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As we age, our muscles gradually become smaller, weaker and less able to heal after injury. In a new study, UPMC and University of Pittsburgh researchers pinpoint an important mediator of youthfulness in mouse muscle, a discovery that could advance muscle regeneration therapies for older people.

Published today in Nature Aging, the study demonstrates that circulating shuttles called , or EVs, deliver for the longevity protein known as Klotho to cells. Loss of muscle function and impaired muscle repair in old may be driven by aged EVs, which carry fewer copies of these instructions than those in .

The findings are an important advance in understanding why the capacity for muscles to regenerate dwindles with age.

http://spie.org/bios.

Boyden’s award-winning research has led to tools that can activate or silence neurons with light, enabling the causal assessment of how specific neurons contribute to normal and pathological brain functions.

Ed Boyden is the founder and principal investigator of the Synthetic Neurobiology Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The group develops tools for controlling and observing the dynamic circuits of the brain, and uses these neurotechnologies to understand how cognition and emotion arise from brain network operation, as well as to enable systematic repair of intractable brain disorders such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, and chronic pain.

Many disorders of the brain currently are treated with drugs or electrical stimulation. Nearly a quarter of million people have implanted electrical probes in their brains for such stimulation. The problem with this approach is that it targets large areas of the brain instead of the discrete cells or location that cause the disorder. Boyden works on implementing light-stimulated processes in the brain to address these disorders at the cellular level. The method utilizes adeno-associated viruses (AAV) to create light-sensitive centers in the brain which can then be stimulated by light pulses. Very small optical waveguides (fibers) can then be introduced in the brain to stimulate these sites.

Boyden was named to the “Top 35 Innovators Under the Age of 35″ by Technology Review and to the “Top 20 Brains Under Age 40″ by Discover, and has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Society for Neuroscience Research Award for Innovation in Neuroscience, and the Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, as well as numerous other recognitions. In early 2011, he was an invited speaker at the renowned TED conference, sharing the bill with a high-powered lineup that included presenters as diverse as Bill Gates and choreographer Julie Taymor.

He has contributed numerous articles to SPIE Proceedings, and was an invited speaker at the Biomedical Optics Hot Topics Session at SPIE Photonics West 2011.

Nick talks to Stanford psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr. Karl Deisseroth. They discuss a range of topics about the brain, including autism, depression, bipolar disorder, dissociation, and more. They also talk about optogenetics, a technique Karl co-developed which uses light to control specific neurons in the brain, allowing neuroscientists to turn circuits in the brain on and off to reveal how the brain generates perception, emotion, and behavior. They also talk about Karls’ new book, “Projections: A Story of Human Emotion.”

Buy “Projections” by Karl Deisseroth: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1984853694/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1984853694&linkCode=as2&tag=lifeboatfound-20&linkId=8e84ac9937aeb22c6158be40e9fc7537
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About Nick Jikomes:

Nick is a neuroscientist and podcast host. He is currently Director of Science & Innovation at Leafly, the world’s largest cannabis information resource. He received a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University and a B.S. in Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

0:00:00 Episode Intro.
0:03:44 Karl Deisseroth Intro.
0:07:19 “Projections” Book Synopsis.
0:13:02 Language & Psychiatry.
0:18:19 Psychiatry vs. Neurology vs. Neuroscience.
0:20:57 What is Optogenetics?
0:29:46 Optogenetics Video Example.
0:38:25 Can Optogenetics Be Used in Humans?
0:44:09 Anxiety.
0:50:34 Brain Basis of Complex Behaviors.
0:58:50 Importance of Basic Research.
1:08:46 Dissociation.
1:20:02 Treatment Resistant Depression.
1:23:30 Ketamine, Psychedelics & Depression.
1:28:24 Autism.
1:36:55 Final Thoughts

In this episode, I talk to world-renowned biologist David Sinclair about aging and longevity. David rejects the notion that the deterioration of health is a natural part of growing old and asserts that aging is a disease itself that we need to reverse. But how will a reset of our biological clocks affect our interactions, responses to adversity, morality, and how we live our lives? We discuss the ethical implications of limitless lifespans and also touch on the topics of death, evolution, genetics, medicine, and data tracking.

Bio.
Dr. David Sinclair is a professor in the department of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the scientific journal Aging. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. In addition to being a co-founder of several biotechnology companies, he’s the author of the book Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To. Dr. Sinclair was listed by TIME magazine as one of the “100 most influential people in the world”.

