Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical

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Sources cited in this episode include the following:

The November 3rd, 2020 Globe and Mail post, “Broadcasting bill targets online streaming services” at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-says-broadcasting-act-changes-will-raise-over-800-million-from/

The November 3rd, 2020 TVOntario post, “The pandemic is killing government transparency” at https://www.tvo.org/article/the-pandemic-is-killing-government-transparency.

The November 2nd, 2020 Ottawa Citizen Defence Watch post, “Canadian Military wants to establish new organization to use propaganda, other techniques to influence Canadians” at https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-military-to-establish-new-organization-to-use-propaganda-other-techniques-to-influence-canadians.

The November 3rd, 2020 Science and Enterprise post, “Venture Rounds, IPOs, Mergers Vanish in Election Week” at https://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=40235#:~:text=3%20Nov.,2020.&text=According%20to%20technology%20investment%20research,so%20far%20this%20entire%20week.

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A genetic disposition that plays a role in the development of the heart in the embryo also appears to play a key role in the human immune system. This is shown by a recent study led by the University of Bonn (Germany). When the gene is not active enough, the immune defense system undergoes characteristic changes, causing it to lose its effectiveness. Doctors speak of an aging immune system, as a similar effect can often be observed in older people. In the medium term, the results may contribute to reduce these age-related losses. The study is published in the journal Nature Immunology.

The gene with the cryptic abbreviation CRELD1 has so far been a mystery to science. It was known to play an important role in the development of the heart in the embryo. However, CRELD1 remains active after birth: Studies show that it is regularly produced in practically all of the body. For what purpose, however, was previously completely unknown.

The Bonn researchers used a novel approach to answer this question. Nowadays, scientific studies with often include so-called transcriptome analyses. By these means, one can determine which genes are active to what extent in the respective test subjects. Researchers are also increasingly making the data they obtain available to colleagues, who can then use it to work on completely different matters. “And this is exactly what we did in our study,” says Dr. Anna Aschenbrenner from the LIMES Institute at the University of Bonn and member of the ImmunoSensation² Cluster of Excellence.

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Metabolites from marine fungi have hogged the limelight in drug discovery because of their promise as therapeutic agents. A number of metabolites related to marine fungi have been discovered from various sources which are known to possess a range of activities as antibacterial, antiviral and anticancer agents. Although, over a thousand marine fungi based metabolites have already been reported, none of them have reached the market yet which could partly be related to non-comprehensive screening approaches and lack of sustained lead optimization. The origin of these marine fungal metabolites is varied as their habitats have been reported from various sources such as sponge, algae, mangrove derived fungi, and fungi from bottom sediments. The importance of these natural compounds is based on their cytotoxicity and related activities that emanate from the diversity in their chemical structures and functional groups present on them. This review covers the majority of anticancer compounds isolated from marine fungi during 2012–2016 against specific cancer cell lines.

Marine fungi are important source of secondary metabolites useful for the drug discovery purposes. Even though marine fungi are less explored in comparison to their terrestrial counterparts, a number of useful hits have been obtained from the drug discovery perspective adding to their importance in the natural product discovery (Molinski et al., 2009; Butler et al., 2014), which have yielded a wide range of chemically diverse agents with antibacterial, antiviral and anticancer properties in animal systems. Starting with the celebrated example of cephalosporins, marine fungi have provided unique chemical skeletons that could be used to develop drugs of clinical importance (Bhadury et al., 2006; Saleem et al., 2007; Javed et al., 2011; Sithranga and Kathiresan, 2011). Fungi, in general, have been generous source of drugs as evidenced by the isolation of many drugs in use such as paclitaxel, camptothecin, vincristine, torreyanic acid and cytarabine to name a few.

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Host Mark Sackler and panelists discuss the challenges of getting governments and the public on board with one of the basic principles of longevity research: that the cause of all chronic diseases of aging is aging itself.

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Three-dimensional (3D) nanostructured materials—those with complex shapes at a size scale of billionths of a meter—that can conduct electricity without resistance could be used in a range of quantum devices. For example, such 3D superconducting nanostructures could find application in signal amplifiers to enhance the speed and accuracy of quantum computers and ultrasensitive magnetic field sensors for medical imaging and subsurface geology mapping. However, traditional fabrication tools such as lithography have been limited to 1-D and 2-D nanostructures like superconducting wires and thin films.

Now, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed a platform for making 3D superconducting nano-architectures with a prescribed organization. As reported in the Nov. 10 issue of Nature Communications, this platform is based on the self-assembly of DNA into desired 3D shapes at the nanoscale. In DNA self-assembly, a single long strand of DNA is folded by shorter complementary “staple” strands at specific locations—similar to origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.

