An international team of biologists has discovered how specialized enzymes remodel the extremely condensed genetic material in the nucleus of cells in order to control which genes can be used. The discovery will be published in the print edition of the journal Nature on Feb. 4, 2016.
Over the last 12,000 years or so, human civilization has noticeably reshaped the Earth’s surface. But changes on our own planet will likely pale in comparison when humans settle on other celestial bodies. While many of the changes on Earth over the centuries have been related to food production, by way of agriculture, changes on other worlds will result, not only from the need for on-site production of food, but also for all other consumables, including air.
As vital as synthetic biology will be to the early piloted missions to Mars and voyages of exploration, it will become indispensable to establish a long-term human presence off-Earth, namely colonization. That’s because we’ve evolved over billions of years to thrive specifically in the environments provides by our home planet.
Our physiology is well-suited to Earth’s gravity and its oxygen-rich atmosphere. We also depend on Earth’s magnetic field to shield us from intense space radiation in the form of charged particles. In comparison, Mars currently has no magnetic field to trap particle radiation and an atmosphere that is so thin that any shielding against other types of space radiation is negligible compared with the protection that Earth’s atmosphere affords. At the Martian surface, atmospheric pressure never gets above 7 millibars. That’s like Earth at an altitude of about 27,000 m (89,000 ft), which is almost the edge of space. And it’s not like the moon is a better option for us since it has no atmosphere at all.
It’s not a smoking gun. But in this week’s Nature, there’s a study that strongly links schizophrenia with a double-agent gene involved in the immune system.
Interesting
Scientists have implanted a wireless device the size of a peppercorn inside mice to stimulate nerves.
The technique combines optogenetics—using light to control the activity of the brain—with a newly developed method for wirelessly powering implanted devices. It’s described in a paper published in Nature Methods.
“This is a new way of delivering wireless power for optogenetics,” says Ada Poon, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University. “It’s much smaller and the mouse can move around during an experiment.”
“According to many industry observers, we are today on the cusp of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developments in previously disjointed fields such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and genetics and biotechnology are all building on and amplifying one another…”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) published an analysis today on the technological and sociological drivers of employment.
The report, titled The Future of Jobs, validates the accelerating impact of technology on global employment trends, and also highlights serious concerns that job growth in certain industries is still very much outpaced by large scale declines in other industries.
The report surveyed senior executives and chief human resources officers of various companies “representing more than 13 million employees across 9 broad industry sectors in 15 major developed and emerging economies and regional economic areas.”
People with a family history of some inheritable diseases like cystic fibrosis can now be tested to see if they carry the genes for the condition. If neither parent has the disease, but both carry the corresponding gene or genes, the odds of having a child with the condition are higher.
Cambridge diagnostics company Good Start Genetics has partnered with Helix, a startup in California, to bring its genetic tests to a bigger market.
People with a family history of some inheritable diseases like cystic fibrosis can now be tested to see if they carry the genes for the condition. If neither parent has the disease, but both carry the corresponding gene or genes, the odds of having a child with the condition are higher.
Good Start is among the companies that specializes in such “carrier testing” and sells tests for 23 diseases, including cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy.
A new algorithm has been developed that will drastically reduce the time and effort needed to create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). As a result of this breakthrough, we can expect a dramatic revolution in regenerative medicine in the near future.
What if you could directly reprogram cells to develop into whatever you wished? What if you could take an undifferentiated, incipient cell, full of the unrealized potential to become any one of the many specialized cells in the human body, and nudge it into becoming ocular tissue, or neural cells, even a new heart to replace an old or damaged one?
This is the promise afforded by Mogrify, the result of the application of computational and mathematical science to the problems of medicine and biology. It was developed by an international collaboration of researchers from the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, Monash University in Australia, and RIKEN in Japan. The new research was published online in the journal Nature Genetics.
The real opportunities of our future is when we truly integrate technology and genetics/ healthcare together to the point that technology benefits from learning and evolving from what we do in genetics/ healthcare; and genetics/ healthcare truly evolve through technology discoveries and evolution. Does this sound like singularity? Yes; however, this is when we truly see some amazing advancements in both fields. And, several investors (even in Silicon Valley) are investing in technology that is positioned to focus on evolving technology through healthcare.
Scientists have been quietly working for decades to crack the genetic codes that allow humans to live forever, or at least significantly longer.
And judging by the bits of information on this research that is beginning to leak into the mainstream of human discourse, the idea may no longer be far-fetched.
Stuart Kim, a genetics professor at Stanford University, recently appeared on Fox Business News speaking about his work in the field of “gene therapy.”
CRISPR/Cas9 has been touted as an almost magical technology in the news—and rightly so. The technique allows scientists to alter the DNA of living cells and, it’s hoped, achieve a longstanding goal of science to treat disease at the genetic level.
That’s a really big deal.
An estimated 6,000 diseases are caused by genetic mutations, and only 5% can be treated. Take sickle-cell anemia, for example. Often deadly, it is caused by a single mutation in one of the human body’s three billion DNA base pairs. It’s a small, well-understood error in the genetic code, but so far we have been helpless to repair it.
Interesting perspective of the world and globalization.
It is my belief that we are heading toward a blend of Islandization and Commonization. World transformation is powered first and foremost by the mega-driver of technology, which in turn is central to both of these worlds. The most significant change in the past seven years of world history is that we have entered into a period of sustained technological progress. I fully expect in coming years further breakthroughs in areas including alternative energy, biotechnology and artificial intelligence that dramatically change our economies and our societies.
Unfortunately, I am less sure that technological change will be positive. The exploitation by violent extremists of social media is a case in point of the double-edge that new technologies can bring. This is an extremely disruptive and dislocating time for individuals, organizations and governments alike. The net gain of technology will almost certainly be positive, but there will be winners and losers, and losers will not necessarily go quietly. Nor will the winners necessarily perceive objective gain as actual gain. And some new technologies, such as the gene-editing powers of CRISPR, point to a highly uncertain future.
In our days together in Davos, I will focus my conversations on this new age of exploration in a post-globalization world. As the next global order takes hold, organizational foresight and agility will be critical in determining winners and losers in the new global operating environment.
