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Category: genetics

A new story out on Engadget, emphasizing the need to make government treat science and technology as a primary focus:

Zoltan Istvan didn’t have much of a chance at being president, but that didn’t stop him from campaigning as the Transhumanist Party’s candidate to promote his pro-technology and science positions. Now, he’s setting his sights a bit lower, and with a different party. Istvan announced this morning that he plans to run for governor of California in 2018 under the Libertarian Party.

“We need leadership that is willing to use radical science, technology, and innovation—what California is famous for—to benefit us all,” he wrote in a Newsweek article. “We need someone with the nerve to risk the tremendous possibilities to save the environment through bioengineering, to end cancer by seeking a vaccine or a gene-editing solution for it, to embrace startups that will take California from the world’s 7th largest economy to maybe even the largest economy—bigger than the rest of America altogether.”

When we spoke to him in November, Istvan made it clear that he would be looking at the Libertarian Party if he were to run for president again. Not only does he identify as libertarian, he also saw the benefit of working with a more established political party, instead of starting one from the ground up.

“The most important thing I learned from my presidential campaign is that this is a team sport,” Istvan said in an email. “Without the proper managers, volunteers, spokespeople, and supporters, it’s really impossible to make a dent in an election. That’s part of the reason I joined the Libertarian Party for my governor run. They have tens of thousands of active supporters in California alone, so my election begins with real resources and infrastructure to draw upon. That’s a large difference from my Presidential campaign, where we essentially were shoe-stringing it the whole time.”

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In Brief

  • Researchers were able to increase the weight of tobacco plants by around 14 to 20 percent compared to unmodified plants by adding in genes to improve the process of photosynthesis.
  • If successful with other plants, the method could improve the yields of food crops such as cowpeas, rice, and cassava and decrease world hunger.

In terms of plants, the concept of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) often refers to the insertion of genetic information from one species of plant to another so that the recipient plant gains a desirable trait. This process has been used extensively to improve crop yields. For example, one type of rice has been made waterproof so that yields aren’t affected by heavy floods from typhoons.

Now, a group of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, has published a paper in the journal Science that takes a different approach to increasing crop yields. Instead of inserting genetic information from one species of plant into another to change it, these biologists used genetic modification to tweak a mechanism already inherent in plants.

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Need to share this with a few folks researching glaucoma disease and treatment/ mutation reversal.

Elderly are frequently hospitalized due to their age-associated organ degeneration, the presence of co-morbidities, and their susceptibility to adverse insults. Alterations in functional status often occur during hospitalization, and the degree of functional decline can parallel the severity of illnesses. For older persons, gauging their pre-morbid and in-hospital functional status facilitates treatment planning and potentially functional restoration1,2,3. While the identification of risk factors or markers of poor pre-morbid and in-hospital functional status may help facilitate this process, this area remains under-researched to date. Factors associated with functional decline in the hospitalized elderly include the types of morbidities and the reasons for their admission. Indeed, elderly with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are more likely to exhibit functional decline, beginning from the earlier stage of CKD to end-stage renal disease (ESRD)4,5; functional dependency also predisposes individuals with CKD and ESRD to recurrent hospitalization and higher mortality.

Albuminuria and proteinuria, as the staging criteria for CKD in the most recent version of Kidney Disease Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) CKD guidelines, are both well-established predictors of subsequent renal function decline. There is increasing awareness that albuminuria and proteinuria have an independent role in the prediction of adverse outcomes apart from the baseline renal function. As explained above, although CKD is associated with poor functional status, it is still unclear whether proteinuria alone exhibits similar association with functional status regardless of CKD. No reports focus on this association using the severity of proteinuria among geriatric patients with acute medical illnesses.

We hypothesized that elderly with proteinuria on admission, regardless of the presence of CKD, are more likely to have poor functional status, and that a dose-responsive relationship between the severity of proteinuria and that of functional impairment exists. Therefore, we conducted a cross-sectional study to evaluate this theory.

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To understand 1st how to solve things like cancer, or other immune deficiency disorders, or to solve the human system’s other mysteries; one must understand DNA v. RNA.

DNA is a deoxyribonucleic acid and is a hereditary material in all living organism. It is located in the nucleus of cell which is known as nuclear DNA. But small amount of DNA is also found in the mitochondria known as mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA whereas RNA is ribonucleic acid present in all living cells. It carries instructions from DNA which controls the synthesis of proteins but in some viruses RNA, instead of DNA carries the genetic information. Do you know who had reported first time nucleic acids in 1871 — Friedrich Miescher from nuclei of pus cells.

DNA deoxyribonucleic

Source: www.static.diffen.com

How Genetics define the hereditary characteristics of human?

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Yesterday, I shared the new cancer research discovery by Prof. Samie Jaffrey and his team. The following provides additional details on their discovery.

The human body is made of trillions of cells. Each fulfills a specific purpose, undergoes tremendous wear and tear and is eventually replaced. Despite extensive research, some questions related to protein production that fuels this simple process have gone unanswered. Fascinated by these intricacies, Prof. Samie Jaffrey, pharmacology, may have found part of the answer.

Jaffrey and his team discovered that messenger RNA molecules, responsible for conveying genetic information to protein producers in the cell, have special features that predetermine how much protein they generate. The discovery could provide scientists with a greater understanding of the causes of cancer and ways of regulating it.

“Over the past few years we have found that methylation [deposition of methyl groups] inside the mRNA can have effects on translation [the process of translating genetic information to physical protein production] and stability,” Jaffrey said.

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By Jonathan Latham, PhD

Test your understanding of the living world with this simple question. What kind of biomolecule is found in all living organisms? If your answer is “DNA”, you are incorrect. The mistake is very forgiveable though. The standard English-language biology education casts DNA (DeoxyriboNucleic Acid) as the master molecule of life, coordinating and controlling most, if not all, living functions. This master molecule concept is popular. It is plausible. It is taught in every university and high school. But it is wrong. DNA is no master controller, nor is it even at the centre of biology. Instead, science overwhelmingly shows that life is self-organised and thus the pieces are in place for biology to undergo the ultimate paradigm shift.

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Over the past several years, DARPA-funded researchers have pioneered RNA vaccine technology, a medical countermeasure against infectious diseases that uses coded genetic constructs to stimulate production of viral proteins in the body, which in turn can trigger a protective antibody response. As a follow-on effort, DARPA funded research into genetic constructs that can directly stimulate production of antibodies in the body., DARPA is now launching the Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program, aimed at developing that foundational work into an entire system capable of halting the spread of any viral disease outbreak before it can escalate to pandemic status. Such a capability would offer a stark contrast to the state of the art for developing and deploying traditional vaccines—a process that does not deliver treatments to patients until months, years, or even decades after a viral threat emerges.

“DARPA’s goal is to create a technology platform that can place a protective treatment into health providers’ hands within 60 days of a pathogen being identified, and have that treatment induce protection in patients within three days of administration. We need to be able to move at this speed considering how quickly outbreaks can get out of control,” said Matt Hepburn, the P3 Program Manager. “The technology needs to work on any viral disease, whether it’s one humans have faced before or not.”

Recent outbreaks of viral infectious diseases such as Zika, H1N1 influenza, and Ebola have cast into sharp relief the inability of the global health system to rapidly contain the spread of a disease using existing tools and procedures. State-of-the-art medical countermeasures typically take many months or even years to develop, produce, distribute, and administer. These solutions often arrive too late—if at all—and in quantities too small to respond to emerging threats. In contrast, the envisioned P3 platform would cut response time to weeks and stay within the window of relevance for containing an outbreak.

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