Lifeboat Foundation

More broadly, biologists are wondering how else deep learning — the AI technique used by both approaches — might be applied to the prediction of protein arrangements, which ultimately dictate a protein’s function. These approaches are cheaper and faster than existing lab techniques such as X-ray crystallography, and the knowledge could help researchers to better understand diseases and design drugs. “There’s a lot of excitement about where things might go now,” says John Moult, a biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park and the founder of the biennial competition, called Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP), where teams are challenged to design computer programs that predict protein structures from sequences.

Deep learning makes its mark on protein-structure prediction.

Millions of people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack may need to rethink the pill-popping, Harvard researchers reported Monday.

A daily low-dose aspirin is recommended for people who have already had a heart attack or stroke and for those diagnosed with heart disease.

But for the otherwise healthy, that advice has been overturned. Guidelines released this year ruled out routine aspirin use for many older adults who don’t already have heart disease — and said it’s only for certain younger people under doctor’s orders.

A few years ago, researchers discovered that abnormalities in microbial communities, or microbiomes, in the intestine appear to contribute to childhood malnutrition. Now comes word that this discovery is being translated into action, with a new study showing that foods formulated to repair the “gut microbiome” may help malnourished kids rebuild their health [1].

In a month-long clinical trial in Bangladesh, 63 children received either regular foods to treat malnutrition or alternative formulations for needed calories and nutrition that also encouraged growth of beneficial microbes in the intestines. The kids who ate the microbiome-friendly diets showed improvements in their microbiome, which helps to extract and metabolize nutrients in our food to help the body grow. They also had significant improvements in key blood proteins associated with bone growth, brain development, immunity, and metabolism; those who ate standard therapeutic food did not experience the same benefit.

Globally, malnutrition affects an estimated 238 million children under the age 5, stunting their normal growth, compromising their health, and limiting their mental development [2]. Malnutrition can arise not only from a shortage of food but from dietary imbalances that don’t satisfy the body’s need for essential nutrients. Far too often, especially in impoverished areas, the condition can turn extremely severe and deadly. And the long term effects on intellectual development can limit the ability of a country’s citizens to lift themselves out of poverty.

Cilantro, also known as coriander, has been traditionally used as a folk medicine for thousands of years, with one of those uses being as an anticonvulsant to prevent the onset of epileptic seizures. New research from University of California, Irvine, has now for the first time homed in on the specific molecular action that explains how this herb can reduce seizures.

Recently, we had the opportunity to interview Professor George Church, a well-known geneticist and rejuvenation expert whom we have previously interviewed. Prof. Church’s company, Rejuvenate Bio, will be launching a clinical trial to test a rejuvenation therapy in dogs this fall.

In your recent paper on enabling large-scale genome editing, you talked about manipulating endogenous transposable elements with the help of dead Cas9 base editors. At Ending Age-Related Diseases, Andrei Gudkov spoke about the super mutagenic phenotype that arises from the expression of LINE1 reverse transcriptase. In this context, he mentioned the possibility of the retrobiome (as he referred to it) being the main driver of all types of cellular damage, which is consequently improperly addressed due to immunosenescence. Do you share his views on the contribution of LINEs and SINEs in aging? If not, why?

Yes. That is one of the reasons why we explored the tech for editing of repeats. We are now extending this to the germline engineering of repeats.

For Kenneth Church, sending a 3D printer that could one day print viable human organs to the International Space Station was a personal decision.

Church’s daughter, Kendie Hope, suffered from a diaphragmatic hernia when she was little that prevented her right lung from growing.

“It turned out that my kid shouldn’t have lived,” Church, who is the CEO of nScrypt — an Orlando-based manufacturer that sells 3D printing equipment, said.

HELLO! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6025786/

With approximately 40 million adults across the United States experiencing anxiety each year, scientists and researchers have dedicated their careers to trying to better understand this condition. Despite this work, we are still somewhat unclear on what actually causes this condition to occur.

Continue reading “Panic Attacks and Anxiety Episodes Linked to Vitamin Deficiencies in Groundbreaking Study” »

Today, we want to highlight a recent human trial of the popular supplement nicotinamide riboside, a compound that has been shown in mice to restore NAD+ levels. The compound has had impressive results against some aspects of aging in mouse studies, and there is now some more data for NR in humans [1].

What is nicotinamide riboside?

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a chemical that facilitates the production of energy from sugar and is present in every cell in our body. As well as being important in energy production, it is also involved in DNA repair, cellular signaling, and many other cell functions.