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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1441

In a research paper published in Nature Aging, the team reports using a novel approach to provide the first data-driven classification of multiple diseases obtained using human genetic and medical data freely available from the UK Biobank.

Co-author Professor Linda Partridge (UCL Institute of Health Aging and Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging) said: Advancing age is the main risk for major diseases, including cancer, dementia, and . Understanding the molecular links between the aging process and age-related diseases could allow them to be targeted with drugs to improve late-life health.

The striking finding from the study was that diseases with a similar age of onset were genetically more similar to each other than they were to diseases in the other three clusters.

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CRISPR: Can we control it?
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CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a revolutionary technology that gives scientists the ability to alter DNA. On the one hand, this tool could mean the elimination of certain diseases. On the other, there are concerns (both ethical and practical) about its misuse and the yet-unknown consequences of such experimentation.

“The technique could be misused in horrible ways,” says counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke lists biological weapons as one of the potential threats, “Threats for which we don’t have any known antidote.” CRISPR co-inventor, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, echos the concern, recounting a nightmare involving the technology, eugenics, and a meeting with Adolf Hitler.

Should humanity even have access to this type of tool? Do the positives outweigh the potential dangers? How could something like this ever be regulated, and should it be? These questions and more are considered by Doudna, Clarke, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, psychologist Steven Pinker, and physician Siddhartha Mukherjee.
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TRANSCRIPT:

0:41 Jennifer Doudna defines CRISPR

Continue reading “CRISPR: Can we control it? | Jennifer Doudna, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, & more | Big Think” | >

Summary: Computer-generated, or virtual humans, prove to be just as good as humans in helping people practice leadership skills.

Source: Frontiers.

A virtual human can be as good as a flesh-and-blood one when it comes to helping people practice new leadership skills. That’s the conclusion from new research published in the journal Frontiers in Virtual Reality that evaluated the effectiveness of computer-generated characters in a training scenario compared to real human role-players in a conventional setting.

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This article is part of a series tracking the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on major businesses and sectors. For other articles and earlier versions, go here.

A global shortage of semiconductors — chips that power massive data-centers, modern autos and countless digital devices — has roiled global manufacturing and is not expected to end soon. It isn’t a blanket problem, however, as different sectors within the chip industry will continue to be affected by the shortage in different ways.

As the industry entered 2020, high demand was expected in the mobile chip area because of the rollout of 5G devices. That path was turned on its head when COVID-19 became a global pandemic, driving millions, if not billions, of people into the safety of their homes to work, go to school, be entertained and to socialize.

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The more data collected, the better the results.

Understanding the genetics of complex diseases, especially those related to the genetic differences among ethnic groups, is essentially a big data problem. And researchers need more data.

1000, 000 genomes

To address the need for more data, the National Institutes of Health has started a program called All of Us. The project aims to collect genetic information, medical records and health habits from surveys and wearables of more than a million people in the U.S. over the course of 10 years. It also has a goal of gathering more data from underrepresented minority groups to facilitate the study of health disparities. The All of Us project opened to public enrollment in 2018, and more than 270000 people have contributed samples since. The project is continuing to recruit participants from all 50 states. Participating in this effort are many academic laboratories and private companies.

Continue reading “Scientists are on a path to sequencing 1 million human genomes and use big data to unlock genetic secrets” | >

Papers referenced in the video:

Dietary Thiols: A Potential Supporting Strategy against Oxidative Stress in Heart Failure and Muscular Damage during Sports Activity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7765667/

Ergothioneine levels in an elderly population decrease with age and incidence of cognitive decline; a risk factor for neurodegeneration?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27444382/

Is ergothioneine a ‘longevity vitamin’ limited in the American diet?

Continue reading “Ergothioneine: A ‘Longevity Vitamin’ With Potential Benefits For Age-Related Outcomes?” | >

New research reveals how cancer cells endure stress and survive. Publishing in Molecular Cell, an international research team identified mechanisms that human and mouse cells use to survive heat shock and resume their original function – and even pass the memory of the experience of stress down to their daughter cells.

Lead author Anniina Vihervaara, Assistant Professor in Gene Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, says the results provide insight into the mechanisms that coordinate transcription in cells, which potentially could make a vital contribution in disease research.

The researchers examined how embryonic fibroblast cells and cancer cells responded when subjected to heat shock at a temperature of 42C, using advanced technology to monitor the process of transcription across genes and their regulatory regions. Heat shock causes acute proteotoxic stress due to misfolding and aggregation of proteins. To adjust and maintain stability, stressed cells reduce protein synthesis and increase expression of chaperones that help other proteins to maintain their correct configuration. The heat shock response and protein misfolding are involved in many diseases, including cancer, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s.

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Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine, joins Ali Velshi to discuss the “pause” on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States after the discovery of 6 rare cases of blood clotting in women who were immunized with the shot. The goal, says Hotez, is to identify a specific group who might be at higher risk, and that requires a little time. “Even though the U.S. Has other options, many countries don’t. For many countries, all they have are the J & J, AstraZeneca vaccine and the Russian Sputnik V vaccine,” all of which are non-mNRA and have the potential to behave similarly. Says Hotez, “It is critical to sort this out not only to protect American citizens, but to protect the world.”

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You’ll need to prick up your ears for this slice of deepfakery emerging from the wacky world of synthesized media: A digital version of Albert Einstein — with a synthesized voice that’s been (re)created using AI voice cloning technology drawing on audio recordings of the famous scientist’s actual voice.

The startup behind the “uncanny valley” audio deepfake of Einstein is Aflorithmic (whose seed round we covered back in February).

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