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A study published today by scientists from Harvard University and epigenetic research company TruDiagnostic has shed light on the reasons why our bodies are aging on a cellular level, laying the foundations for medical based treatment options to reduce the risk of age-related death and disease in highly targeted ways.

Longevity. Technology: Age is the number one risk factor for most chronic diseases and death across the world. Epigenetics (or the way our genes are put to use throughout our bodies) has emerged as a crucial method of evaluating health, and while previous DNA methylation clocks could determine how advanced one’s body has aged, they have not yet been able to provide information to the reasons why someone might have accelerated or decelerated aging outcomes.

“In our research, we set out to create the best method to quantify the biological aging process. However, aging is extremely complex,” explains Harvard Medical School Associate Professor Dr Jessica Lasky-Su. “To solve this issue of complexity, our approach was to gather data across multiple sources of information. We chose to do this by building one of the most robust aging datasets in the world by quantifying patients’ proteomics, metabolomics, clinical histories and DNA methylation.”

The Collective Intelligence of Cells During Morphogenesis: What Bioelectricity Outside the Brain Means for Understanding our Multiscale Nature with Michael Levin — Incredible Minds.

Recorded: April 29, 2023.

Each of us takes a remarkable journey from physics to mind: we start as a blob of chemicals in an unfertilized quiescent oocyte and becomes a complex, metacognitive human being. The continuous process of transformation and emergence that we see in developmental biology reminds us that we are true collective intelligences – composed of cells which used to be individual organisms themselves. In this talk, I will describe our work on understanding how the competencies of single cells are harnessed to solve problems in anatomical space, and how evolution pivoted this scaling of intelligence into the familiar forms of cognition in the nervous system. We will talk about diverse intelligence in novel embodiments, the scaling of the cognitive light cone of all beings, and the role of developmental bioelectricity as a cognitive glue and as the interface by which mind controls matter in the body. I will also show a new synthetic life form, and discuss what it means for bioengineering and ethics of human relationships to the wider world of possible beings. We will discuss the implications of these ideas for understanding evolution, and the applications we have developed in birth defects, cancer, and traumatic injury repair. By merging deep ideas from developmental biophysics, computer science, and cognitive science, we not only get a new perspective on fundamental questions of life and mind, but also new roadmaps in regenerative medicine, biorobotics, and AI.

Michael Levin received dual undergraduate degrees in computer science and biology, followed by a PhD in molecular genetics from Harvard. He did his post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School, and started his independent lab in 2000. He is currently the Vannevar Bush chair at Tufts University, and an associate faculty member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard. He serves as the founding director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. His lab uses a mix of developmental biophysics, computer science, and behavior science to understand the emergence of mind in unconventional embodiments at all scales, and to develop interventions in regenerative medicine and applications in synthetic bioengineering. They can be found at www.drmichaellevin.org/

In this episode, Max and Daniel sit down with the renowned Aubrey de Grey to discuss the connection between life extension and cryonics. They cover a wide range of topics, diving into the latest breakthroughs and obstacles in both fields.

In this captivating conversation, they explore:

-The current state of rejuvenation technologies.
–Recent advances in longevity research over the past decade.
–Challenges still facing life extension science.
–Perspectives on achieving longevity escape velocity.
–Progress in robust mouse rejuvenation experiments.
–Aubrey de Grey’s journey into the world of cryonics.
–Tanya Jones’s new cryonics venture, Keinice.
–Innovative cryopreservation techniques using helium persufflation.
–The importance of cryonics vs life extension.
–The potential for cryonics to become mainstream.
–The search for major donors to support cryonics research.
–And much more!

As always, you can find Max and Daniel over at the Cryosphere Cryonics discord server: https://discord.gg/cryosphere.

Join us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/MichaelLustgartenPhD

Discount Links:
At-Home Metabolomics: https://www.iollo.com?ref=michael-lustgarten.
Use Code: CONQUERAGING At Checkout.

Epigenetic Testing: https://trudiagnostic.com/?irclickid=U-s3Ii2r7xyIU-LSYLyQdQ6…M0&irgwc=1
Use Code: CONQUERAGING

NAD+ Quantification: https://www.jinfiniti.com/intracellular-nad-test/

A quarter-century ago, researchers discovered that adults, not just developing infants, can generate new brain cells, a process called neurogenesis. But it’s still not clear what role these new neurons play in health or disease.

In a new mouse study, Columbia University researchers found that neurogenesis in adults is critical for maintaining that support working across the lifespan and chronic loss of adult neurogenesis causes , like that seen in age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

The study, “Adult-born neurons maintain hippocampal cholinergic inputs and support working memory during aging,” was published in July in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.