Can we decrease mutation rate in humans?

⁴Institute for Cardiovascular Regeneration, Centre of Molecular Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

⁵German Center for Cardiovascular Research DZHK, Partner site Frankfurt Rhine-Main, Berlin, Germany.

⁶Cardiopulmonary Institute, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.

Did they unlock one of the vital keys to stop aging?

According to a recent National Eye Institute (NEI) study in mice, loss of the protein pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF), which protects retinal support cells, may promote age-related changes in the retina.

Age-related retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), can cause blindness since the retina is the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. The new information could help develop medicines to stop AMD and other aging conditions of the retina. The research was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

“People have called PEDF the ‘youth’ protein because it is abundant in young retinas, but it declines during aging,” said Patricia Becerra, Ph.D., chief of NEI’s Section of Protein Structure and Function and senior author of the study. “This study showed for the first time that just removing PEDF leads to a host of gene changes that mimic aging in the retina.”

6G radiation is affecting brain cells. As 6G as the successor of 5G is poised to take over the world, should we worry? I feel so.

Discovery could help assess new communication technology and also develop therapies to treat brain diseases, Beijing researchers say.

Possibly this will make covid-19 less severe and manageable.

Medicine developed at Ichilov moderates immune response, helps prevent deadly cytokine storm, researchers say; 29 of 30 phase 1 trial patients left hospital within 3–5 days.

Islamic religious scientist points out a hidden existential threat, worse even than the SARS-CoV-2 virus: two-legged viruses that spread liberal democracy.

Iranian scholar Alireza Ebadi, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative in the Southern Khorasan Province, said in a lecture that aired on Khorasan Jonoobi TV (Iran) on April 10, 2020 that the “virus” of Western liberal democracy is even worse than the coronavirus since it has caused the deaths and displacement of millions of people, two world wars, coups in various countries such as Iraq, the spread of cholera in Yemen, and Western intervention in Syria, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Ebadi expressed hope that once humanity defeats the “pest” of the coronavirus, it will “make sure the greatest pests of all do not escape.” He added: “May God [save] humanity from [the] two-legged viruses.”

Like all communities, space colonies need to be socially stable. What do succeeded and failed Utopia’s on Earth teach us?

Most utopian communities are, like most start-ups, short-lived. What makes the difference between failure and success?

Let us not forget to finally get rid of this old killer.

The Campaign To Wipe Out Polio: Good News And Bad News : Goats and Soda The World Health Organization is celebrating the eradication of another strain of the polio virus. Yet major challenges remain in the global effort to get rid of the disease.

A new pathogen can have devastating consequences in genetically homogenous populations.

When Spanish forces arrived in Mexico in 1519, the native population was estimated to be around 25 million. A century later, there were only around 1 million left, following several devastating outbreaks of disease brought in from overseas.

Despite plenty of speculation, the diseases that contributed to the collapse of Aztec society remain unconfirmed. But now scientists have presented the first DNA evidence of a bacterial species from one of the worst epidemics — and it suggests that a deadly outbreak of salmonella might have been involved.

The downfall of Aztec society has been the source of plenty of fascination, and it’s generally believed that a variety of factors were involved — mainly the arrival of Spanish forces, followed by several outbreaks of European diseases among the native population.

Like all communities, space colonies need to be socially stable. What do succeeded and failed Utopias on Earth teach us?

Most utopian communities are, like most start-ups, short-lived. What makes the difference between failure and success?

The more crops we cultivate, the less chance our food supply wil get wiped out by a disease.

Out of the more than 300,000 plant species in existence, only three species—rice, wheat, and maize—account for most of the plant matter that humans consume, partly because in the history of agriculture, mutations arose that made these crops the easiest to harvest. But with CRISPR technology, we don’t have to wait for nature to help us domesticate plants, argue researchers at the University of Copenhagen. In a Review published March 2 in Trends in Plant Science, they describe how gene editing could make, for example, wild legumes, quinoa, or amaranth, which are already sustainable and nutritious, more farmable.

“In theory, you can now take those traits that have been selected for over thousands of years of crop domestication—such as reduced bitterness and those that facilitate easy harvest—and induce those mutations in plants that have never been cultivated,” says senior author Michael Palmgren, a botanist who heads an interdisciplinary think tank called “Plants for a Changing World” at the University of Copenhagen.

The approach has already been successful in accelerating domestication of undervalued crops using less precise gene-editing methods. For example, researchers used chemical mutagenesis to induce random mutations in weeping rice grass, an Australian wild relative of domestic rice, to make it more likely to hold onto its seeds after ripening. And in wild field cress, a type of weedy grass, scientists silenced genes with RNA interference involved with fatty acid synthesis, resulting in improved seed oil quality.