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‘I’m really just high on life and beauty’: the woman who can see 100 million colours

A woman can see nearly 100 million more colors than the rest of us.

This extraordinary ability, known as tetrachromacy, arises from a rare genetic variation that influences the development of the retina, giving her an extra type of cone cell capable of detecting a broader spectrum of light.

While most people have three types of cone cells, allowing them to see around a million colors, tetrachromats have four, enabling them to perceive a staggering range of hues that remain invisible to the average person. For this woman, the world is a kaleidoscope of vibrant, nuanced colors. Ordinary scenes, such as a pathway of pebbles, transform into a dazzling array of oranges, yellows, greens, blues, and pinks, while others see only dull gray.

However, tetrachromacy is not always a blessing. The overwhelming array of colors in environments like grocery stores can be distressing, as the sheer intensity of visual information becomes exhausting. She finds solace in the simplicity of white surfaces, which provide a rare respite from the constant flood of color. Tetrachromacy is thought to be exclusive to women due to its genetic basis. The genes responsible for red and green cone cells are located on the X chromosome. Women, with two X chromosomes, can carry different versions of these genes, potentially resulting in four distinct cone types. While approximately 12% of women may have the genetic potential for tetrachromacy, only a small fraction exhibit the enhanced color perception associated with the condition. Researchers identified the first tetrachromat in 2010. Since then, others have described experiencing a world filled with richer and more nuanced colors.

Learn more.


As a kid, Concetta Antico was always ‘a bit out of the box’, but it took decades for her to discover just how differently she was seeing the world.

Researchers explore how to build shapeshifting, T-1000-style robots

Researchers have developed small robots that can work together as a collective that changes shape and even shifts between solid and “fluid-like” states — a concept that should be familiar to anyone still haunted by nightmares of the T-1000 robotic assassin from “Terminator 2.”

A team led by Matthew Devlin of UC Santa Barbara described this work in a paper recently published in Science, writing that the vision of “cohesive collectives of robotic units that can arrange into virtually any form with any physical properties … has long intrigued both science and fiction.”

Otger Campàs, a professor at Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, told Ars Technica that the team was inspired by tissues in embryos to try and design robots with similar capabilities. These robots have motorized gears that allow them to move around within the collective, magnets so they can stay attached, and photodetectors that allow them to receive instructions from a flashlight with a polarization filter.

Repairing DNA Damage: Scientists Identify New Benefits of Melatonin Supplementation

A small clinical trial, published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine, suggests that melatonin supplementation may help counteract DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

Early ancestral bottleneck could’ve spelled the end for modern humans

Humanity came close to extinction 800,000 years ago. Only 1,280 of our ancestors survived.

A recent study published in Science suggests that a catastrophic “ancestral bottleneck” reduced the global population to just 1,280 breeding individuals, wiping out 98.7% of the early human lineage.

This population crash, lasting about 117,000 years, likely resulted from extreme climate shifts, prolonged droughts, and dwindling food sources.

Using a groundbreaking genetic analysis method called FitCoal, researchers analyzed modern human genomes to trace this dramatic decline, potentially explaining a gap in the African and Eurasian fossil record.

Despite the near-extinction, this bottleneck may have played a crucial role in shaping modern humans. Scientists believe it contributed to a key evolutionary event—chromosome fusion—which may have set Homo sapiens apart from earlier hominin species, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. The study raises intriguing questions about how this small population survived, possibly through early fire use and adaptive intelligence. Understanding this ancient crisis helps scientists piece together the story of human evolution and the resilience that allowed our species to thrive against all odds.

Learn more.


What’s The Best Way To Optimize NAD? Jin-Xiong She, PhD

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Apertura Gene Therapy Supports the Broad Institute in Development of Gene Therapy for Prion Disease Using Engineered AAV Capsid Targeting TfR1 for CNS Delivery

Two remarkable innovations coming together to tackle prion disease: AAVs that leverage human receptors to cross the blood-brain-barrier + a way of epigenetically silencing the gene encoding prions. I recall reading those cited papers and both are amazing!


BOSTON and NEW YORK, Feb. 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Apertura Gene Therapy, a biotechnology company focused on innovative gene therapy solutions, supports the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the Whitehead Institute in advancing a gene therapy approach for the treatment of prion disease. The project is led by the Vallabh-Minikel lab at the Broad Institute which is focused on finding a cure for prion disease, and their approach leverages two cutting-edge technologies developed at the Institutes of both the Broad and Whitehead: the CHARM platform designed in Dr. Jonathan Weismann’s lab, and TfR1 capsid, an engineered AAV designed in the lab of Dr. Ben Deverman, Director of Vector Engineering at the Broad Institute and scientific founder of Apertura.

Prion disease is a rare, fatal, neurodegenerative disorder caused by misfolded proteins. The new gene therapy aims to address the root cause by using CHARM (Coupled Histone tail for Autoinhibition Release of Methyltransferase) to target and silence the gene that codes for the disease-causing protein1. This payload will be combined with Apertura’s TfR1 capsid, an adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsid engineered to efficiently cross the blood-brain barrier by binding to the human TfR1 receptor, which facilitates iron transport into brain cells2. Together, these technologies represent a transformative approach to tackling CNS diseases.

“We are thrilled to see the progress being made in the development of this innovative therapy for prion disease,” said Dr. Sonia Vallabh, co-leader of the group at the Broad working on preventative therapies for prion disease. “The collaborative efforts between Apertura, the Broad Institute and the Whitehead mark a significant milestone toward addressing unmet needs in neurodegenerative disorders.”

A Low RDW Is Associated With A Longer Lifespan (Clip)

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Posthumanism Explained — Nietzsche, Deleuze, Stiegler, Haraway

This is the prophesied follow-up to my fastpunch through humanism, covering some 20th century reactions to humanist thought. I hypothesize that we’re at something of a standoff between humanism and posthumanism, as our political and educational institutions are struggling to terms with changing technical contexts.

If you like the work there’s more at https://spoti.fi/3f0OIXD and / plasticpills.

Addendum: Sometimes posthumanism is confused with transhumanism, which I had planned to cover in this video but it was getting too long. Transhumanism is often humanistic in that it privileges the same capacities that humanism does–intellect, memory, progress, consciousness–and proposes that our bodies can be technologically or genetically augmented to improve these capacities in new stages of human develepment– uploading our consciousness into the cloud or staving off mortality. Posthumanists, by and large, tend to de-emphasize the supposed value of those ends in the first place, although there is some overlap.

Thanks for watching!

Sources Used:
Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols (https://amzn.to/37GFyw7) and Human, All Too Human (https://amzn.to/2OQsdbQ)
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (https://amzn.to/33l4AgP)
Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time (https://amzn.to/2qQoJOF)
Donna Haraway (https://amzn.to/2pPVxqy)

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