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Category: biotech/medical

A team of researchers affiliated with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, MIT and the National Institutes of Health has found that CRISPR-associated transposons can be used to insert custom genes into DNA without cutting it. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their new gene-editing technique and how well it worked when tested in a bacterial genome.

The CRISPR gene editing has made headlines in recent years due to its potential for treating hereditary diseases. Unfortunately, despite much research surrounding the technique, it is still not a viable option for use on human patients. This is because the technique is error-prone—when snipping strands of DNA, CRISPR sometimes cuts off-target DNA as well, leading to unintended and unpredictable consequences (and sometimes cancerous tumors). In this new effort, the researchers have found a way to use CRISPR in conjunction with another protein to edit a strand of DNA without cutting it—they are calling it CRISPR-associated transposase (CAST).

Prior research has shown that certain pieces of DNA called transposons are, for unknown reasons, able to reposition themselves in a genome spontaneously—for this reason, they have come to be known as jumping genes. Not long after they were discovered, researchers noted that they might be used for gene editing. This is what the researchers did in the new study. They associated a transposon called Tn7 with the Cas12 enzyme used with CRISPR to edit a section of a bacterial genome. In practice, CRISPR led the Tn7 transposon to the target location in the genome—at that point, the transposon inserted itself into the without cutting it.

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LA JOLLA—(June 6, 2019) Scientists once thought that neurons, or possibly heart cells, were the oldest cells in the body. Now, Salk Institute researchers have discovered that the mouse brain, liver and pancreas contain populations of cells and proteins with extremely long lifespans—some as old as neurons. The findings, demonstrating “age mosaicism,” were published in Cell Metabolism on June 6, 2019. The team’s methods could be applied to nearly any tissue in the body to provide valuable information about lifelong function of non-dividing cells and how cells lose control over the quality and integrity of proteins and important cell structures during aging.

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Putting a bit of positive spin on Birthdays and why you should probably see them as a good thing in the context of aging research.

Not so long ago, it was my 44th birthday, and I’ve finally decided to write something that I’ve been reflecting on for a while. To some people, a birthday is a cause for celebration; for others, it is viewed as a bad thing.

Yes, if you take the negative view, you could see it as simply a reminder of being another year older and another year closer to the grave. However, this is not how I see it; in fact, I think quite the opposite. I see it as another year closer to our goal: the defeat of age-related diseases due to the progress of rejuvenation biotechnology that offers longer and healthier lives.

From my point of view, viewing birthdays, or, indeed, the passing of time, as a positive or negative thing is largely a question of knowledge and understanding of the aging research field, which ties in with what I want to address today.

Continue reading “Why I Am Future Positive on My Birthday” | >

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field that has a long history but is still constantly and actively growing and changing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is increasingly prevalent in our everyday lives. It has uses in a variety of industries from gaming, journalism/media, to finance, as well as in the state-of-the-art research fields from robotics, medical diagnosis, and quantum science.


Udacity was born out of a Stanford University experiment in which Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig offered their “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online to anyone, for free. Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled and not much later, Udacity was born.

Udacity, a pioneer in online education, is building “University by Silicon Valley”, a new type of online university that: – teaches the actual programming skills that industry employers need today; – delivers credentials endorsed by employers, because they built them; – provides education at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional schools.

Continue reading “AI Course with Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig: Udacity Course” | >

The protocol, dubbed Walk Again Neuro-Rehabilitation (WA-NR), first uses EEG to record and control virtual avatars and robotic exoskeleton walkers while the patient wears a “tactile shirt” that offers them sensory feedback. This stimulation theoretically teaches damaged nerves to reroute their motor functions to healthy ones. Following the program for just three years, the patients—some paralyzed for decades—dramatically regained sensation in their lower limbs. They could feel where their legs were in space and better control their lower limbs. Some even reported feelings of normal, welcomed pain after a sharp jab.

The current study, published in Scientific Reports, takes neurorehab a step further. In two patients from the original cohort, the team further trained and examined their neuro-recovery in detail. Patient P1 was a middle-aged man paralyzed for 4.5 years at the onset of the study; P2, a 32-year-old, had been paralyzed for a decade. Although trained with WA-NR, both patients scored on the low end of overall movement, with the ability to extend their knees at most.

For each training session, the patients wore an EEG cap to measure movement intent and had eight electrodes placed on the skin of each leg to stimulate muscles. Simultaneously they wore a haptic shirt, which gave them a sense of their body in space by stimulating their forearms.

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A new open-source, artificially intelligent prosthetic leg designed by researchers at the University of Michigan and Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is now available to the scientific community.

The leg’s free-to-copy design and programming are intended to improve the quality of life of patients and accelerate by offering a unified platform to fragmented research efforts across the field of bionics.

“Our Open-Source Bionic Leg will enable investigators to efficiently solve challenges associated with controlling across a range of activities in the lab and out in the community,” said lead designer Elliott Rouse, core faculty at U-M’s Robotics Institute and assistant professor of mechanical engineering. “In addition, we hope our bionic leg will unite researchers with a common hardware platform and enable new investigators from related fields to develop innovative control strategies.”

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UMBC postdoctoral fellow Sarah Stellwagen and co-author Rebecca Renberg at the Army Research Lab have published the first-ever complete sequences of two genes that allow spiders to produce glue—a sticky, modified version of spider silk that keeps a spider’s prey stuck in its web. The findings appeared in Genes, Genomes, Genetics.

The innovative method they employed could pave the way for others to sequence more silk and glue , which are challenging to sequence because of their length and repetitive structure. Better understanding of these genes could move scientists closer to the next big advance in biomaterials.

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Researchers at Amsterdam’s UMC have identified a rare gene that halves people’s chances of developing dementia in old age.

People with the genetic variant, which occurs in around 1% of the population, are also more likely to live longer. The researchers studied 16 different sample populations in Europe and North America, including a number of people over the age of 100, for the study published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica.

The discovery could potentially be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative illnesses such as frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia.

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