Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: genetics

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Genetic Engineering and DNA alteration is an emerging technology with huge ramifications in the future, including potentially altering the DNA of adult humans, not just embryos or plants & animals.

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Listen or Download the audio of this episode from Soundcloud: Episode’s Audio-only version:
https://soundcloud.com/isaac-arthur-148927746/dna-manipulation-in-living-subjects.
Episode’s Narration-only version: https://soundcloud.com/isaac-arthur-148927746/dna-manipulation-in-living-subjects-narration-only.

Credits:
DNA Manipulation in Living Subjects.
Episode 227; Feb 27, 2020

Writers:
Isaac Arthur.

Editors:
David Jackson.
Jerry Guern.
Keith Blockus.

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Yesterday’s longevity AMA: michael lustgarten, phd.

Questionsabout yesterday’s video, and more…AMA!

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Timestamps:
0:51 Evaluating what’s optimal for biomarkers that are genetically low or high.
3:59 Details on replicating the approach.
6:59 EVOO
9:41 Carotid artery thickness scan.
10:55 Exercise routine.
18:26 Sirtuins, resveratrol and longevity.
19:31 Using blood testing to identify which supplements are detrimental, neutral, or beneficial at n=1
23:00 Devices that I use.
24:54 TG/HDL ratio.
26:47 Use of herbs, adaptogens.
30:00 Rapamycin.
33:23 Fish oil.
35:30 Other fish besides sardines?
37:12 Balance between taste and health.
38:00 Tracking starch intake?
40:50 Current macros.
42:32 Importance of thymus and immunosenescence.
45:04 Evaluating what’s optimal for dietary vitamin/mineral intake.
47:46 Taking time off from supplements before blood testing (or not)
49:52 Thoughts on genetic biomarkers.
51:32 Adding weights to the biomarkers/Are they all equal for their effects during aging.
57:20 Cinnamon vs biomarkers.
58:50 Managing the diet/approach in social settings.
1:00:30 Oils and cooking.
1:01:45 Biomarker weights.
1:03:05 Investigating factors surrounding thymus hypertrophy.
1:04:08 Liposomal delivery and aging.
1:06:52 Finding trusted sources for supplements.
1:08:00 Attia, Rhonda.
1:10:18 Not just focusing on cardio for health.
1:11:05 ION test.
1:15:00 What if I don’t beat the longevity record.
1:16:30 Where would I bet on anti-aging tech.
1:18:45 Liver detox.
1:19:36 How often I eat junk food.
1:21:10 Metformin.
1:22:50 Sauna.
1:24:41 Blood donation: impact on biological age?
1:25:25 Is there an upper limit for venous recovery after blood testing?
1:26:15 No cheat days for Christmas?
1:27:29 Next-generation biological age clocks?
1:31:09 Parabiosis.
1:33:19 CR and lymphocytes.
1:36:27 Protein intake.
1:40:08 Cortisol and hormones.
1:42:00 Blood pressure.
1:43:44 TruAge clock.
1:47:35 Noise in epigenetic testing.

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The earliest genetic traces of Native American ancestry among Polynesians.

The peopling of Polynesia was a stunning achievement: Beginning around 800 C.E., audacious Polynesian navigators in double-hulled sailing canoes used the stars and their knowledge of the waves to discover specks of land separated by thousands of kilometers of open ocean. Within just a few centuries, they had populated most of the Pacific Ocean’s far-flung islands. Now, researchers have used modern DNA samples to trace the exploration in detail, working out what order the islands were settled in and dating each new landfall to within a few decades.

“The whole question of the settlement of Polynesia has been going on for 200 years,” says University of Hawaii, Manoa, archaeologist Patrick Kirch, who was not involved in the research. “This is a really great paper, and I’m happy to see it.”

Archaeologists already had hints of how this great exploration took place. Studying the styles of stone tools and carvings, as well as languages, of the people on the various islands had suggested the original ancestors traced back to Samoa and that the expansion ended halfway across the ocean in Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. But they disagreed on whether it happened in a few centuries, beginning around 900 C.E., or started much earlier and lasted 1 millennium or more.

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Chinese scientists developed a targeted delivery system that can conduct precise gene-editing for inflammatory bowel disease. /CFP

Chinese scientists have developed a targeted delivery system that can bring gene-editing tools to colon cells, offering a precise cure for inflammatory bowel disease.

