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).
Great ape animal studies have long been prohibited in Europe due to ethical concerns. An alternative to using animals in studies is the use of so-called organoids, which are three-dimensional cell structures that can be generated in the lab and are just a few millimeters in size.
These organoids can be created using pluripotent stem cells, which then subsequently develop into particular cell types like nerve cells. The study team was able to create both chimpanzee and human brain organoids by using this method.
“These brain organoids allowed us to investigate a central question concerning ARHGAP11B,” says Wieland Huttner of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, one of the three lead authors of the study.
Just a quick vid. He mentions the hope of replacing current gene therapy with a pill or three which I heard Cynthia Kenyon say many years ago.
Dr David Sinclair talks about longevity genes, genes therapies and his works on resetting the eyes in this short clip.
David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.
Dr David Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives.
Dr David Sinclair is the co-founder of several biotechnology companies (Life Biosciences, Sirtris, Genocea, Cohbar, MetroBiotech, ArcBio, Liberty Biosecurity) and is on the boards of several others.
Carbenes are among the most adaptable building blocks in organic chemistry, but they may also be dangerously hot. Due to their explosivity in the lab, scientists often avoid using these very reactive molecules.
However, in a new study that was just published in the journal Science, researchers from The Ohio State University describe a new, safer method to turn these short-lived, high-energy molecules into much more stable ones.
“Carbenes have an incredible amount of energy in them,” said David Nagib, co-author of the study and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State. “The value of that is they can do chemistry that you just cannot do any other way.”
People who eat more foods with omega-3 fatty acids in midlife may have superior thinking skills and even better brain structure than people who eat few foods containing the fatty acids. This is according to an exploratory study that was recently published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish such as salmon, sardines, lake trout, and albacore tuna. They are also found in dietary supplements as well as foods that are fortified with the fatty acids.
“If people could improve their cognitive resilience and potentially ward off dementia with some simple changes to their diet, that could have a large impact on public health.” —
“Improving our diet is one way to promote our brain health,” said study author Claudia L. Satizabal, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “If people could improve their cognitive resilience and potentially ward off dementia with some simple changes to their diet, that could have a large impact on public health. Even better, our study suggests that even modest consumption of omega-3 may be enough to preserve brain function. This is in line with the current American Heart Association dietary guidelines to consume at least two servings of fish per week to improve cardiovascular health.”
ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (AP) — When Chastity Murry had her first psychotic break, she went into her bathroom and downed a whole bottle of pills, hoping to die. Her teenage daughter had to perform CPR to save her life.
Around that same time more than a decade ago, the man who would become her husband, Dante Murry, also lost touch with reality and considered suicide.
Different illnesses led them down similar paths – bipolar disorder in her case and schizoaffective disorder in his – conditions long considered by many to be distinct and unrelated.
Brain tumors are among the most deadly and difficult-to-treat cancers. Glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive form, kills more than 10,000 Americans a year and has a median survival time of less than 15 months.
For patients with brain tumors, treatment typically includes open-skull surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible followed by chemotherapy or radiation, which come with serious side effects and numerous hospital visits.
What if a patient’s brain tumor could be treated painlessly, without anesthesia, in the comfort of their home? Researchers at Stanford Medicine have developed, and tested in mice, a small wireless device that one day could do just that. The device is a remotely activated implant that can heat up nanoparticles injected into the tumor, gradually killing cancerous cells.
The CRISPR system, which involves a Cas enzyme to cut DNA, is a powerful tool for gene editing. But the genetic scissors sometimes make changes at the wrong place, creating a major safety problem that could limit their therapeutic use.
Now, scientists at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin have refined the Cas9 protein used in the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR-Cas9 tool. The new version, dubbed SuperFi-Cas9, was thousands of times less likely to perform off-target editing but just as efficient at on-target editing as the original version, the team said in a paper published in Nature.
“This really could be a game-changer in terms of a wider application of the CRISPR-Cas systems in gene editing,” Kenneth Johnson, Ph.D., the study’s co-senior author, said in a statement.
Researchers at Europe’s science lab CERN, who regularly use particle physics to challenge our understanding of the universe, are also applying their craft to upend the limits to cancer treatment.
The physicists here are working with giant particle accelerators in search of ways to expand the reach of cancer radiation therapy, and take on hard-to-reach tumours that would otherwise have been fatal.
In one CERN lab, called CLEAR, facility coordinator Roberto Corsini stands next to a large, linear particle accelerator consisting of a 40-metre metal beam with tubes packed in aluminium foil at one end, and a vast array of measurement instruments and protruding colourful wires and cables.
