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Category: genetics – Page 466

Carriers of the mutation are essentially playing catch-up for their entire lives.

Any night owls reading this will be familiar with the struggle of constantly trying to fit into a morning person’s world. And now researchers say they’ve finally identified the genetic typo that causes this social jetlag.

A new study has revealed that many people who stay up late and struggle to wake up in the morning aren’t lazy, their internal clock is simply genetically programmed to run between 2 and 2.5 hours slower than the rest of the population, thanks to a mutation in a body clock gene called CRY1.

“Carriers of the mutation have longer days than the planet gives them, so they are essentially playing catch-up for their entire lives,” says lead researcher Alina Patke from The Rockefeller University in New York.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Pinpointed the Annoying Genetic Mutation That Turns Us Into Night Owls” | >

China has made the precision medicine field a focus of its 13th five-year plan, and its companies have been embarking on ambitious efforts to collect a vast trove of genetic and health data, researching how to identify cancer markers in blood, and launching consumer technologies that aim to tap potentially life-saving information. The push offers insight into China’s growing ambitions in science and biotechnology, areas where it has traditionally lagged developed nations like the United States.

Precision medicine a focus of latest five-year plan.

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 09 February, 2017, 1:42pm.

UPDATED : Thursday, 09 February, 2017, 1:42pm.

Continue reading “Chinese biotech scientists plan to use big data in war on cancer” | >

Transhumanism stuff out in these stories: http://z-news.link/the-future-of-the-earth-through-the-eyes-of-futurists-photo/ & http://yemcentral.com/2017/03/29/would-robots-make-better-po…an-humans/ & https://player.fm/series/lions-of-liberty-podcast/287-zoltan…nd-liberty

Futurism, or more precisely, futurology, is the study of possible hypotheses, probable and preferred options for the future. To understand what futurists predict in the improvement of the human condition, consider the progress happening in the field of science, medicine and computing.

1. Cure Alzheimer’s disease

Continue reading “The future of the Earth through the eyes of futurists. Photo” | >

  • In 2016 alone, 58,320 people in the U.S. died from leukemia. This new development could increase a patients’ chance of survival
  • Current treatment methods can increase a patient’s risk of secondary cancer after remission. This Engineered T-Cell approach has not shown to be carcinogenic

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the need for chemotherapy no longer existed? In some cases, these treatments aren’t even effective enough to send patients into remission, but for many people, there are few other options.

What if there was an easier and more effective way to tackle cancer? Thanks to one recent case, there is.

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The race is on to edit genes and prevent disease. But this technology is ripe for abuse.

Economic inequity already exists in the reproductive industry. IVF, for example, is not covered by insurance in most states (Massachusetts excepted), setting up a situation in which only infertile people with well-padded pockets can afford the treatment. And of course the well-off have easier access to good health care via quality private insurance — or their own bank accounts. Steve Jobs, for example, spent $100,000 in 2011 to sequence his genome and that of his pancreatic tumor — a bill not many could hope to afford.

“The beautiful thing about this [gene-editing] work is it offers an opportunity to intervene around the moment of birth,” says Katy Kozhimannil, an associate professor in the Division of Health Policy at University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health. “That said, as we pay attention to the opportunity of that moment, it’s important to bear in mind the value of liberty and justice for all.”

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Genomic instability (mutations) has been suggested as being one of the primary hallmarks of aging and this research might support that idea. Researchers at John Hopkins report that around 66% of mutations in cancer cells are due to random errors with environment/lifestyle contributing 29% and 5% inherited.

“That finding challenges the common wisdom that cancer is the product of heredity and the environment. “There’s a third cause and this cause of mutations is a major cause,” says cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein.”

“Such random mutations build up over time and help explain why cancer strikes older people more often. Knowing that the enemy will strike from within even when people protect themselves against external threats indicates that early cancer detection and treatment deserve greater attention than they have previously gotten, Vogelstein says.”

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RUPTURE follows Renee Morgan (Noomi Rapace), a single mom, who is deathly terrified of spiders. While in route to meet up with a friend, she is violently abducted by a group of strangers. After enduring intense yet strange questioning and examinations, some about her fear of spiders, Renee soon discovers that she is now the subject of an underground experiment. Her captors explain to her that she has a genetic abnormality that can potentially allow her to “rupture” and reveal her alien nature. Renee must find a way to escape before it is too late.

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Amazing Genes are HIDDEN inside of us; Science has found it. In 2014 one of the craziest science experiments by some incredible scientists at Oxford University found that less than 10% of human DNA is active, meaning that the majority of your genetic code is just sitting around doing nothing.

Narration provided by JaM Advertising New Mexico www.tasteofjam.com

If you’ve ever been in a fight with a child, and I know I have, you’ll soon realise that their bodies have an uncanny ability to heal faster than an adult’s. Every human on Earth possesses a gene called ACTN3, but for some people this gene possesses a very special ability — the ability to be totally badass at sports. When my head is in a bouquet of flowers or I’m hovering over a batch of freshly baked cookies, I wonder how great this must smell to a dog. Remember that movie where Bruce Willis had unbreakable bones and Samuel L Jackson played a weird guy who said he was unbreakable and he proved it when he was in a car crash and his bones were unbreakable?The ability to hibernate for months at a time is a trait man has envied ever since the invention of the Lay-Z-Boy. Instead of sleeping for months, how awesome would it be to need no more than four hours sleep and still feel as refreshed as you would after sleeping in till noon? Remember the mice from the regeneration gene entry? Ever wanted to swim underwater without having to worry about that pesky little thing called drowning? On the surface this ability may sound pretty neat, because imagine how good chocolate or steak would be if your sense of taste was ramped up a few notches? The ability to become infected by an ancient virus may not seem like the best dormant trait to wake up, but they can’t all be winners now can they?

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To put it mildly, sequencing and building a genome from scratch isn’t cheap. It’s sometimes affordable for human genomes, but it’s often prohibitively expensive (hundreds of thousands of dollars) whenever you’re charting new territory — say, a specific person or an unfamiliar species. A chromosome can have hundreds of millions of genetic base pairs, after all. Scientists may have a way to make it affordable across the board, however. They’ve developed a new method, 3D genome assembly, that can sequence and build genomes from the ground up for less than $10,000.

Where earlier approaches saw researchers using computers to stick small pieces of genetic code together, the new technique takes advantages of folding maps (which show how a 6.5ft long genome can cram into a cell’s nucleus) to quickly build out a sequence. As you only need short reads of DNA to make this happen, the cost is much lower. You also don’t need to know much about your sample organism going in.

As an example of what’s possible, the team completely assembled the three chromosomes for the Aedes aegypti mosquito for the first time. More complex organisms would require more work, of course, but the dramatically lower cost makes that more practical than ever. Provided the approach finds widespread use, it could be incredibly valuable for both biology and medicine.

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