Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: genetics – Page 223

Whatever you are doing, whether it is driving a car, going for a jog, or even at your laziest, eating chips and watching TV on the couch, there is an entire suite of molecular machinery inside each of your cells hard at work. That machinery, far too small to see with the naked eye or even with many microscopes, creates energy for the cell, manufactures its proteins, makes copies of its DNA, and much more.

Among those pieces of machinery, and one of the most complex, is something known as the nuclear pore complex (NPC). The NPC, which is made of more than 1,000 individual proteins, is an incredibly discriminating gatekeeper for the cell’s nucleus, the membrane-bound region inside a cell that holds that cell’s genetic material. Anything going in or out of the nucleus has to pass through the NPC on its way.

Nuclear pores stud the surface of the cell’s nucleus, controlling what flows in and out of it. (Image: Valerie Altounian)

Read more | >

“When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, it had a projected budget of $3 billion. […] Now, one company claims to have achieved the major milestone of whole genome sequencing for just $100.”

Ultima Genomics, a biotech company based in California, has emerged from stealth mode with a new high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platform that it claims can deliver a $100 genome.

When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, it had a projected budget of $3 billion. Some researchers believed it would take centuries to map all 20,000+ genes and to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs making up DNA, though in the end it took 13 years. Since then, genome sequencing has undergone technology and cost improvements at a rate faster than Moore’s Law (a long-term trend in the computer industry that involves a doubling of performance every two years). What used to require billions of dollars and many years of work is now several orders of magnitude cheaper and possible in a matter of hours.

Companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com have been offering DNA test kits at the consumer level. These can generate reports relating to a customer’s ancestry and genetic predispositions to health-related issues. While most people have opted for tests based on partial (i.e. incomplete) sequencing, the costs are now becoming so low that whole genome sequencing may soon be affordable. Veritas Genetics made headlines in 2016 by breaking the $1,000 barrier and in 2021 the price fell to $562.

Continue reading “Whole human genome sequencing for 0” | >

Not that Thier should be more animals raised for meat.

But beefalo does have its opponents.

“We just don’t think there should be beefalo,” said Martha McFarland, farmland viability coordinator for the advocacy group Practical Farmers of Iowa. She also raises cattle and bison, but said she would never mix the two.

“Nature did just fine producing bison. It’s an excellent animal that also is good to eat, and mixing it with cows is not necessary and weakens the genetic line of the bison.”

Continue reading “Beefalo, a bison-cattle hybrid, is being touted as the healthy meat of the future” | >

Having multiple conditions that affect the heart are linked to a greater risk of dementia than having high genetic risk, according to a largescale new study.

Led by Oxford University and the University of Exeter, the study is among the largest ever to examine the link between several heart-related conditions and dementia, and one of the few to look at the complex issue of multiple health conditions.

Published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, the paper looked at data from more than 200,000 people, aged 60 or above, and of European ancestry in UK Biobank. The international research team identified those who had been diagnosed with the cardiometabolic conditions diabetes, stroke, or a heart attack, or any combination of the three, and those who went on to develop dementia.

Read more | >

New research has uncovered how genetic changes that accumulate slowly in blood stem cells throughout life are likely to be responsible for the dramatic change in blood production after the age of 70.

The study, by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and collaborators, has been published in the journal Nature.

Longevity. Technology: Has our understanding of one of the mechanisms of aging taken a quantum leap? Molecular damage accumulates throughout our lives, gradually increasing year-on-year as we suffer telomere attrition, mutation, epigenetic change and oxidative and replicative stress. It’s a double whammy as our ability to repair this damage also declines as we age, but given the gradual nature of these processes, why, as the paper authors themselves put it, “Is there an abrupt increase in mortality after 70 years of age? [1]”.

Read more | >

“Functional mutations in the growth hormone pathway” meaning it is not active. What’s good for you as a youngster might not be good for you when you’re old.

Dr Nir Barzilai reveals what the longevity genes project found on why Centenarians live longer, not the longevity genes, not healthy lifestyles in this clip.

Dr. Nir Barzilai is the director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. He is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair of Aging Research, professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics, and member of the Diabetes Research Center and of the Divisions of Endocrinology & Diabetes and Geriatrics.

Continue reading “NOT The Longevity Genes!? Surprising Facts WHY Centenarians LIVE LONGER | Dr Nir Barzilai Clips” | >

A drug combination targeting multiple mutant versions of cancer’s “death star” protein has shown promise in a small, early-phase clinical trial for some patients with advanced lung, ovarian and thyroid cancer.

The two– was effective against with a range of mutations to the KRAS gene—dubbed the “death star” because its protein drives one in four cancers and has a largely impenetrable, drug-resistant surface.

The phase I trial tested the drugs VS-6766 and everolimus in 30 patients with a range of mutations to KRAS—including 11 with highly advanced, .

Read more | >

Observer, backup youthful copy, playing the right piano notes, quantum states oh my.

Dr David Sinclair explain about through his lab experiments, why he thinks there is an observer/backup copy for our youthfulness and what are the possible identities he can think of in this clip.

David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.

Continue reading “WHO Is The OBSERVER That Holds The Key For OUR YOUTHFULNESS? | Dr David Sinclair Interview Clips” | >

Scientists at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution announced today that ribonucleic acid (RNA), an analog of DNA that was likely the first genetic material for life, spontaneously forms on basalt lava glass. Such glass was abundant on Earth 4.35 billion years ago. Similar basalts of this antiquity survive on Mars today.

More information:

Craig A. Jerome et al, Catalytic Synthesis of Polyribonucleic Acid on Prebiotic Rock Glasses, Astrobiology (2022). DOI: 10.1089/ast.2022.

Hyo-Joong Kim et al, Prebiotic stereoselective synthesis of purine and noncanonical pyrimidine nucleotide from nucleobases and phosphorylated carbohydrates, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.

Continue reading “Scientists announce a breakthrough in determining life’s origin on Earth—and maybe Mars” | >