Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,080

Sea creature revealed to have so much DNA it can hardly be called a species

This is because the species undergoes a process called polyploidization, which is when a single chromosome is duplicated multiple times.

“It has amazing genetic diversity,” study co-author Tim O’Hara, a senior marine curator at Museums Victoria in Australia, told Newsweek.

“Instead of evolving into separate species over time, lineages readily hybridize with each other, so building up a great amount of genetic diversity. But not only that, they sometimes add their genomes together, so end up with four or more copies of each gene,” O’Hara said.

MemPal: Wearable Memory Assistant for Aging Population

We’re living in an aging society with cognitive loss placing stress on caregivers to monitor older adults struggling with memory decline.

MemPal is a wearable voice-based memory assistant that helps older adults live more independently and safely at home while also reducing caregiver burden. MemPal uses AI to automatically log the user’s actions in real-time based on visual context from a wearable camera without storing any image data, thereby preserving user privacy. With this activity log, MemPal helps older adults recall locations of misplaced objects and completion of past actions using simple voice-based queries such as “Hey Pal, where is my phone?” Additionally, MemPal provides context-based proactive safety reminders (e.g., “you may have forgotten to turn off the stove” or” you already took your medicine an hour ago”) and automatically tracks the completion on the MemPal app, allowing for remote monitoring by caregivers. Lastly MemPal can generate an automatic, summarized diary of activities for caregivers that may also prove useful for physicians to better understand patient behavior within their home.

MemPal was tested within the homes of 15 older adults (ages 65+). Our study demonstrated improved performance of object finding with audio-based assistance compared to no aid and positive overall user perceptions on the designed system. We discuss future design guidelines to adapt these types of wearable systems to various older adults’ needs.

The next generation of genome editing is making big changes to DNA

But the technology for using bridge RNA in genome editing is still in the early stages. Hsu’s team has demonstrated this system only in bacteria, though Hsu says he is optimistic that efforts to adapt the approach to work in mammalian cells will succeed. Chen says this system’s efficiency may not be as good as CRISPR’s is now but that improvements will come with time.

Research team reveals how TREM2 genetic mutation affects late-onset Alzheimer’s

Researchers led by the University of California, Irvine have discovered how the TREM2 R47H genetic mutation causes certain brain areas to develop abnormal protein clumps, called beta-amyloid plaques, associated with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Leveraging single-cell Merfish spatial transcriptomics technology, the team was able to profile the effects of the mutation across multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions, offering first-of-their-kind insights at the single-cell level.

The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, compared the brains of normal mice and special mouse models that undergo changes like those in humans with Alzheimer’s.

Findings revealed that the TREM2 mutation led to divergent patterns of beta-amyloid plaque accumulation in various parts of the brain involved in higher-level functions such as memory, reasoning and speech. It also affected certain and their gene expression near the plaques.

EV costs on track to match gas guzzlers next year as battery prices drop ‘dramatically’

The higher cost of owning an electric versus a gas-powered vehicle is a sticking point for many would-be buyers of EVs. Now, the price of a key EV component is falling, raising hopes that automakers could close the gap as they grapple with waning demand.

Batteries make up about one-third to one-fourth of the cost of producing an electric vehicle, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. The firm predicts the global average cost to automakers for batteries in 2024 will average about $115 per kilowatt hours, about 23% lower than last year. Prices are expected fall another 20% in 2025.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk (TSLA) recently noted costs have come down for lithium-ion cells used in EV batteries, a big reversal from the “massive spike” during the pandemic when car manufacturers put in “giant, giant orders.”

Scientists Discover Fossil Chromosomes in 52,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Which Could Help De-Extinct the Species

Chromosomes are threadlike structures composed entirely of DNA that reside in the cells of all living things. Each one of these biological databanks contains a wealth of genetic information that scientists can use to glean insights into the history and evolution of life on Earth. Normally, the remains of dead creatures degrade over time, causing DNA to fragment. Most ancient animal DNA discovered to date has been incomplete, often comprised of fewer than 100 base pairs out of the billions that once made up the full sequence of the organism.

However, the 52,000-year-old skin sample at the heart of this research was taken from behind the ear of a mammoth discovered in Northern Siberia in 2018. An intensive analysis of the sample revealed the presence of complete fossil chromosomes. These chromosomes, each measuring billionths of a meter in length, had seemingly been frozen in a glass-like state for tens of thousands of years. Knowing the shape of an organism’s chromosomes can help researchers to assemble entire DNA sequences of extinct creatures, a task previously deemed nearly impossible due to DNA degradation over time.

“This is a new type of fossil, and its scale dwarfs that of individual ancient DNA fragments — a million times more sequence,” explained Erez Lieberman Aiden, a corresponding author on the study and director of the Center for Genome Architecture at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Racial Discrimination, Neural Connectivity, and Epigenetic Aging in Black Women

(THE CONVERSATION) Racism steals time from people’s lives – possibly because of the space it occupies in the mind.

Question Is racial discrimination associated with brain connectivity, and are alterations in deep brain functional connectivity associated with accelerated epigenetic aging?

Findings In this cohort study of 90 Black women in the US, higher self-reported racial discrimination was associated with greater resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between the locus coeruleus (LC) and precuneus. Significant indirect effects were observed for the association between racial discrimination frequency and DNA methylation age acceleration.

Meaning These findings suggest that racial discrimination is associated with greater connectivity in pathways involved with rumination, which may increase vulnerability to stress-related disorders and neurodegenerative disease via epigenetic age acceleration.

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