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The sleep-wake cycle is among the most well-known circadian rhythms in the body and is severely affected in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). “Eighty percent of patients with AD suffer dysregulation or disruption of circadian rhythms, and the obvious clinical manifestations are the sleep-wake reversals,” Desplats said. “These patients are very sleepy during the day, agitated during the night, more confused, and sometimes aggressive.”

The feeding-fasting cycle is one of the strongest signals you can send the body to entrain the circadian clock.-Paula Desplats, University of California, San Diego

In a recent study published in Cell Metabolism, Desplats’s team used mice that are genetically engineered to develop AD to test whether intermittent fasting improves circadian rhythm abnormalities.³ Rather than restricting calories or making dietary changes, they simply limited food access to a defined six-hour daily window. They found that time-restricted eating improved sleep, metabolism, memory, and cognition, and reduced brain amyloid deposits and neuroinflammatory gene expression. “Many of the genes that are affected in AD are rhythmically expressed in the brain, meaning that they are in direct relation with the circadian clock and are involved in functions that are fundamental to AD pathology,” Desplats said. Intermittent fasting restored the rhythmic activity of these genes, but the real surprise was the extent to which it mitigated brain amyloid deposits and improved cognition and sleep-wake behaviors. “I didn’t expect that it will have such a dramatic impact on pathology,” Desplats said.

The regulation of genetic diversity resulting from polyploidization and its impact on environmental adaptability remain unclear. Here, the authors show that

Biological materials are made of individual components, including tiny motors that convert fuel into motion. This creates patterns of movement, and the material shapes itself with coherent flows by constant consumption of energy. Such continuously driven materials are called active matter.

The mechanics of cells and tissues can be described by active matter theory, a scientific framework to understand the shape, flow, and form of living materials. The active matter theory consists of many challenging mathematical equations.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, the Center for Systems Biology Dresden (CSBD), and the TU Dresden have now developed an algorithm, implemented in an open-source supercomputer code, that can for the first time solve the equations of active matter theory in realistic scenarios.

Treating cancer is becoming increasingly complex, but also offers more and more possibilities. After all, the better a tumor’s biology and genetic features are understood, the more treatment approaches there are. To be able to offer patients personalized therapies tailored to their disease, laborious and time-consuming analysis and interpretation of various data is required. Researchers at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin have now studied whether generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT can help with this step. This is one of many projects at Charité analyzing the opportunities unlocked by AI in patient care.

If the body can no longer repair certain genetic mutations itself, cells begin to grow unchecked, producing a tumor. The crucial factor in this phenomenon is an imbalance of growth-inducing and growth-inhibiting factors, which can result from changes in oncogenes – genes with the potential to cause cancer – for example. Precision oncology, a specialized field of personalized medicine, leverages this knowledge by using specific treatments such as low-molecular weight inhibitors and antibodies to target and disable hyperactive oncogenes.

In a new multidisciplinary study, researchers at Texas A&M University showed how quantum computing—a new kind of computing that can process additional types of data—can assist with genetic research and used it to discover new links between genes that scientists were previously unable to detect.

Their project used the new computing technology to map gene regulatory networks (GRNs), which provide information about how genes can cause each other to activate or deactivate.

As the team published in npj Quantum Information, quantum computing will help scientists more accurately predict relationships between genes, which could have huge implications for both animal and human medicine.

Advancements in genetic engineering, gene therapies, and anti-aging research may eventually allow for age reversal and the restoration of youthful health and longevity.

What is the key idea of the video?
—The key idea is that advancements in genetic engineering and anti-aging research may eventually allow for age reversal and the restoration of youthful health and longevity.

Continue reading “Aging is Now Optional w/ David Sinclair” »

Every cell in the human body contains the same genetic instructions, encoded in its DNA. However, out of about 30,000 genes, each cell expresses only those genes that it needs to become a nerve cell, immune cell, or any of the other hundreds of cell types in the body.

Each cell’s fate is largely determined by chemical modifications to the proteins that decorate its DNA; these modification in turn control which genes get turned on or off. When cells copy their DNA to divide, however, they lose half of these modifications, leaving the question: How do cells maintain the memory of what kind of cell they are supposed to be?

A new MIT study proposes a theoretical model that helps explain how these memories are passed from generation to generation when cells divide. The research team suggests that within each cell’s nucleus, the 3D folding pattern of its genome determines which parts of the genome will be marked by these chemical modifications.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and KU Leuven have discovered a suite of genes that influence head shape in humans. These findings, published this week in Nature Communications, help explain the diversity of human head shapes and may also offer important clues about the genetic basis of conditions that affect the skull, such as craniosynostosis.

By analyzing measurements of the cranial vault —the part of the skull that forms the rounded top of the head and protects the brain—the team identified 30 regions of the genome associated with different aspects of head shape, 29 of which have not been reported previously.

“Anthropologists have speculated and debated the genetics of cranial vault shape since the early 20th century,” said co-senior author Seth Weinberg, Ph.D., professor of oral and craniofacial sciences in the Pitt School of Dental Medicine and co-director of the Center for Craniofacial and Dental Genetics.

Researchers from the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the Catholic University, Rome and the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario A. Gemelli IRCCS have developed an engineered protein that boosts memory.

Neuroscientists at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Catholic University, Rome, and the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS have genetically modified a molecule, the protein LIMK1, which is normally active in the brain, with a key role in memory.

They added a “molecular switch” that is activated by administering a drug, rapamycin, known for its several anti-aging effects on the brain.