Lifeboat Foundation

Oxford Nanopore systems offer real-time, scalable, direct DNA sequencing. This can be performed on the portable MinION device, the benchtop GridION and the high-thoughput, high-sample number PromethION.

Nanopore sequencing also offers, for the first time, direct RNA sequencing, as well as PCR or PCR-free cDNA sequencing.

With nanopore sequencing, the user chooses fragment length and the nanopore sequences the entire fragments. Reads approaching 1Mb have been reported.

And yet still; the system still requires everyone to carry an identification card.

The most extensive and detailed human genome sequence yet has been assembled using a hand-held device roughly the size of a cell phone.

An international team of scientists working at a lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz, created a portable nanopore sequencer that not only used DNA fragments hundreds of times longer than is standard, but closed 12 gaps in the known human genome, according to a UCSC press release. That makes the human genome it assembled the most complete one ever created to date. A paper describing the research was published in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.

Continue reading “Map your genome at home with a cell-phone sized human DNA sequencer” »

LAUSANNE, Switzerland—(BUSINESS WIRE).

Breakthrough translational science of dietary supplementation with Urolithin A, a pomegranate metabolite, on mitochondrial and cellular health in humans published in the journal Nature Metabolism

Amazentis, an innovative life sciences company pioneering scientific breakthroughs in nutrition to manage health conditions linked to aging, announced today a collaborative publication in Nature Metabolism with scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) demonstrating the Company’s lead product, Urolithin A (UA), is safe, bioavailable and improves mitochondrial and cellular health in humans.

Another researcher has announced controversial plans to gene edit babies. The scientific community must intervene.

O.o!

With the growing economic success of legalized recreational marijuana in 11 states it seems that national legalization is right around the corner, but could hallucinogenic mushrooms be next?

The city of Oakland recently decriminalized shrooms, a policy likely to be enacted by the entire state of California. Advocacy groups for the outright legalization of psilocybin have gained a lot of traction in recent years throughout California, Oregon and Colorado. We recently interviewed a respected psychologist who believes that legalized magic mushrooms not only could but should happen in America. He was incredibly wise, and made of hundreds of thousands of bees.

Continue reading “Is America Ready for Legalized Shrooms? This Psychologist Made of Bees Says ‘Yes’” »

Antibody drug conjugates (ADC) are generating excitement with a breast cancer treatment called DS-8201, which has few side effects.

Type O blood is the universal donor, but these scientists have found a way to make Type A into Type O. This could double the blood supply for transfusions.

We report that 3D-A-DNA structure behaves as a fractal antenna, which can interact with the electromagnetic fields over a wide range of frequencies. Using the lattice details of human DNA, we have modeled radiation of DNA as a helical antenna. The DNA structure resonates with the electromagnetic waves at 34 GHz, with a positive gain of 1.7 dBi. We have also analyzed the role of three different lattice symmetries of DNA and the possibility of soliton-based energy transmission along the structure.

Fruits are major sources of essential nutrients and serve as staple foods in some areas of the world. The increasing human population and changes in climate experienced worldwide make it urgent to the production of fruit crops with high yield and enhanced adaptation to the environment, for which conventional breeding is unlikely to meet the demand. Fortunately, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) technology paves the way toward a new horizon for fruit crop improvement and consequently revolutionizes plant breeding. In this review, the mechanism and optimization of the CRISPR system and its application to fruit crops, including resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, fruit quality improvement, and domestication are highlighted. Controversies and future perspectives are discussed as well.