Youthereum talking about rejuvenation, funding, there is a history lesson here but the modern look starts at 38:01.
My overview of the history of partial reprogramming — a novel approach to epigenetic rejuvenation that uses short bursts of Yamanaka factors expression to periodically roll back the epigenetic state of cells to a younger pattern.
A newly discovered antibody was able to neutralize not only all strains of COVID-19, but other coronaviruses known to cause respiratory infections in humans — a potential silver bullet for a whole class of deadly, flu-like viruses.
Mutant viruses: As viruses spread, they undergo tiny genetic mutations, and when we find a unique version of the virus, we call it a new strain.
Occasionally, new strains appear that can spread more easily, evade the immune system, or cause more severe disease.
The groups also explained why in previous studies by other scientists, the chromatin appeared to fill the cell nuclei. “When scientists plate cells on a glass slide in order to study them under a microscope, they change their volume and physically flatten them. This may perturb some of the forces governing chromatin arrangement and reduce the distance between the upper part of the nucleus to its base,” Safran explains.
If you open a biology textbook and run through the images depicting how DNA is organized in the cell’s nucleus, chances are you’ll start feeling hungry; the chains of DNA would seem like a bowl of ramen: long strings floating in liquid. However, according to two new studies—one experimental and the other theoretical—that are the outcome of the collaboration between the groups of Prof. Talila Volk of the Molecular Genetics Department and Prof. Sam Safran of the Chemical and Biological Physics Department at the Weizmann Institute of Science, this image should be reconsidered. Clarifying it is essential since DNA’s spatial arrangement in the nucleus can affect the expression of genes contained within the DNA molecule, and hence the proteins found in the cell.
This story began when Volk was studying how mechanical forces influence cell nuclei in the muscle and found evidence that muscle contractions had an immediate effect on gene expression patterns. “We couldn’t explore this further because existing methods relied on imaging of chemically preserved cells, so they failed to capture what happens in the cell nuclei of an actual working muscle,” she says.
To address this issue, Dr. Dana Lorber, a research associate in Volk’s group, led the design of a device that makes it possible to study muscle nuclei in live fruit fly larvae. The device holds the tiny, translucent larva within a groove that allows it to contract and relax its muscles but keeps its movement constrained so that it can be scanned by a fluorescence microscope. Using the device, the researchers obtained images of the internal, linearly-organized complexes of DNA and its proteins (known as chromatin), surrounded by the membrane of the muscle nuclei.
A genomic analysis of lung cancer in people with no history of smoking has found that a majority of these tumors arise from the accumulation of mutations caused by natural processes in the body. This study was conducted by an international team led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and describes for the first time three molecular subtypes of lung cancer in people who have never smoked.
These insights will help unlock the mystery of how lung cancer arises in people who have no history of smoking and may guide the development of more precise clinical treatments. The findings were published September 6 2021, in Nature Genetics.
“What we’re seeing is that there are different subtypes of lung cancer in never smokers that have distinct molecular characteristics and evolutionary processes,” said epidemiologist Maria Teresa Landi, M.D., Ph.D., of the Integrative Tumor Epidemiology Branch in NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, who led the study, which was done in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, another part of NIH, and other institutions. “In the future we may be able to have different treatments based on these subtypes.”
To Sheng-Ying Pao, the power of reframing CRISPR lies in what is absolutely ordinary: paper. In CRISPaper, Pao revisited a cultural past in the ancient art of papermaking.
Over thousands of years, farmers painstakingly converted the wild rice plant into a staple crop. Today, researchers are using CRISPR to change genes to optimize grain yield. However, rice is more than food. In ancient China, it was used to make paper.
Pao took rice stalks from plants edited with CRISPR and ground the fibers into pulp. She then poured the pulp over a mesh screen. Every time she dipped the screen into water, the plant fibers would lift and resettle on top of the mesh, eventually making paper. Through the genome-edited rice plant, an ancient practice was juxtaposed with cutting-edge technology. Pao’s meditative ritual of papermaking is a counterbalance to the strangeness of the source material.
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Ian Bremmer.
If you could cure genetic diseases by editing DNA sequences, would you?
GZERO Media #GZEROWorld
Berkeley scientist Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize for her work on the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. It has the potential to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and hereditary blindness and may even be used to treat cancer and HIV. But when it comes to editing humanity, where do we draw the line?
International research team isolates DNA
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).
The cumulative effect of reduced PTPN2 activity on both mechanisms was an elevated fluid loss. The researchers proved this defect could be reversed by treating cells lacking PTPN2 with recombinant -; or synthetic -; matriptase.
A team of researchers led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside, has identified a novel mechanism by which loss-of-function mutations in the gene PTPN2, found in many patients with inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD, affect how intestinal epithelial cells maintain a barrier.
The intestinal epithelium, a single layer of cells, plays a critical role in human health by providing a barrier while also allowing nutrient and water absorption. Intestinal epithelial cells are needed for regulating immune function, communicating with the intestinal microbiota, and protecting the gut from pathogen infection -; all of which critically depend on an intact epithelial barrier.
Affecting roughly 3 million Americans, IBD is a set of chronic intestinal diseases in which the lining of the gut becomes inflamed and leaky. Increased gut leakiness has recently been confirmed to increase the risk of developing IBD.
Cats have many superior genetic mutations like night vision even immunity to the current pandemic. If we can find the key to their immunity we could find a way to have near super human immunity.
“Getting a better understanding of the cat’s biology and genetic makeup will help us better understand the biology of humans, too,” says Leslie Lyons. (Credit: Lottie/Flickr)
The findings, published in Trends in Genetics, come after decades of genome DNA sequencing by Leslie Lyons, professor of comparative medicine in the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine. Their cat genome assembly is nearly 100% complete.
The late 21st century belongs to Superhumans. Technological progress in the field of medicine through gene editing tools like CRISPR is going to revolutionize what it means to be human. The age of Superhumans is portrayed in many science fiction movies, but for the first time in our species history, radically altering our genome is going to be possible through the methods and tools of science.
The gene-editing tool CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, could help us to reprogram life. It gives scientists more power and precision than they have ever had to alter human DNA.
Genetic engineering holds great promise for the future of humanity. A growing number of scientists including David Sinclair believe that we will soon be able to engineer and change our genes in a way that will help us live longer and healthier lives.
But how much should we really tinker with our own nature? What is the moral responsibility of scientists and humans towards future generations?
With technological advances in molecular biology like CRISPR that allow for specific gene editing approaches, many scientists argue that there are strong potential benefits as well as risks to human genetic engineering.
David Sinclair is a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. He believes it’s possible to unlock the fountain of youth.
The potential uses of such gene editing techniques could range from the treatment of disease to the enhancement of beauty and intelligence.
New discoveries in gene editing technologies are popping up everywhere in the world and experts predict that we will see many more in coming years. Many scientists believe that genetic engineering is the future of our evolution. It provides us with a chance to give ourselves any traits we want, such as muscle mass or eye color. Basically, anything is possible.
