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Category: genetics

Designing Plants To Bring Quality Of Life — Dr. Björn Örvar, Ph.D., CSO, EVP, Co-Founder, ORF Genetics (Iceland)

Dr. Björn Lárus Örvar, Ph.D. is Chief Scientific Officer, Executive VP of Business Development, and a Co-Founder of ORF Genetics (https://www.orfgenetics.com/), an innovative plant biotechnology company and a pioneer in developing and manufacturing high-quality recombinant proteins, such as growth factors, derived from barley plants.

ORF Genetics was established in 2001 to develop innovative, economically viable and enabling solutions to produce recombinant proteins, using barley grain as a vehicle for their production, providing a more efficient and safer method than other protein expression systems provide.

Dr. Örvar served as the CEO of the company from 2006 to 2,013 and the Executive V.P. and Chief Scientific Officer of ORF Genetics since 2,013 and was the Member of the Board of ORF Genetics from 2001 to 2006.

Dr. Örvar received his Ph.D. in plant molecular genetics in 1997 from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and was a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University, Montréal for three years, focusing on plant cell stress signalling.

Dr. Örvar is responsible for research and innovation within the company as well as being the international spokesperson for ORFs skincare brand, BIOEFFECT.

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The path that led Jennifer Doudna, PhD, and her colleagues to the development of CRISPR, the gene-editing tool that has revolutionized science and earned her a Nobel Prize, started with their deep curiosity and drive to understand how the most basic building blocks of life function.

When Doudna first decided to investigate precisely what systems bacteria use to adapt their immune systems to fight off viral infections, she had little expectation that the findings would ultimately provide the key to technology that could be used to safely alter genetic code.

“All of us [on the research team] realized that what had started as a fundamental research question was morphing into a very different kind of project; namely, one with enormous technical potential and also risks and opportunities that we had not appreciated when we started the work,” Doudna explained during a conversation with J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, chair of the AAMC Board of Directors and executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, at the opening plenary of Learn Serve Lead 2021: The Virtual Experience, on Monday, Nov. 8.

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The human genome can be thought of as a massive library, containing over 20,000 different “instruction manuals”: your genes. For example, there are genes which contain information to build a brain cell, a skin cell, a white blood cell, and so on. There are even genes that contain information about regulating the genome itself—like books that explain how to organize a library. The ability to regulate gene expression —in other words, the cell’s ability to turn various constellations of genes on or off—is the basis of why different cells (such as a muscle cell or a brain cell) have different forms and functions.

For any library to be useful to a reader, it needs to be organized in an easily searchable way. For example, all the books pertaining to world history may be on one shelf, whereas the cookbooks may be in an entirely different section of the library. In a cellular nucleus, there is over six feet of genetic material packed into a space 50 times smaller than the width of a human hair. How is the “library” in the nucleus organized? When a cell needs to regulate certain genes, how does the cellular machinery find the right ones amongst 20,000 others?

A new paper from the laboratory of Mitchell Guttman, professor of biology, uses a powerful new tool that can peer into the world of the cell’s genetic material (DNA.

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In a study published in Nucleic Acids Research, the team of cancer researcher Francis Rodier, an Université de Montréal professor, shows for the first time that cellular senescence, which occurs when aging cells stop dividing, is caused by irreversible damage to the genome rather than simply by telomere erosion.

This discovery goes against the scientific model most widely adopted in the last 15 years, which is based on one principle: telomeres, caps located at the ends of chromosomes whose purpose is to protect genetic information, erode with each cell division. When they get too short, they tell the cell to stop dividing, thus preventing damage to its DNA. Made dormant, the cell enters senescence.

For this model to be valid, the inactivation of a single should be sufficient to activate the senescence program. Rodier’s laboratory and many others had already observed that several dysfunctional telomeres were necessary.