Website: sinclair.hms.harvard.edu.

Twitter: @davidasinclair.

Topics.

00:02:26 David’s “sticky beak” personality.

Circa 2019


Researchers of Sechenov University and University of Pittsburgh described the most promising strategies in applying genetic engineering for studying and treating Parkinson’s disease. This method can help evaluate the role of various cellular processes in pathology progression, develop new drugs and therapies, and estimate their efficacy using animal disease models. The study was published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder accompanied by a wide array of motor and cognitive impairments. It develops mostly among elderly people (after the age of 55–60). Parkinson’s symptoms usually begin gradually and get worse over time. As the disease progresses, people may have difficulty controlling their movements, walking and talking and, more importantly, taking care of themselves. Although there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, medicines, surgical treatment, and other therapies can often relieve some symptoms.

The disease is characterized by significant (up to 50–70%) loss of dopaminergic neurons, i.e. nerve cells that synthesize neurotransmitter dopamine which enables communication between the neurons. Another hallmark is the presence of Lewy bodies — oligomeric deposits of a protein called alpha-synuclein inside the neurons.

There’s also been a lot of interest in creating more versatile “living inks” made up of bacteria, which can be genetically engineered to do everything from deliver drugs to clean up pollutants. But so far, approaches have relied on mixing microbes with polymers that help provide the ink with some structural integrity.

Now, researchers have developed a new living ink that more closely lives up to the name by replacing the polymers with a protein made by genetically engineered E. coli bacteria. The researchers say this opens the door to seeding large-scale, living structures from nothing more than a simple cell culture.

The key to the breakthrough was to repurpose the proteins that E. coli cells secrete to stick together and form hard-to-shift biofilms. In a paper in Nature Communications, the researchers describe how they genetically engineered bacteria to produce two different versions of this protein known as a “knob” and a “hole,” which then lock together to form a robust cross-linked mesh.

Western intelligence agencies fear Beijing could within decades dominate all of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics.

China’s economic and military rise over the past 40 years is considered to be one of the most significant geopolitical events of recent times, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union which ended the Cold War.

MI6, depicted by novelists as the employer of some of the most memorable fictional spies from John le Carré’s George Smiley to Ian Fleming’s James Bond, operates overseas and is tasked with defending Britain and its interests.

Kind of starts out with a no but ends in a yes. Just a few minutes long.


An increasing number of studies suggest the presence of a “metabolic clock” that controls aging. This clock involves the accumulation of metabolic alterations and a decline in metabolic homeostasis and biological fitness. There are nine cellular hallmarks of aging: telomere attrition, genomic instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient sensing, epigenetic alterations, and altered intercellular communication. Metabolic alterations have been implicated in each of these processes.

https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(13)00645-4
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)30981-3.pdf.

David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.

Dr David Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives.

Dr David Sinclair is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Life Biosciences, Sirtris, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others.
He is also co-founder and co-chief editor of the journal Aging. He is an inventor on 35 patents and has received more than 35 awards and honors. In 2014, he was on Time Magazine’s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and listed as Time’s Top 50 in healthcare in 2018.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that none of the information in this video constitutes health advice or should be substituted in lieu of professional guidance. The video content is purely for informational purposes.

#DavidSinclair #ReverseAging #Epigenetic #OleicAcid#NMN #NAD #Sirtuins #Fasting #Exercise #NMN #NADIV #Longevity #RestoreYouth #Reprogramming #DavidSinclair #DrSinclairLab #Lifespan #Healthspan #Younger #Resveratrol #antiaging #DrSinclair #NAD #longevity #Bioscience #Epigenome #AndrewHuberman

A new type of cell has been identified in the heart that is linked to regulating heart rate – and the discovery promises to advance our understanding of cardiovascular defects and diseases, once these cells have been more extensively studied.

The new cell is a type of glial cell – cells that support nerve cells – like astrocytes in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). Named nexus glia, they’re located in the outflow tract of the heart, the place where many congenital heart defects are found.

The new cell type was first found in zebrafish, before being confirmed in mouse and human hearts too. Experiments on zebrafish found that when the cells were removed, heart rate increased; and when genetic editing blocked glial development, the heartbeat became irregular.