolerance but produced 25% more grain in a field test in Shanghai, China, and 31% more in a field test conducted on China’s Hainan Island.

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Long story in The Independent: https://www.independent.co.uk/…/biohacking-transhumanism-aa… #transhumanism #biohacking

On the morning of 29 April, staff at the Soulex spa in Washington DC discovered the lifeless body of one of its clients lying face down in a sensory deprivation tank. The body was that of 28-year-old Aaron Traywick, who less than three months earlier had injected himself live on stage at an event in Austin, Texas, with an untested gene therapy that he claimed could cure herpes.

Stories soon spread about the discovery of Traywick’s body, with some inferring a potential link between the DIY herpes treatment and his untimely death. But those who knew the young entrepreneur and were familiar with the work he did suspected something much more sinister.

Traywick was part of a fringe but steadily growing community known as body hackers – or biohackers – whose modest goal is to cure disease, end ageing and ultimately stop death. “Why this test is so important,” he said on stage in Austin, just before injecting himself in the leg with the therapy, “is because if we succeed with herpes in even the most minor of ways, then we can move forward immediately with cancer.”

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The hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. There seems to be no shortage of sensationalist news about how AI could cure diseases, accelerate human innovation and improve human creativity.

Just looking at the media headlines, you might think that we are already living in a future where AI has infiltrated every aspect of society.

While it is undeniable that AI has opened up a wealth of promising opportunities, it has also led to the emergence of a mindset that can be best described as “AI solutionism”. This is the philosophy that, given enough data, machine learning algorithms can solve all of humanity’s problems.

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This in depth story has recently been translated to English: https://ciencias.uautonoma.cl/…/we-want-to-declare-ageing-a…?

Zoltan Istvan is currently a Libertarian candidate for Governor in California, also former 2016’s US presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party and he is known around the world as someone that advocates for Transhumanism, a public figure in science and technology.

Dr. Marcela Gatica-Andrades and Nadia Politis from Science Communication Center interviewing Zoltan Istvan.

Pictures: Pablo Madariaga

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On May 7th, Tactical Robotics (a subsidiary of Urban Aeronautics Ltd), based in Yavne. Israel, successfully performed a first “mission representative” demonstration for its lead customer, the Israel Defence Forces. This milestone was announced for the first time today at the Israel Combat Rescue and Emergency Medicine conference where the company also presented Cormorant’s capability to be the first UAS system fielded for unmanned casualty evacuation missions.

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Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School has co-founded a new startup company, Rejuvenate Bio, which has plans to reverse aging in dogs as a way to market anti-aging therapies for our furry friends before bringing them to us.

Dogs first, humans next

The company has already carried some initial tests on beagles and plans to reverse aging by using gene therapy to add new instructions to their DNA. If it works, the goal is ultimately to try the same approach in people, and George Church may be one the first human volunteers.

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Esearchers have devised a new way to get a sneak peek into what’s going on deep in your digestive system, creating a swallowable sensor that, with the help of engineered bacteria and a tiny electrical circuit, can detect the presence of molecules that might be signs of disease and then beam the results to a smartphone app.

The device, which scientists validated in pigs, remains a prototype and needs to be refined before it could be used in people. But the researchers, who reported their work Thursday in the journal Science, combined innovations in synthetic biology and microelectronics to create a modular platform that could be adapted to identify a wide range of molecules.

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