Memczak, S., Izpisua Belmonte, J.C. & Graepel, T. Escaping ageing through Cell Annealing—a phenomenological model. Cell Res (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-025-01138-z.
Memczak, S., Izpisua Belmonte, J.C. & Graepel, T. Escaping ageing through Cell Annealing—a phenomenological model. Cell Res (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41422-025-01138-z.
Massimo Pigliucci, Roman Yampolskiy, Anders Sandberg, and Nadine Dijkstra discuss the latest developments in neuroscience and computer programming.
Can we upload our minds to computers?
With a free trial, you can watch the full debate NOW at https://iai.tv/video/consciousness-in-the-clouds?utm_source=…escription.
The idea of uploading our minds to the digital cloud has not only been taken seriously by Silicon Valley, but turned into a detailed business plan. Elon Musk claims digitising consciousness will revolutionise humanity, and the industry is estimated to be worth $50 billion by 2030. But it’s unknown whether, in principle, we can replicate minds with computer code, or whether we should seek to do so. Critics argue we have no idea how a machine could create consciousness, and neuroscientists have yet to provide an explanation for how the brain does so. A survey of specialists by Nature found the majority thought it unlikely AI would achieve consciousness anytime soon.
Should we see talk of uploading our minds to the cloud as implausible tech marketing nonsense? Should we conclude that if thought and consciousness are unobservable, it will not be possible to replicate the mind with silicon chips? Or is digital immortality such a profound and important sea change in our lives and potential that we should pursue it at all costs?
#consciousness #ai #artificialintelligence #elonmusk #neuralink #neuroscience.
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FasL is an immune cell membrane protein that triggers a programmed cell death called apoptosis. Activated immune cells, including CAR-T cells made from a patient’s immune system, use apoptosis to kill cancer cells.
The team discovered that in human genes, a single evolutionary amino acid change — serine instead of proline at position 153 — makes FasL more susceptible to being cut and inactivated by plasmin.
Plasmin is a protease enzyme that is often elevated in aggressive solid tumors like triple negative breast cancer, colon cancer and ovarian cancer.
This means that even when human immune cells are activated and ready to attack the tumor cells, one of their key death weapons — FasL — can be neutralized by the tumor environment, reducing the effectiveness of immunotherapies.
The findings may help explain why CAR-T and T-cell-based therapies can be effective in blood cancers but often fall short in solid tumors. Blood cancers often do not rely on plasmin to metastasize, whereas tumors like ovarian cancer rely heavily on plasmin to spread the cancer.
Significantly, the study also showed that blocking plasmin or shielding FasL from cleavage can restore its cancer-killing power. That finding may open new doors for improving cancer immunotherapy.
Differences in the Pace of Aging are important for many health outcomes but difficult to measure. Here the authors describe the Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from NeuroImaging measure, an approach that uses a single brain image to measure how fast a person is aging and can help predict mortality or the risk of developing chronic disease.
A combination of high-resolution imaging and machine learning, also known as artificial intelligence (AI), can track cells damaged from injury, aging, or disease, and that no longer grow and reproduce normally, a new study shows.
These senescent cells are known to play a key role in wound repair and aging-related diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, so tracking their progress, researchers say, could lead to a better understanding of how tissues gradually lose their ability to regenerate over time or how they fuel disease. The tool could also provide insight into therapies for reversing the damage.
The study included training a computer system to help analyze animal cells damaged by increasing concentrations of chemicals over time to replicate human aging. Cells continuously confronted with environmental or biological stress are known to senesce, meaning they stop reproducing and start to release telltale molecules indicating that they have suffered injury.