Lifeboat Foundation

Each CRISPR system has two parts: a strand of RNA that matches the target and a protein that makes the edit. The most commonly used protein for gene editing is called “Cas9,” but scientists have discovered CRISPRs with other proteins that give them unique capabilities — while CRISPR-Cas9 slices through DNA, for example, CRISPR-Cas13 targets RNA.

Our current CRISPR gene editors are far from perfect, though. They can make edits in the wrong places or edit too few cells to make a difference, so researchers are constantly on the hunt for new CRISPR systems.

AI-designed CRISPR: Up until now, that hunt has been limited to the CRISPRs that have been discovered in nature, but Profluent has used the same types of AI models that allow ChatGPT to generate language to develop an AI platform that can generate millions of CRISPR-like proteins.

Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google Deepmind, expects AI systems in the near future to not only answer questions but also plan and act independently.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Hassabis says his company is working on such “agent-like” systems that could be ready for use in one to two years.

“I’m really excited about the next stage of these large general models. You know, I think the next things we’re going to see perhaps this year, maybe next year, is more agent like behavior,” says Hassabis.

Summary: Researchers created the largest 3D reconstruction of human brain tissue at synaptic resolution, capturing detailed images of a cubic millimeter of human temporal cortex. This tiny piece of brain contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, which amounts to 1,400 terabytes of data.

This research is part of a broader effort to map an entire mouse brain’s neural wiring, with hopes of advancing our understanding of brain function and disease. The technology combines high-resolution electron microscopy and AI-powered algorithms to meticulously color-code and map out the complex neural connections.

The funding would provide Musk’s venture, which is behind the Grok AI chatbot, a welcome boost in its efforts to catch up to AI rivals like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.

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Humanoid robots are getting increasingly realistic. From Sophia to BINA48, here are 5 of the most realistic and sophisticated humanoid robots.

Two eggs fertilized by two sperm coincided in a uterus and, instead of giving rise to two sisters, they fused to form a single person: Karen Keegan. When she was 52 years old, this woman from Boston suffered very serious kidney failure, but luckily she had three children willing to donate a kidney to her. The doctors did genetic tests to see which offspring was most compatible and they got a major surprise: the test said that two of them were not her children. The reality was even more astonishing: Karen Keegan had two different DNA sequences, two genomes, depending on the cell you looked at. Biologist Alfonso Martínez Arias maintains that this chimeric woman is conclusive proof that DNA does not define a person’s identity.

The most inspiring science book of all time is The Selfish Gene, according to a survey carried out by the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. In this famous work from 1976, British biologist Richard Dawkins defended that the DNA molecule uses the human being as a mere envelope in order to be transmitted to the next generation and become immortal. “We are survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes,” Dawkins stated. Almost half a century later, Martínez Arias refutes this perspective of the selfish gene and proposes a much more romantic alternative: the altruistic cell. “An organism is the work of cells. Genes merely provide materials for their work,” he says in The Master Builder, a fascinating and provocative book from the London publisher Basic Books that will also be published in Spanish this year.

Martínez Arias, 68, argues that the DNA sequence of an individual is not an instruction manual or a construction plan for their body, but a box of tools and materials for the true architect of life: the cell. The Madrid-born biologist argues that there is nothing in the DNA molecule that explains why the heart is located on the left, why there are five fingers on the hand or why twin brothers have different fingerprints. Cells are what “control time and space,” he proclaims. They are the ones who know where right and left are, and where exactly a person’s foot or an elephant’s trunk should end.

Elon Musk has given an update with an outline for Tesla’s upcoming Full Self-Driving (FSD) software updates.

With FSD v12 and the upcoming launch of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi, there’s a lot of excitement around Tesla’s self-driving effort.

Musk is again in the too-familiar position of predicting that the automaker is close to releasing a true self-driving system, but the path to get there is still far from clear.

The Ned2 6-axis robot is an easy-to-handle cobot. It is designed for education, research and development. Automate tasks.