The monkeypox virus has mutated at a far faster rate than would normally be expected and likely underwent a period of “accelerated evolution,” a new study suggests.
The virus, which has infected more than 3,500 people in 48 countries since its detection outside Africa in May, may be more infectious due to dozens of new mutations. In all, the virus carries 50 new mutations not seen in previous strains detected from 2018 to 2019, according to a new study published June 24 in the journal Nature Medicine.
Scientists usually don’t expect viruses like monkeypox to gain more than one or two mutations each year, the study authors noted.
Typhoid fever might be rare in developed countries, but this ancient threat, thought to have been around for millennia, is still very much a danger in our modern world.
According to new research, the bacterium that causes typhoid fever is evolving extensive drug resistance, and it’s rapidly replacing strains that aren’t resistant.
Currently, antibiotics are the only way to effectively treat typhoid, which is caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (S Typhi). Yet over the past three decades, the bacterium’s resistance to oral antibiotics has been growing and spreading.
As they grow, solid tumors surround themselves with a thick, hard-to-penetrate wall of molecular defenses. Getting drugs past that barricade is notoriously difficult. Now, scientists at UT Southwestern have developed nanoparticles that can break down the physical barriers around tumors to reach cancer cells. Once inside, the nanoparticles release their payload: a gene editing system that alters DNA inside the tumor, blocking its growth and activating the immune system.
The new nanoparticles, described in Nature Nanotechnology, effectively stopped the growth and spread of ovarian and liver tumors in mice. The system offers a new path forward for the use of the gene editing tool known as CRISPR-Cas9 in cancer treatment, said study leader Daniel Siegwart, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biochemistry at UT Southwestern.
“Although CRISPR offers a new approach for treating cancer, the technology has been severely hindered by the low efficiency of delivering payloads into tumors,” said Dr. Siegwart, a member of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Human Longevity Inc, which was built by the pioneers of the human genome sequencing effort, and Freedom Acquisition Corporation, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), have announced that they have signed a non-binding letter of intent for a proposed business combination that would result in HLI becoming a publicly listed company. Assuming everything ticks along as planned, the parties currently expect to seek approval from Freedom’s shareholders by the first quarter of 2023.
Longevity. Technology: Unicorns are the stuff of legends and headlines, and while there can be no assurance that a definitive agreement will be entered into or that the proposed transaction will be consummated, the speculation is delicious because longevity start-ups with billion-dollar valuations mean more visible, accelerating progress for the sector.
The proposed transaction values the combined company at approximately $1 billion, providing HLI with funding to pursue growth and technology innovation – watch this space!
Patients with worsening heart failure who received colchicine, a common gout medication, had a survival rate of 97.9% compared with a 93.5% survival rate for patients who did not take colchicine.
Colchicine, a common gout medication, dramatically increased the survival rates of patients with worsening heart failure who were hospitalized, according to a recent University of Virginia (UVA) Health study. In individuals with an accumulation of cholesterol in their arteries, the researchers think colchicine might also lower the risk for heart attack and stroke.
More than 1,000 patients who were hospitalized at the University of Virginia Medical Center between March 2011 and February 2020 due to worsening heart failure had their records examined. Patients who took colchicine for a gout flare had a survival rate of 97.9%, as opposed to patients who did not receive colchicine, who had a survival rate of 93.5%.
As cyberattacks on medical networks continue to affect healthcare institutions across the country, organizations who are directly at risk of these attacks are seeking government assistance.
From January through June, the Office of Civil Rights tallied 256 hacks and information breaches, up from 149 for the same period a year ago. It’s a continuing trend from last year: Cybersecurity outfit Sophos reports that in 2021, attacks on health systems were up 66 percent over 2020.
Now some health systems are asking the federal government to step in and provide more security for what they consider critical national infrastructure.
Decades of research has led to a thorough understanding of the main protein players and the broad strokes of membrane fusion for synaptic transmission. Bernard Katz was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Medicine in part for demonstrating that chemical synaptic transmission consists of a neurotransmitter-filled synaptic vesicle fusing with the plasma membrane at nerve endings and releasing its content into the opposing postsynaptic cell. And Rizo-Rey’s longtime collaborator, Thomas Südhof, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2013 for his studies of the machinery that mediates neurotransmitter release (many with Rizo-Rey as a co-author).
But Rizo-Rey says his goal is to understand the specific physics of how the activation process of thought occurs in much more detail. “If I can understand that, winning the Nobel Prize would just be a small reward,” he said.
Recently, using the Frontera supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), one of the most powerful systems in the world, Rizo-Rey has been exploring this process, creating a multi-million atom model of the proteins, the membranes, and their environment, and setting them in motion virtually to see what happens, a process known as molecular dynamics.
Superhumans are coming! Various technological advances in the field of medicine through AI and CRISPR are going to radically alter our understanding of what it means to be human. AI and Crispr technology have been making revolutionary changes to the field of medicine. Artificial intelligence is being applied in identification of harmful genes and treatment of disease.
Multiple new gene editing technologies in addition to artificial intelligence will cause major changes in healthcare. The gene-editing tool CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, could help us to reprogram life. It gives scientists more power and precision than they have ever had to alter human DNA.
Could it be conceivable that at one point in the future we could increase the average IQ of the population? CRISPR technology in the future could enable efficient and affordable treatment of many diseases. It will be also probably used to enhance our intelligence.
CRISPR was originally designed as a technique for editing the DNA of living organisms, but its uses and capabilities have expanded substantially. It is now used widely in biomedical research, including research into human genetics. One of the main issues concerning technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 is accuracy and safety, as mistakes can have significant and dangerous consequences when it comes to an individual’s genome.
David Sinclair explains the mind boggling breakthroughs of medicine in recent times.
The possibility of altering the sequences of genes and correcting the mistakes that were previously irreversible opens many new possibilities for research. Nevertheless, for now, genetic editing technology is still incapable of making the hundreds of changes presumably necessary to make a superintelligent human. But the corresponding ethical issues deserve serious attention before these capabilities become a reality.
Artificial Intelligence is touching almost every aspect of our lives. It’s reasonable to expect AI influence will only increase in the future. One of many fields heavily influenced by AI is the military. Particularly in the development of Supersoldiers. The notion of super-soldiers enhanced with biotechnology and cybernetics was once only possible in the realm of science fiction. But it may not be too long before these concepts become a reality.
A new worldwide arms race is pitting countries against each other to be the first to successfully create real genetically modified super soldiers by using tools such as CRISPR. Understandably many of these human enhancement technologies raise health and safety questions and it is more likely these enhancements will first gain traction in countries that do not place as much weight on ethical concerns.
According to US Intelligence, China has conducted “human testing” on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with “biologically enhanced capabilities.
This has made the U.S. military’s top intelligence agencies increasingly worried but the Pentagon has significantly invested in its own research in AI and in the extension of the human senses beyond their current physical limitations, to provide soldiers with superhuman abilities.
The basics of brain-machine interfaces with AI are being developed for the military, and if the results are as successful as scientists hope they will be, soldiers could one day be enhanced with cybernetics, effectively becoming trans-human soldiers.
The US Military is also examining newly scientific tools, like genetic engineering, brain chemistry, and shrinking robotics, for even more dramatic enhancements. But most of this advanced technology remains classified.