“Because of its structural programmability, DNA can provide an assembly platform for building designed nanostructures,” said co-corresponding author Oleg Gang, leader of the Soft and Bio Nanomaterials Group at Brookhaven Lab’s Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) and a professor of chemical engineering and of applied physics and at Columbia Engineering. “However, the fragility of DNA makes it seem unsuitable for functional device fabrication and nanomanufacturing that requires inorganic materials. In this study, we showed how DNA can serve as a scaffold for building 3D nanoscale architectures that can be fully “converted” into inorganic materials like superconductors.”

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Peter and Dan continue their conversation about the Abundance Platinum Longevity trip, where Peter and a select group of entrepreneurs, executives and investors spent five days learning from the top longevity and immunology experts in two of California’s top biotech hubs.

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Cosmological observations and measurements collected in the past suggest that ordinary matter, which includes stars, galaxies, the human body and countless other objects/living organisms, only makes up 20% of the total mass of the universe. The remaining mass has been theorized to consist of so-called dark matter, a type of matter that does not absorb, reflect or emit light and can thus only be indirectly observed through gravitational effects on its surrounding environment.

While the exact nature of this elusive type of matter is still unknown, in recent decades, physicists have identified many particles that reach beyond the standard model (the theory describing some of the main physical forces in the universe) and that could be good candidates. They then tried to detect these particles using two main types of advanced particle detector: gram-scale semiconducting detectors (usually made of silicon and used to search for low-mass dark matter) and ton-scale gaseous detectors (which have higher energy detection thresholds and are better suited to perform high-mass dark matter searches).

The EDELWEISS Collaboration, a large group of researchers working at Université Lyon 1, Université Paris-Saclay and other institutes in Europe, recently carried out the first search for Sub-MeV dark matter using a germanium(Ge)-based detector. While the team was unable to detect dark matter, they set a number of constraints that could inform future investigations.

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At high concentrations, reactive oxygen species—known as oxidants—are harmful to cells in all organisms and have been linked to aging. But a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has now shown that low levels of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide can stimulate an enzyme that helps slow down the aging of yeast cells.

One benefit of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, is that they neutralize —known as oxidants—which may otherwise react with important molecules in the body and destroy their biological functions. Larger amounts of oxidants can cause serious damage to DNA, cell membranes and proteins for example. Our have therefore developed powerful defense mechanisms to get rid of these oxidants, which are formed in our normal metabolism.

It was previously believed that oxidants were only harmful, but recently, scientists have begun to understand that they also have positive functions. Now, the new research from Chalmers University of Technology shows that the well-known hydrogen peroxide can actually slow down the aging of yeast cells. Hydrogen peroxide is a chemical used for hair and tooth whitening, among other things. It is also one of the metabolically produced oxidants that is harmful at higher concentrations.

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What rights does a robot have? If our machines become intelligent in the science-fiction way, that’s likely to become a complicated question — and the humans who nurture those robots just might take their side.

Ted Chiang, a science-fiction author of growing renown with long-lasting connections to Seattle’s tech community, doesn’t back away from such questions. They spark the thought experiments that generate award-winning novellas like “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” and inspire Hollywood movies like “Arrival.”

Chiang’s soulful short stories have earned him kudos from the likes of The New Yorker, which has called him “one of the most influential science-fiction writers of his generation.” During this year’s pandemic-plagued summer, he joined the Museum of Pop Culture’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. And this week, he’s receiving an award from the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation for employing imagination in service to society.

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Most efforts to combat the coronavirus have focused on public health measures and the race to develop a vaccine. However, a team from Columbia University, Cornell University, and others has developed something new: a nasal spray that attacks the virus directly. In a newly released study, the concoction was effective at deactivating the novel coronavirus before it could infect cells.

Like all viruses, SARS-CoV-2 (the causative agent of COVID-19) needs to enter a cell to reproduce. The virus injects its RNA genome and hijacks cellular machinery to make copies of itself, eventually killing the cell and spreading new virus particles to infect other cells. Gaining access to a cell requires a “key” that fits into a protein lock on the cell surface. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we call that the spike protein, and that’s where the new nasal spray blocker attacks.

The spike protein “unzips” when it meets up with a cell, exposing two chains of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins). The spray contains a lipoprotein, which has a complementary strand of amino acids linked with a cholesterol particle. The lipoprotein inserts itself into the spike protein, sticking to one of the chains that would otherwise bind to a receptor and allow the virus to infect the cell. With that lipoprotein in the way, the virus is inactivated.

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