But not everyone is on board.
“The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take,” University of Colorado geneticist James Sikela told the MIT Technology Review. “It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued.”
Pinpointing the gene’s role in intelligence could help scientists understand how humans evolved to be so smart, MIT Tech reports.
Posted in bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, life extension | Leave a Comment on Program: We are happy to announce Dr. Ruby Yanru Chen-Tsai, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Applied StemCell, Inc. as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference
“Ruby, along with her company Applied Stem Cell, is one of the world’s most respected experts in gene editing. We are delighted to be working with her on our ambitious project to transform the potential of somatic gene therapy, in terms of both its safety from creating unwanted mutations and its efficacy in delivering large amounts of DNA, which is founded on some pioneering work at Stanford in which she was also heavily involved.” says Aubrey de Grey.
#undoingaging #sens #foreverhealthy
In a new study published in the journal Human Biology, archaeologists from the Tel Aviv University reveal the molecular similarities between Neanderthals and woolly mammoths by studying three case studies.
Scientists discover that two completely different species can evolve and develop the same genetic characteristics. In a landmark study, Neanderthals and woolly mammoths are found to be very similar to each other.
This article opened with some fearful figures about cancer and its effect on people worldwide. But there’s reason to hope.
While the total number of new cancer cases and deaths continues to increase, the rates of cancer diagnoses and deaths decline each year — as absolute figures don’t account for rises in life expectancy, population growth, or aging populations. We’ve made great strides in understanding the disease and its various genetic and environmental origins. And events like Breast Cancer Awareness Month continue to educate the populace about the preventative measures available to them.
Thanks to scientists like those at the University of Basel in Switzerland, we may have more reasons to be hopeful very soon.
A team of researchers from Nanjing and Xiamen Universities in China has developed an alternative to using viruses to transport CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tools into a desired cell—and it involves two types of light. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their new type of carrier and how well it worked with test mice.
CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tools are a coming revolution in treating genetic conditions, and scientists continue to test their abilities in a variety of applications. One area of study has involved looking for a replacement carrier system—the current approach uses a virus to carry the gene editing tool into a particular cell. Early on, researchers knew that the virus approach was not viable because of possible responses from the immune system, or worse, the threat of initiating tumors. In this new effort, the team in China has come up with an entirely new way to deliver the gene editing tool using two kinds of light.
Their carrier system consists of nanoparticles that are sensitive to low-energy near–infrared radiation (NIR) and that emit UV light. When NIR is shone on the nanoparticles, the light is absorbed and converted to UV light, which is emitted. Inside of a cell, the package is activated by shining NIR onto the skin, where it penetrates into the body and makes its way to the gene editing tool. When the NIR is converted to UV light, it cuts molecules in the carrier package, releasing the gene editing tool to do its work.
Posted in biotech/medical, chemistry, food, genetics, information science, robotics/AI | Leave a Comment on Agriculture: Machine learning can reveal optimal growing conditions to maximize taste, other features
What goes into making plants taste good? For scientists in MIT’s Media Lab, it takes a combination of botany, machine-learning algorithms, and some good old-fashioned chemistry.
Using all of the above, researchers in the Media Lab’s Open Agriculture Initiative report that they have created basil plants that are likely more delicious than any you have ever tasted. No genetic modification is involved: The researchers used computer algorithms to determine the optimal growing conditions to maximize the concentration of flavorful molecules known as volatile compounds.
But that is just the beginning for the new field of “cyber agriculture,” says Caleb Harper, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Media Lab and director of the OpenAg group. His group is now working on enhancing the human disease-fighting properties of herbs, and they also hope to help growers adapt to changing climates by studying how crops grow under different conditions.
At the Undoing Aging 2019 conference, we had the opportunity to interview Yuri Deigin, the CEO of Youthereum Genetics. His company is developing therapies that focus on OSKM, the Yamanaka factors known for turning cells back into a pluripotent state. By partially reprogramming cells using a single component of OSKM, Oct4, the company hopes to remove epigenetic aging from cells while still allowing them to retain their normal functions.
Do you think epigenetic alterations are a cause or a consequence of aging, and why?
Well, this question has so many different parts that need to be addressed. Of course, there are alterations that are consequences. Some of the epigenetics are consequences of aging, like epigenetic drift, with things that aren’t methylated in cells, as they divide throughout the lifetime, that methylation seems to get diluted away with subsequent divisions, but other parts of the genome, many of the epigenetic changes that happen that we can track throughout the aging of an organism are definitely not consequences of aging; they’re actually, from what I understand, causes of aging or causes in the change of metabolism and change of homeostasis, change how the organism behaves, essentially, that are driven by some high program in animal development, that basically silences some genes and activates other genes.
Galor says the study results, published on Monday, April 1, in Nature Ecology & Evolution, lend credence to what he and a colleague had surmised in a highly influential 2002 paper — that during the pre-industrial era, the natural selection of those who were genetically predisposed toward having fewer children was instrumental in spurring industrialization and sustained economic growth.
In a study of 200 years of pre-industrial Quebecois genealogical history, researchers at Brown found that fertility-related changes in natural selection during the pre-industrial era paved the way for economic and technological progress.
Conventional DNA is comprised of the familiar A, C, G, and T base pairs, but a newly created genetic system is packed with eight, thus doubling the number of letters normally found in self-replicating molecules. Intriguingly, the new system, dubbed “hachimoji,” could resemble the building blocks of extraterrestrial life.
New research published yesterday in Science describes the hachimoji, which means “eight letters” in Japanese. In addition to the conventional four base pairs, this genetic system has an extra four building blocks, dramatically increasingly the information density compared to regular DNA. The scientists behind the work, led by Steven Benner from the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Alachua, Florida, said the new system may be robust enough to support life, that is, to support the processes required for Darwinian self-replication.
It is a crazy thought, right?! To think that mushrooms could be alien life. But before you dismiss the idea, take a look at some of principles of the theory. The main concept was formulated by the ingenious psychonaut philosopher Terrence McKenna, and goes along following lines.
Like no other form of life on our planet, the spores of mushrooms are almost perfectly suited to space travel. They can survive high vacuum and insanely low temperatures; the casing of a spore is one of the most electron dense materials in nature, to the point where McKenna says it is almost akin to a metal; global currents are even able to form on the quasi-metallic surface of an airborne spore, which then acts as a repellent to the extreme radiation of space. It is a mind boggling thought that something could evolve to be so perfectly suited to explore the universe.
If a civilization is advanced enough, then chances are their concepts and understanding of reality would far outweigh ours. If they were advanced enough to be able to change their very genetic structure, then there would be a lot of merit in changing/evolving into a mushroom. Mushrooms are highly resilient, non-invasive, practically immortal, full of neurotransmitters, and able to weather space. It would be the perfect way to explore and colonize the galaxy. Plus once mushrooms establish themselves, they create an underground neural network of mycelium that highly resembles the neural networks of the human brain or the internet.