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1. In a paper published on October 28 2021, in the peer-reviewed Journal of Heredity, scientists from the San Diego Zoo revealed that at least two California condors born over the last 40 years or so are biologically fatherless. A genetic database maintained since the 1980s showed no trace whatsoever of paternal genes in their DNA.

2. No one knows whether reproducing asexually is a new talent for California condors. Maybe the species has always been capable of it. California condors almost went extinct in the 1980s, and they are still endangered. Because of this, the number of animals in the genetic database is too small for anyone to address the question reasonably.

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Dr. Yuval Noah Harari, macro-historian, Professor, best-selling author of “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus,” and one of the world’s most innovative and exciting thinkers, has a few hypotheses of his own on the future of humanity.

He examines what might happen to the world when old myths are coupled with new godlike technologies, such as artificial intelligence and genetic engineering.

Harari tackles into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the uncharted territory of the future.

According to Harari, we are probably one of the last generation of homo sapiens. Within a century earth will be dominated from entities that are not even human, intelligent species that are barely biological. Harari suggests the possibility that humans are algorithms, and as such Homo sapiens may not be dominant in a universe where big data becomes a paradigm.
Robots and AI will most likely replace us in our jobs once they become intelligent enough.

Although he is hopeful that AI might help us solve many problems, such as healthcare, climate change, poverty, overpopulation etc, he cautions about the possibility of an AI arms race.

Furthermore Dr. Yuval Noah Harari suggests this technology will also allow us to upgrade our brains and nervous systems. For example, humans will be able to connect their minds directly to the internet via brain implants.

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The USA Government is secretly working on a real Anti Aging Pill which aims to extend peoples lifespan and improve their health. This new longevity research project even made Aubrey De Grey interested as he said in an interview. Although he’s working on other kinds of medication to make people live forever or at least to stop peoples aging.

Dr. David Sinclair’s main research interest is the epigenetics of aging, with a focus on epigenetic reprogramming of aging, NAD+ metabolism and sirtuins, and NAD+ precursors like NR and NMN. David Sinclair is also working on supplements that are supposed to slow down the aging process.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The first of its kind.
02:28 How this Pill is going to help.
04:48 Aubrey De Grey’s Opinion.
05:43 The Future of Longevity Biotechnology.
07:07 Last Words.
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#aubreydegrey #longevity #aging

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According to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the 4-IR follows the first, second, and third Industrial Revolutions—the mechanical, electrical, and digital, respectively. The 4-IR builds on the digital revolution, but Schwab sees the 4-IR as an exponential takeoff and convergence of existing and emerging fields, including Big Data; artificial intelligence; machine learning; quantum computing; and genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. The consequence is the merging of the physical, digital, and biological worlds. The blurring of these categories ultimately challenges the very ontologies by which we understand ourselves and the world, including “what it means to be human.”

The specific applications that make up the 4-R are too numerous and sundry to treat in full, but they include a ubiquitous internet, the internet of things, the internet of bodies, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, 3D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and more.

While Schwab and the WEF promote a particular vision for the 4-IR, the developments he announces are not his brainchildren, and there is nothing original about his formulations. Transhumanists and Singularitarians (or prophets of the technological singularity), such as Ray Kurzweil and many others, forecasted these and more revolutionary developments,. long before Schwab heralded them. The significance of Schwab and the WEF’s take on the new technological revolution is the attempt to harness it to a particular end, presumably “a fairer, greener future.”

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A team of physicists has discovered how 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).

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Many people develop Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia as they get older. However, others remain sharp well into old age, even if their brains show underlying signs of neurodegeneration.

Among these cognitively resilient people, researchers have identified and amount of time spent on intellectually stimulating activities as factors that help prevent dementia. A new study by MIT researchers shows that this kind of enrichment appears to activate a called MEF2, which controls a genetic program in the brain that promotes resistance to cognitive decline.

The researchers observed this link between MEF2 and cognitive resilience in both humans and mice. The findings suggest that enhancing the activity of MEF2 or its targets might protect against age-related dementia.

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