Researchers at universities in New York and Ningbo, China, say they have created tiny robots built from DNA that can reproduce themselves.
Such nanorobots could one day launch search-and-destroy missions against cancer cells within a human’s bloodstream without the need for surgery or collect toxic waste from the ocean.
The tiny mechanism is so small that 1,000 of them could fit into the width of a sheet of paper.
Posted in biotech/medical, life extension
I like the chapter “would you want to be”.
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Ah, immortality, previously only for the gods and individuals with a fetish for chopping each other’s heads off. In more modern times, science is coming closer and closer to both identifying the tapestry of things that cause humans to grow old, and slowly but surely taking the first steps into finding ways to delay and even reverse this process for fun and profit. So, just what causes individuals of the human persuasion to grow old and die, who was the oldest confirmed human, are there any living things that are biologically immortal, and if there was an option to become biologically immortal, would you take it?
0:00 Intro.
3:42 The Oldest Human.
4:50 The Lobster.
9:01 It’s Not the Years Honey, It’s the Mileage.
13:32 Would You Want to Be Biologically Immortal?
17:24 The Senescent Cell Problem.
20:46 A Myriad of Other Factors.
26:04 The Biologically Immortal Creatures.
Author: Daven Hiskey.
Pancreatic cancer is deadly, and its toll is growing. Scientists find that scar tissue around the tumor suggests how long a patient will live after diagnosis.
FOX Business’ Lauren Simonetti details a breakthrough finding in the medical community revealing how artificial intelligence can help detect silent seizures.
An MIT study suggests 3D folding of the genome is key to cells’ ability to store and pass on “memories” of which genes they should express.
Every cell in the human body contains the same genetic instructions, encoded in its DNA. However, out of about 30,000 genes, each cell expresses only those genes that it needs to become a nerve cell, immune cell, or any of the other hundreds of cell types in the body.
Each cell’s fate is largely determined by chemical modifications to the proteins that decorate its DNA; these modification in turn control which genes get turned on or off. When cells copy their DNA to divide, however, they lose half of these modifications, leaving the question: How do cells maintain the memory of what kind of cell they are supposed to be?
A new MIT study proposes a theoretical model that helps explain how these memories are passed from generation to generation when cells divide. The research team suggests that within each cell’s nucleus, the 3D folding of its genome determines which parts of the genome will be marked by these chemical modifications. After a cell copies its DNA, the marks are partially lost, but the 3D folding allows the cell to easily restore the chemical marks needed to maintain its identity. And each time a cell divides, chemical marks allow a cell to restore its 3D folding of its genome. This way, by juggling the memory between 3D folding and the marks, the memory can be preserved over hundreds of cell divisions.
Biotech company Teal Omics founded after researchers develop algorithm that measures how fast individual organs are aging.
Researchers at the Hubrecht Institute have laid the foundation for the development of a gene therapy for the genetic heart disease arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM). Their approach, based on replacement of the PKP2 gene, led to significant structural and functional improvements in laboratory models of the disease.
The study by the group of Eva van Rooij was published on 7 December 2023 in Nature Cardiovascular Research. Multiple clinical trials will start in 2024 in the United States to explore the clinical potential of this approach in ACM patients with PKP2 mutations.
ACM is a genetic heart disease that affects 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people worldwide. It is characterized by arrhythmias and can lead to sudden cardiac arrest. Current treatment of the disease usually consists of antiarrhythmic drugs and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), which are focused solely on treating the symptoms rather than targeting the root of the problem.
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Takeaways:
• A sudden rise in respiratory ailments in China, particularly among children, has raised global concern. The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported over 3,500 cases of respiratory infection, with Chinese media attributing the outbreak to mycoplasma pneumonia.
• The World Health Organization has been monitoring the situation since mid-October 2023 and has requested more information from China. As of November 24, no unusual or novel pathogens have been reported in the clusters of pneumonia cases.
WASHINGTON, Dec 5 (Reuters) — Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide are killed annually by malaria and other diseases spread through the bite of mosquitoes, insects that date back to the age of dinosaurs. All of these bites are inflicted by females, which possess specialized mouth anatomy that their male counterparts lack.
But it has not always been that way. Researchers said they have discovered the oldest-known fossils of mosquitoes — two males entombed in pieces of amber dating to 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period and found near the town of Hammana in Lebanon. To their surprise, the male mosquitoes possessed elongated piercing-sucking mouthparts seen now only in females.
“Clearly they were hematophagous,” meaning blood-eaters, said paleontologist Dany Azar of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology and Lebanese University, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Current Biology. “So this discovery is a major one in the evolutionary history of mosquitoes.”
