Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: chemistry – Page 154

(NewsNation) — A new study claims to have found chemical compounds that can actually reverse the effects of aging, though so far results have been limited to animal studies.

Harvard Medical School, University of Maine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists collaborated on the study, published in the journal Aging. Researchers found it was possible to reverse cellular engineering rather than simply delay it.

They used six chemical compounds to reverse aging in cells, returning them to a youthful state without having them revert too far and become cancerous.

Read more | >

Large language models like GPT-4 have taken the world by storm thanks to their astonishing command of natural language. Yet the most significant long-term opportunity for LLMs will entail an entirely different type of language: the language of biology.

One striking theme has emerged from the long march of research progress across biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics over the past century: it turns out that biology is a decipherable, programmable, in some ways even digital system.

DNA encodes the complete genetic instructions for every living organism on earth using just four variables—A (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine) and T (thymine). Compare this to modern computing systems, which use two variables—0 and 1—to encode all the world’s digital electronic information. One system is binary and the other is quaternary, but the two have a surprising amount of conceptual overlap; both systems can properly be thought of as digital.

Read more | >

Science and Technology:

Hope that they find a medicine to cure aging and turn us immortal and able to live forever still during “our” lifetime.

Insilico Medicine, a clinical stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, today announced that it combined two rapidly developing technologies, quantum computing and generative AI, to explore lead candidate discovery in drug development and successfully demonstrated the potential advantages of quantum generative adversarial networks in generative chemistry.

The study, published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, was led by Insilico’s Taiwan and UAE centers which focus on pioneering and constructing breakthrough methods and engines with rapidly developing technologies—including generative AI and —to accelerate drug discovery and development.

The research was supported by University of Toronto Acceleration Consortium director Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Ph.D., and scientists from the Hon Hai (Foxconn) Research Institute.

Read more | >

Advantageously, the fabrication of OECTs, in particular of the conductive channel, is compatible with solution-based fabrication methods and additive manufacturing, enabling cost-efficient manufacturing and rapid prototyping on flexible substrates10. This opens new possibilities in terms of the combination of materials that can be used in the manufacturing of OECTs, in particular the use of degradable materials. Degradable electronics refer to electronic systems and components that can degrade in an environment of interest spontaneously, in a controlled amount of time, and without releasing byproducts that are harmful to that environment18. With concerning amounts of electronic waste being generated, as well as exploding numbers of connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices19, there is growing interest in transient electronic systems with a service life of a few days to a few months. Although advances have been made in the manufacturing of fully degradable functional devices, i.e. antennas20, batteries21 and physical as well as environmental sensors22,23, investigations into degradable biosensors remain relatively limited24.

Advances have been made in proposing new materials for the OECT terminals, in particular the gate electrode, as its properties play a key role in modulating the transistor’s behavior. While Ag/AgCl gates offer the advantage of being non-polarizable, Au gates present little electrochemical activity in the range of voltages typical for OECT-based biosensing. Au and PEDOT: PSS gates have been explored for OECT-based biosensors, with the advantage of expanding the possibilities for bio-functionalizing the gate electrode6,25. PEDOT: PSS gates and contacts have been investigated, simplifying notably their manufacturing26. An all-PEDOT: PSS OECT was presented and shown to measure dopamine concentrations reliably and specifically27. Various forms of carbon have also been investigated for the realization of gate electrodes for OECTs8. Activated carbon gates, for example, showed increased drain current modulation due to the large specific surface area of the carbon material9. Recently, screen-printed carbon-gated OECTs were shown to be suitable for the detection of uric acid after functionalization of the carbon gate with platinum and Uricase28. Transient or recyclable materials such as paper26 have been proposed as substrates for OECTs. Polylactic acid (PLA)24 and Poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid)29 (PLGA) have been studied as degradable substrates for OECTs30, as well as diacetate cellulose31. These studies, however, relied on non-degradable contacts for the operation of the printed OECTs. More recently, Khan et al.32 proposed a fully printed OECT on cellulose acetate (CA) for the selective detection of glucose. The OECT is made of degradable materials and CA is a biocompatible material that is suitable as a substrate for transient biosensors.

In this work, we present disposable and biocompatible OECTs based on carbon, PEDOT: PSS and PLA as substrate. Challenges in the fabrication of transient electronic devices come from the low-temperature tolerance18 of biopolymeric substrates and reaching adhesion of the PEDOT: PSS channel material on the biopolymer33, which is often deposited from an aqueous solution. A fully additive fabrication process is developed to address these challenges, leveraging screen and inkjet printing. The influence of the gate material choice, as well as the gate geometry, are studied, and these parameters are optimized for the fabrication of transient OECTs for ions and metabolite sensing. The transistor characteristics of the devices as well as their sensing behavior and reproducibility are characterized. Finally, the degradable OECTs are integrated with highly conductive transient zinc metal traces, which are of interest for interconnection with other degradable electronic circuits and could allow, for example, the wireless operation of the biochemical chemical sensors34.

