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Category: genetics – Page 239

Western intelligence agencies fear Beijing could within decades dominate all of the key emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics.

China’s economic and military rise over the past 40 years is considered to be one of the most significant geopolitical events of recent times, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union which ended the Cold War.

MI6, depicted by novelists as the employer of some of the most memorable fictional spies from John le Carré’s George Smiley to Ian Fleming’s James Bond, operates overseas and is tasked with defending Britain and its interests.

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Kind of starts out with a no but ends in a yes. Just a few minutes long.

An increasing number of studies suggest the presence of a “metabolic clock” that controls aging. This clock involves the accumulation of metabolic alterations and a decline in metabolic homeostasis and biological fitness. There are nine cellular hallmarks of aging: telomere attrition, genomic instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient sensing, epigenetic alterations, and altered intercellular communication. Metabolic alterations have been implicated in each of these processes.

https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(13)00645-4

Continue reading “DAVID SINCLAIR “One Therapy To Reverse All Hallmarks Of Aging” | Dr David Sinclair Interview Clips” | >

A new type of cell has been identified in the heart that is linked to regulating heart rate – and the discovery promises to advance our understanding of cardiovascular defects and diseases, once these cells have been more extensively studied.

The new cell is a type of glial cell – cells that support nerve cells – like astrocytes in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). Named nexus glia, they’re located in the outflow tract of the heart, the place where many congenital heart defects are found.

The new cell type was first found in zebrafish, before being confirmed in mouse and human hearts too. Experiments on zebrafish found that when the cells were removed, heart rate increased; and when genetic editing blocked glial development, the heartbeat became irregular.

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For the first time, researchers appear to have effectively treated a genetic disorder by directly injecting a CRISPR therapy into patients’ bloodstreams — overcoming one of the biggest hurdles to curing diseases with the gene editing technology.

The therapy appears to be astonishingly effective, editing nearly every cell in the liver to stop a disease-causing mutation.

The challenge: CRISPR gives us the ability to correct genetic mutations, and given that such mutations are responsible for more than 6,000 human diseases, the tech has the potential to dramatically improve human health.

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There are synergies between the two kinds of intelligence. The brain serves the genes by improving the organism’s capability to survive and reproduce. In exchange, evolution favors genetic mutations that improve the brain’s innate and learning capacities for each species (this is why some animals are born with the ability to walk while others learn it weeks or months later).

At the same time, the brain comes with tradeoffs. Genes lose some of their control over the behavior of the organism when they relegate their duties to the brain. Sometimes, the brain can go chasing rewards that do not serve the self-replication of the genes (e.g., addiction, suicide). Also, the behavior learned by the brain does not pass on through genes (this is why you didn’t inherit your parents’ knowledge and had to learn language, math, and sports from scratch).

As Lee writes in Birth of Intelligence, “The fact that brain functions can be modified by experience implies that genes do not fully control the brain. However, this does not mean that the brain is completely free from genes, either. If the behaviors selected by the brain prevent the self-replication of its own genes, such brains would be eliminated during evolution. Thus, the brain interacts with the genes bidirectionally.”

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Scientists have discovered a way to stop the COVID-19 virus from replicating in infected human cells, marking major progress towards a definitive treatment for the deadly illness and accentuating the potential of genetic engineering to cure viral diseases.

The study explores the use of CRISPR, a genome editing tool, and builds on research that started at Australia’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in 2019, when Dr. Mohamed Fareh and Prof. Joe Trapani showed that CRISPR could be used to eliminate abnormal RNAs that drive children’s cancers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, and in collaboration with Director Prof. Sharon Lewin and Dr. Wei Zhao from the Doherty Institute, the scientists reprogrammed the same CRISPR tool to suppress replication of the RNA virus SARS-CoV-2 — and importantly, its “variants of concern” — in a test tube model. SARS-CoV-2, which is short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, is the virus that causes COVID-19.

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Researchers have imaged a major component in conjugation—the process bacteria use to share DNA with each other.

During conjugation, bacteria can exchange genetic information in the form of special pieces of DNA. These include genes that help them resist attacks from common antimicrobial drugs, making many illnesses caused by these bacteria resistant to treatment.

Better understanding conjugation could therefore allow scientists to find ways to stop the process and reduce the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

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ROME, July 2 (Reuters) — A United Nations-backed scientific research centre has teamed up with an Italian tech firm to explore whether laser light can be used to kill coronavirus particles suspended in the air and help keep indoor spaces safe.

The joint effort between the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) of Trieste, a city in the north of Italy, and the nearby Eltech K-Laser company, was launched last year as COVID-19 was battering the country.

They created a device that forces air through a sterilization chamber which contains a laser beam filter that pulverizes viruses and bacteria.

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A cell stores all of its genetic material in its nucleus, in the form of chromosomes, but that’s not all that’s tucked away in there. The nucleus is also home to small bodies called nucleoli — clusters of proteins and RNA that help build ribosomes.

Using computer simulations, MIT chemists have now discovered how these bodies interact with chromosomes in the nucleus, and how those interactions help the nucleoli exist as stable droplets within the nucleus.

Their findings also suggest that chromatin-nuclear body interactions lead the genome to take on a gel-like structure, which helps to promote stable interactions between the genome and transcription machineries. These interactions help control gene expression.

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