Lifeboat Foundation

A tool that has already revolutionized disease research may soon get even better, thanks to an accidental discovery in the bacteria that cause many of the worst cases of meningitis.

A new breakthrough will make DNA sequencing much more accurate and accessible, meaning it’s only a matter of time before your doctor starts doing it.

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Imagine you’re visiting your doctor for a checkup. Your doctor takes all the usual measurements like your height, weight, heart rate, and blood pressure, and then tells you she’s going to sequence your DNA.

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A scientist cuts a DNA fragment under UV light for DNA sequencing. Image: AP Five years ago, when researchers first discovered that bacterial immune systems could be hijacked to edit DNA in living creatures, it was big news. The technology, called CRISPR, allowed scientists to more easily than ever cut and paste all those As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that make up the base pairs of DNA and encode the world’s living things. With CRISPR, scientists could use genetic engineering to tackle problems from disease to famine. But gene editing with CRISPR is so 2017. Recently, scientists have begun exploring n…

New Whitehead Institute research may prove to be a useful paradigm for targeting diseases caused by abnormal methylation. Credit: Steven Lee/Whitehead Institute Fragile X syndrome is the most frequent cause of intellectual disability in males, affecting one out of every 3,600 boys born. The syndrome can also cause autistic traits, such as social and communication deficits, as well as attention problems and hyperactivity. Currently, there is no cure for this disorder. Fragile X syndrome is caused by mutations in the FMR1 gene on the X chromosome, which prevent the gene’s expression. This abs…

CRISPR-associated protein Cas9 (white) from Staphylococcus aureus based on Protein Database ID 5AXW. Credit: Thomas Splettstoesser (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0) A team of researchers with the Catholic University of America has found evidence that suggests a defense mechanism used by bacteria to ward off phage attacks might also be benefiting the phages. In their paper published on the open access site Science Advances, the group describes testing the impact of CRISPR-Cas9 on phages that infect Escherichia coli and what they found. In nature, CRISPR-Cas9 is a defense mechanism used by bacteria t…

This Purkinje neuron was derived from patients with tuberous sclerosis and model properties of the disease at the cellular and molecular level. Sundberg and colleagues first created induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from patients’ blood cells or skin cells, then differentiated them into neural progenitor cells and finally Purkinje cells. Credit: Courtesy Maria Sundberg, PhD, Sahin Laboratory, Boston Children’s Hospital Increasing evidence has linked autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with dysfunction of the brain’s cerebellum, but the details have been unclear. In a new study, researchers…

Is ageing a disease? One that can be ‘cured’? BBC’s Gabriela Torres meets the self-experimenters and scientists who are trying to dramatically extend our lives.

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An experimental treatment completely reversed Alzheimer’s disease in mice by reducing the levels of a single enzyme in the animals’ brains. The results further bolster the theory that amyloid plaques are at the root of this mysterious brain disease, and that addressing these plaques could lead to an eventual cure for Alzheimer’s. The study, published February 14 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, found that slowly reducing levels of the enzyme BACE1 in mice as they aged either prevented or reversed the formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, a hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s disease…

The Undoing Aging 2018 Conference is coming to Berlin to discuss the science of rejuvenation biotech!

The SENS Research Foundation and the Forever Healthy Foundation have joined forces to host an exciting conference about rejuvenation biotechnology on March 15–17, 2018 at the Umspannwerk Alexanderplatz in Berlin, Germany.

A conference for everyone

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