Hemophilia is a devastating genetic condition—without the ability to form blood clots, those who have it risk bleeding to death from even the slightest cut.
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Category: genetics – Page 509
Great.
Research published in Acta Neuropathologica, identified alterations in a protein known as ATRX in human brain tumours; researchers might also be able to target microRNAs directly, altering their levels to make cancer cells less likely to form tumours.
A recent study suggests that two recently discovered genetic differences between brain cancer cells and normal tissue cells could offer clues to tumour behaviour and potential new targets for therapy.
Published in Acta Neuropathologica, the study identified alterations in a protein known as ATRX in human brain tumours that arise as part of a genetically inherited condition known as neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1). The disorder, marked initially by benign tumours on nerves, often leads to brain cancer, and although most NF1-related malignancies are nonaggressive, a fraction are “high-grade” and difficult to treat, experts say.
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More on the cell circuited technology that will deprive cancer cells of oxygen.
Imagine having cells in your body that can actively repel cancer in a way that makes it theoretically impossible for you to suffer from it.
Researchers at the U.K.’s University of Southampton…have engineered cells with a so-called “built-in genetic circuit” capable of producing a molecule for inhibiting the ability of tumors to grow and survive in the body.
“There are various defense mechanisms built into human cells, such as proteins that spot DNA damage, but there are also gaps in this defense system that are exploited by disease,” Professor Ali Tavassoli, one of the lead authors of the paper …“We were wondering if it is possible to equip human cells with the ability to sense and respond to a disease marker…”
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The CLONED dogs of war: Russia unveils genetically-enhanced canines which will work with Putin’s Special Forces and were created by scientist attempting to restore woolly mammoths
- The three Belgian Malinois were cloned by a South Korean professor
- He also aims to one day restore extinct woolly mammoths to Siberia
- Dr Hwang Woo Suk gifted the dogs — each valued at $100,000 — to police
- The will be used in Yakutia, the coldest inhabited region in the world
By Will Stewart In Moscow for MailOnline
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A look back at one of the milestones for SRF and the first successful fundraiser on Lifespan.io for MitoSENS.
We need your support at this critical juncture of the MitoSENS project. The MitoSENS team has already demonstrated the rescue of cells containing mitochondrial mutations, and has recently generated highly promising preliminary data showing the rescue of the complete loss of a mitochondrial gene. Our next steps will focus on improving the effectiveness of the targeting system, so that we can repeat our success with one mitochondrial gene to all thirteen. We will then transition this work into animal models of mitochondrial dysfunction. This would be a crucial step in what may be the development of an eventual cure for aging and aging related diseases.
We have a talented team of highly trained mitochondrial biologists working on MitoSENS. Right now the rate-limiting factor is the cost of the expensive reagents that we use for these experiments. Increasing our funding with this campaign will allow us to double the pace of our research and bring results to the public that much faster. We have made preliminary progress on rescuing function with a second gene, ATP6, and your support will help us perfect our targeting of both ATP8 and ATP6. This requires more cells, more viruses, and many new synthetic gene sequences. Specifically, we will spend your generous donations on cell culture reagents, oxygen consumption measurements, virus production, quantitative reverse transcription PCR, DNA synthesis services, and publication of our results in a peer-reviewed journal.
Your support will help take us there.
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BMI implant leveraging AI.
You probably clicked on this article because the idea of using brain implants to allow artificial intelligence (AI) to read your brain sounds futuristic and fascinating. It is fascinating, but it’s not as futuristic as you might think. Before we start talking about brain implants and how to augment the human brain using AI, we need to put some context around human intelligence and why we might want to tinker with it.
We floated the idea before that gene editing techniques could allow us to promote genetic intelligence by performing gene editing at the germline. That’s one approach. As controversial as it might be, some solid scientific research shows that genetics does play a role in intelligence. For those of us who are already alive and well, this sort of intelligence enhancement won’t work. This is where we might look towards augmented intelligence. This sort of augmentation of the brain will firstly be preventative in that it will look to assist those who have age associated brain disorders as an example. In order for augmented intelligence to be feasible though, we need a read/write interface to the human brain. One company called Kernel might be looking to address this with a technology that takes a page out of science fiction.
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