Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: genetics – Page 458

https://www.wired.com/…/biology-will-be-the-next-great-comp…

In some ways, Synthego looks like any other Silicon Valley startup. Inside its beige business park facilities, a five-minute drive from Facebook HQ, rows of nondescript black server racks whir and blink and vent. But inside the metal shelving, the company isn’t pushing around ones and zeros to keep the internet running. It’s making molecules to rewrite the code of life.

Crispr, the powerful gene-editing tool, is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including human cells. So many people want to use it—from academic researchers to agtech companies to biopharma firms—that new companies are popping up to staunch the demand. Companies like Synthego, which is using a combination of software engineering and hardware automation to become the Amazon of genome engineering. And Inscripta, which wants to be the Apple. And Twist Bioscience, which could be the Intel.

All these analogies to the computing industry are more than just wordplay. Crispr is making biology more programmable than ever before. And the biotech execs staking their claims in Crispr’s backend systems have read their Silicon Valley history. They’re betting biology will be the next great computing platform, DNA will be the code that runs it, and Crispr will be the programming language.

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A compelling study from a team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen has demonstrated a way to completely stop a body’s ability to store fat. In experiments with mice, the team showed that genetically deleting a single enzyme resulted in the animal not being able to gain weight, even when fed a fatty diet.

An enzyme dubbed NAMPT has been connected to obesity in both human and animal models by several studies. Its presence in fat tissue has been found to increase metabolic functionality in numerous body tissues, including fat tissue, which enhances the body’s ability to store fat.

“NAMPT in fat tissue was likely once an extraordinary benefit to our ancestors but in today’s society full of high-fat, calorically-dense foods, it may now pose a liability,” says Zachary Gerhart-Hines, a corresponding author on the study.

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Two hormones called #notum and #lipocalin5 that speed up the body’s ability to burn fat.

UCLA geneticists have created a new technique to hunt for hormones that influence how organs and tissues communicate with each other. The method enabled them to find naturally occurring molecules that play major roles in Type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

In particular, they discovered:

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As April ends and, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, summer approaches, let’s have a look at the progress of worldwide efforts to extend the summer of life.

Kazan 2018: Interventions to Extend Healthspan and Lifespan

The highlight of April was unquestionably the Interventions to Extend Healthspan and Lifespan Conference, which was held in Kazan, Russia on April 23–26. Featuring over 40 distinguished speakers from the field of aging research, this conference, which was the fifth in the series, included talks on epigenetics, genomics, metabolomics, aging biomarkers, bioinformatics, effective advocacy, and more. LEAF board director Elena Milova attended the event and had the chance to interview several of the experts present, such as Dr. Andrei Gudkov and Professor David Gems. We will publish more interviews of these speakers in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

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