Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 238

Following a monthslong battle over CEO Anne Wojcicki’s plans to https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1804591/000134100424000072/sc13da1.htm” rel=“noopener”>take 23andMe private, all seven independent members of its board https://investors.23andme.com/news-releases/news-release-det...oard?_gl=1*1eip6nf*_ga*MTI2OTU3NjA4NC4xNzI2NjYwNzU5*_ga_G330GF3ZFF*MTcyNjY2MDc1OS4xLjEuMTcyNjY2MDgyNy4wLjAuMA…" rel="noopener">resigned en masse Tuesday.

The move is almost certainly the final nail in the coffin for the embattled company known for its mail-order DNA-testing kit. Since https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-04/2…on-merger” rel=“noopener”>going public via merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2021, 23andMe has never turned a profit. Its price on IPO day was $10; so far in 2024, it has yet to reach a $1 valuation. Following the resignation of all its independent directors Tuesday, the stock fell to its rock bottom: $0.30. (As of midday Wednesday, it’s back to $0.36.)

The board includes Sequoia Capital’s https://fortune.com/2024/07/25/seqouia-capital-roelof-botha-…e-nvidia/”>Roelof Botha as well as https://fortune.com/2023/02/28/why-youtube-betting-neal-moha…time-ceo/”>Neal Mohan, who took the helm as CEO of https://fortune.com/company/youtube/”>YouTube last year after Susan Wojcicki, Anne’s late sister, https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/a-personal-update-from-susan/” rel=“noopener”>stepped down.

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British scientists have stored DNA information for an entire human on a crystal, which could be used to bring back humanity if we become extinct.

The team from the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) used lasers to inscribe the data on a 5D crystal, which they said can survive for billions of years.

Unlike other storage formats, it does not degrade over time.

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A small-N comparative analysis of six different areas of applied artificial intelligence (AI) suggests that the next period of development will require a merging of narrow-AI and strong-AI approaches. This will be necessary as programmers seek to move beyond developing narrowly defined tools to developing software agents capable of acting independently in complex environments. The present stage of artificial intelligence development is propitious for this because of the exponential increases in computer power and in available data streams over the last 25 years, and because of better understanding of the complex logic of intelligence. Applied areas chosen for examination were heart pacemakers, socialist economic planning, computer-based trading, self-driving automobiles, surveillance and sousveillance and artificial intelligence in medicine.

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Thanks to a serendipitous discovery and a lot of painstaking work, scientists can now build biohybrid molecules that combine the homing powers of DNA with the broad functional repertoire of proteins—without having to synthesize them one by one, researchers report in a new study. Using a naturally occurring process, laboratories can harness the existing molecule-building capacities of bacteria to generate vast libraries of potentially therapeutic DNA-protein hybrid molecules.

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In the world of nanotechnology, the development of dynamic systems that respond to molecular signals is becoming increasingly important. The DNA origami technique, whereby DNA is programmed so as to produce functional nanostructures, plays a key role in these endeavors. Teams led by LMU chemist Philip Tinnefeld have now published two studies showing how DNA origami and fluorescent probes can be used to release molecular cargo in a targeted manner.

In the journal Angewandte Chemie (“DNA Origami Vesicle Sensors with Triggered Single-Molecule Cargo Transfer”), the researchers report on their development of a novel DNA-origami-based sensor that can detect lipid vesicles and deliver molecular cargo to them with precision.

The sensor works using single-molecule Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (smFRET), which involves measuring the distance between two fluorescent molecules. The system consists of a DNA origami structure, out of which a single-stranded DNA protrudes, which has been labeled with fluorescent dye at its tip. If the DNA comes into contact with vesicles, its conformation changes. This alters the fluorescent signal, because the distance between the fluorescent label and a second fluorescent molecule on the origami structure changes. This method allows vesicles to be detected.

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