The study, published on Thursday in the journal Science Advances, reported a CRISPR-Cas9 prodrug nanosystem that can transport a gene-editing protein exclusively to inflammatory lesions in mice colons and then “switch on” the protein.

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Many intractable diseases are the result of a genetic mutation. Genome editing technology promises to correct the mutation and thus new treatments for patients. However, getting the technology to the cells that need the correction remains a major challenge. A new study led by CiRA Junior Associate Professor Akitsu Hotta and in collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited as part of the T-CiRA Joint Research Program reports how lipid nanoparticles provide an effective means for the delivery to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in mice.

Last year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry to the discoverers of CRISPR-Cas9 cemented the impact of genome editing technology. While CRISPR-Cas9 can be applied to agriculture and livestock for more nutritious food and robust crops, most media attention is on its medical potential. DMD is just one of the many diseases that researchers foresee a treatment using CRISPR-Cas9.

“Oligonucleotide drugs are now available for DMD, but their effects are transient, so the patient has to undergo weekly treatments. On the other hand, CRISPR-Cas9 effects are long lasting,” said Hotta.

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Gene therapy is a powerful developing technology that has the potential to address myriad diseases. For example, Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder, is caused by a mutation in a single gene, and if researchers could go into specific cells and correct that defect, theoretically those cells could regain normal function.

A major challenge, however, has been creating the right “delivery vehicles” that can carry genes and molecules into the that need treatment, while avoiding the cells that do not.

Now, a team led by Caltech researchers has developed a gene-delivery system that can specifically target cells while avoiding the . This is important because a gene therapy intended to treat a disorder in the brain, for example, could also have the side effect of creating a toxic immune response in the liver, hence the desire to find delivery vehicles that only go to their intended target. The findings were shown in both mouse and marmoset models, an important step towards translating the technology into humans.

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A new technology is allowing one company to produce full-spectrum cannabis without growing the plant itself.

Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but it’s very real. In what could be a global first, this week, a publicly traded Canadian-Israeli biotech firm company, BioHarvest Sciences, will announce that it has managed to produce at least 10kg of full-spectrum cannabis without the plant itself.

According to information procured exclusively, the biomass in question was created using the company’s proprietary BioFarming technology platform, which allows it to grow natural plant cells in bioreactors. In addition, management assures, the product is not genetically modified, and is “uniquely consistent and clean.” This could provide an interesting solution to two of the cannabis industry’s main pain points: product variability and contamination — the aseptic, controlled environment means the product isn’t affected by fungi, yeast, mold or any other contaminants or pesticides.

Exclusive details on breakthrough plant technology that could revolutionize medicine, food, land conservation and more.

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The double-helix structure has practically become synonymous with DNA, but it isn’t the only way long strands of genetic information squeeze themselves into a tight space.

When a double-strand of DNA doubles back on itself or attaches to another double-strand, it can actually create a quadruple-stranded knot, known as a G-quadruplex.

Scientists first discovered these ‘double-double-helixes’ in living human cells in 2013, and in the years since, these knots have been found in high concentrations in cancerous cells.

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Researchers from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and Saratov State University have come up with an inexpensive method for visualizing blood flow in the brain. The new technique is so precise it discerns the motions of individual red blood cells — all without the use of toxic dyeing agents or expensive genetic engineering. The study was published in The European Physical Journal Plus.

To understand more about how the brain’s blood supply works, researchers map its blood vessel networks. The resulting visualizations can rely on a variety of methods. One highly precise technique involves injecting fluorescent dyes into the blood flow and detecting the infrared light they emit. The problem with dyes is they are toxic and also may distort mapping results by affecting the vessels. Alternatively, researchers employ genetically modified animals, whose interior lining of blood vessels is engineered to give off light with no foreign substances involved. Both methods are very expensive, though.

Researchers from Skoltech and Saratov State University have devised an inexpensive method for visualizing even the smallest capillaries in the brain. The method — which integrates optical microscopy and image processing — is dye-free and very fine-grained, owing to its ability to detect each and every red blood cell travelling along a blood vessel. Since the number of RBCs in capillaries is not that high, every cell counts, so this is an important advantage over other methods, including dye-free ones.

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