Read more | >

Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in combating ageing and age-related diseases. The study by the researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology was published in the journal Aging-US.

Humanity’s attempt to prevent ageing: What is the breakthrough?

The researchers have introduced a chemical method through a ‘single pill’ to reprogram body cells, following which the cells effectively return to a younger state.

Read more | >

Gero, an AI-driven biotech focused on aging and longevity, has demonstrated the feasibility of applying quantum computing for drug design and generative chemistry, which now offers significant promise for the future of healthcare. The research, published in Scientific Reports, outlines how a hybrid quantum-classical machine-learning model was used to interface between classical and quantum computational devices with the goal of generating novel chemical structures for potential drugs—an industry first.

The research paper follows in the wake of recent advancements from Gero, which sparked vigorous discussion among longevity experts in the when a story was published in Popular Mechanics that asserted humans can stop—but not fully reverse—aging. Earlier this year, Gero announced a target discovery deal with Pfizer, whereby Gero’s machine-learning technology platform is being applied to discover potential therapeutic targets for fibrotic diseases using large-scale human data.

In this new line of research, the team explored whether a hybrid generative AI system—a deep neural network working in conjunction with commercially available quantum hardware—could suggest unique chemical structures that are synthetically feasible and possess drug-like properties.

Read more | >

A team of nearly 100 scientists recently mapped the cell-type taxonomy in the macaque cortex and revealed the relationship between cell-type composition and various primate brain regions by using the self-developed spatial transcriptome sequencing technology Stereo-seq and snRNA-seq technology, which provides a molecular and cellular basis for further investigation into neural circuits.

The study was published in Cell.

Primates have a vast number of neurons that form complex and intricate supporting advanced cognition and behavior. Disruptions in these cells and circuits can lead to various brain disorders. Understanding the composition and of cells in the brain, as well as the relationships between them, is a fundamental question in neuroscience, comparable to the in chemistry, the world map in geographic discoveries, or the DNA base sequence discovered through sequencing.

Read more | >

The immune system is an incredibly complex network that has some amazing capabilities. It can eliminate dangerous cells that may lead to cancer, and defend the body against a wide variety of pathogenic invaders. It also has the ability to remember those encounters with pathogens so if they happen again, the immune system is primed to respond more quickly and forcefully against the offender. Scientists have now learned more about how the immune system memory is created at the molecular level. The findings have been reported in Science Immunology.

When immune cells are exposed to an invader, they can recognize structures called antigens on the surface of the pathogen. In this study, the researchers compared immune cells that had never been exposed to an antigen, so-called naive cells, to immune cells that had been in contact with an antigen, known as memory cells. The investigators wanted to identify the epigenetic differences between these cell types, which are changes in DNA that can impact gene expression, such as structural shifts or chemical tags, but do not alter the sequence of the genome. Epigenetic changes might explain why memory cells can react so quickly while naive cells are comparatively slow.

Read more | >

The thrusters will play an important role on NASA’s Gateway, the outpost orbiting the Moon.

Engineers from NASA and Aerojet Rocketdyne have begun the multiyear qualification testing of the most powerful solar electric propulsion (SEP) thrusters, which are expected to radically change propulsion in space, a press release from the space agency said.

For decades, space research has relied on chemical propulsion to generate millions of pounds of thrust and has attempted to make bigger and more powerful rockets to take us further in our space voyages. While this is a standard even with the most advanced methane-powered rocket engines, it is not necessarily the most efficient way to move about in space.

Read more | >

Immunotherapy could be the “shot in the arm” you need to treat your allergies.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (August 7, 2019) – You may think you can’t tell the difference between the symptoms caused by spring, summer and fall allergies. They all usually involve sneezing, sniffling, itchy eyes and a runny nose. And while symptoms for each Allergies are inappropriate or exaggerated reactions of the immune system to substances that, in the majority of people, cause no symptoms. Symptoms of the allergic diseases may be caused by exposure of the skin to a chemical, of the respiratory system to particles of dust or pollen (or other substances), or of the stomach and intestines to a particular food. rel= tooltip allergy season may be similar, the treatment can look very different, particularly if Immunotherapy is a form of preventive and anti-inflammatory treatment of allergy to substances such as pollens, house dust mites, fungi, and stinging insect venom.

Read more | >