Dive into the captivating realm of Biopunk Science Fiction in our latest video! đ± Discover what Biopunk is, from genetic engineering to human augmentation, and explore the ethical dilemmas it presents in our modern world. Weâll discuss its evolution through literature and film, touching on iconic works like \.
Biopunk androids replicants.
What happens when humans begin combining biology with technology, harnessing the power to recode life itself.
What does the future of biotechnology and genetic engineering look like? How will humans program biology to create organ farm technology and bio-robots. And what happens when companies begin investing in advanced bio-printing, artificial wombs, and cybernetic prosthetic limbs.
Other topic include: bioengineered food and farming, bio-printing in space, new age living bioarchitecture (eco concrete inspired by coral reefs), bioengineered bioluminescence, cyberpunks and biopunks who experiment underground â creating new age food and pets, the future of bionics, corporations owning bionic limbs, the multi-trillion dollar industry of bio-robots, and bioengineered humans with super powers (Neo-Humans).
As well as the future of biomedical engineering, biochemistry, and biodiversity.
Australian researchers have successfully introduced an improved version of Cas12a gene-editing enzyme in mice. Their work establishes a next-generation gene-editing tool that enhances genetic manipulation for cancer and medical research in a preclinical model.
The study, âAdvancing the genetic engineering toolbox by combining AsCas12a knock-in mice with ultra-compact screening,â was published in Nature Communications.
âThis is the first time Cas12a has been used in preclinical models, which will greatly advance our genome engineering capabilities,â said co-author Eddie La Marca, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (ONJCRI) in Australia.
The most complex engineering of human cell lines ever has been achieved by scientists, revealing that our genomes are more resilient to significant structural changes than was previously thought.
Researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Imperial College London, Harvard University in the US and their collaborators used CRISPR prime editing to create multiple versions of human genomes in cell lines, each with different structural changes. Using genome sequencing, they were able to analyze the genetic effects of these structural variations on cell survival.
The research, published in Science, shows that as long as essential genes remain intact, our genomes can tolerate significant structural changes, including large deletions of the genetic code. The work opens the door to studying and predicting the role of structural variation in disease.
We often discuss cybernetic, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and hybrids of them, but what truly is synthetic life? And what is it like?
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/ discord Credits: Synthetic Life Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur Episode 333a, March 13, 2022 Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur Editors: David McFarlane Jason Burbank Jerry Guern Cover Art: Jakub Grygier https://www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator.
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Credits:
Synthetic Life.
Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur.
Episode 333a, March 13, 2022
Written, Produced & Narrated by Isaac Arthur.
Editors:
David McFarlane.
Jason Burbank.
Jerry Guern.
Cover Art:
Jakub Grygier https://www.artstation.com/jakub_grygier.
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator
Hidden within our bones, marrow sustains life by producing billions of blood cells daily, from oxygen-carrying red cells to immune-boosting white cells. This vital function is often disrupted in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiation, which can damage the marrow and lead to dangerously low white cell counts, leaving patients vulnerable to infection.
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science (Penn Engineering), Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) and the Childrenâs Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a platform that emulates human marrowâs native environment. This breakthrough addresses a critical need in medical science, as animal studies often fail to fully replicate the complexities of human marrow.
Researchers from Zhejiang University and HKUST (Guangzhou) have developed a cutting-edge AI model, ProtET, that leverages multi-modal learning to enable controllable protein editing through text-based instructions. This innovative approach, published in Health Data Science, bridges the gap between biological language and protein sequence manipulation, enhancing functional protein design across domains like enzyme activity, stability, and antibody binding.
Proteins are the cornerstone of biological functions, and their precise modification holds immense potential for medical therapies, synthetic biology, and biotechnology. While traditional protein editing methods rely on labor-intensive laboratory experiments and single-task optimization models, ProtET introduces a transformer-structured encoder architecture and a hierarchical training paradigm. This model aligns protein sequences with natural language descriptions using contrastive learning, enabling intuitive, text-guided protein modifications.
The research team, led by Mingze Yin from Zhejiang University and Jintai Chen from HKUST (Guangzhou), trained ProtET on a dataset of over 67 million proteinâbiotext pairs, extracted from Swiss-Prot and TrEMBL databases. The model demonstrated exceptional performance across key benchmarks, improving protein stability by up to 16.9% and optimizing catalytic activities and antibody-specific binding.
A leading neuroscientist claims that a pong-playing clump of about a million neurons is âsentientâ. What does that mean? Why did Cortical Labs teach a lab-grown brain to play pong? To study biological self-organization at the root of life, intelligence, and consciousness. And, according to their website, âto see what happens.â Whatâs next for biocomputing?
CORRECTIONS/Clarifications:
- The cells arenât directly frozen in liquid nitrogen â they are put in vials and stored in liquid nitrogen (and you canât buy them legally without credentials) https://www.atcc.org/products/pcs-201-010
- The sentience of some invertebrates, like octopuses, is generally agreed upon. Prominent scientists affirmed non-human consciousness in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness: https://philiplow.foundation/consciousness/
- The âNeanderthal neuronsâ are human cells that are âNeanderthalizedâ using genetic engineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FBxnkzI9HU
DISCLAIMER: The explanations in this video are those proposed by the researchers, or my opinion. We are far from understanding how brains, or even neurons, work. The free energy principle is one of many potential explanations.
Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/IhmCurious.
Footage from Cortical Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neV3aZtTgVM
NASJAQâs interview with founder Hon Weng Chong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1R5k5QWPsY
Cortical Labs website: https://corticallabs.com.
Full paper on DishBrain: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6
Itâs a mission that is less a nostalgic yearning for a prehistoric past than it is a solution to combat climate change, the companyâs founders have said. By reintroducing mammoths to Arctic environments, they hope to rejuvenate grasslands and reduce permafrost thawâa major source of methane emissions.
The potential ripple effects of such an ecological intervention have raised profound ethical and scientific questions but have nonetheless captivated researchers, investors and the public alike.
Colossal Bioscienceâs approach to de-extinction is rooted in cutting-edge advances in genetic engineering and synthetic biology.
Synthetic Biology is on the cusp of revolutionizing biomedicine.
at NextMed Health 2023 (http://NextMedHealth.com)
Andrew Hessel is chairman of Project-write, and Author of The Genesis Machine, Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology.
More about Andrew Hessel: https://www.nextmed.health/bio-andrewhessel.
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