Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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+ Decoding the secrets of DNA, CRISPR gene editing allows scientists to target specific genes linked to aging. By modifying these genes, researchers aim to prevent conditions that come with aging. Envision a future where genetic risks for age-related diseases are minimized through precise DNA editing.

It is possible to regenerate cells using stem cells, which can turn into a variety of types. In recent trials, stem cells showed promise in regenerating aged tissues like cartilage. Scientists hope to develop therapies that might slow down physical decline and maintain vitality longer by using this potential.

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Nanobots could someday be the future of healthcare by targeting damaged cells directly as they move through your bloodstream. Researchers are currently exploring how nanobots might repair cellular damage and improve overall health, potentially reversing some age-related effects at the cellular level.

As the protective ends of chromosomes, telomeres shorten over time. When they become too short, cells stop functioning. In laboratory studies, researchers have extended the lifespan of animals by using telomere extension techniques. Though still experimental, this research could pave the way for human applications in slowing aging.

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Advances in human longevity are no longer science fiction. Groundbreaking discoveries in fields like genetics, nanotechnology, and regenerative medicine are unlocking the secrets of aging. These 20 developments highlight how science is changing our understanding of what it means to grow older.

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Intracellular recording involves puncturing the cell membrane to gain access to the cell. In this work, the authors introduce a puncture-free intracellular recording approach that leverages a deep learning model to translate extracellular recordings into intracellular signals.

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Our brains evolved to help us rapidly learn new things. But anyone who has put in hours of practice to perfect their tennis serve, only to reach a plateau, can attest that our brains aren’t infinitely flexible. New work shows that patterns of neural activity over time — the temporal dynamics of neural populations — cannot change rapidly, suggesting that neural activity dynamics may both reflect and constrain how the brain performs computations.

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Patients suffering from diseased and injured organs are often treated with transplanted organs, and this treatment has been in use for over 50 years. In 1955, the kidney became the first entire organ to be replaced in a human, when Murray transplanted this organ between identical twins. Several years later, Murray performed an allogeneic kidney transplant from a non-genetically identical patient into another. This transplant, which overcame the immunologic barrier, marked a new era in medicine and opened the door for use of transplantation as a means of therapy for different organ systems.

As modern medicine increases the human lifespan, the aging population grows, and the need for donor organs grows with it, because aging organs are generally more prone to failure. However, there is now a critical shortage of donor organs, and many patients in need of organs will die while waiting for transplants. In addition, even if an organ becomes available, rejection of organs is still a major problem in transplant patients despite improvements in the methods used for immunosuppression following the transplant procedure. Even if rejection does not occur, the need for lifelong use of immunosuppressive medications leads to a number of complications in these patients.

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These problems have led physicians and scientists to look to new fields for alternatives to organ transplantation. In the 1960s, a natural evolution occurred in which researchers began to combine new devices and materials sciences with cell biology, and a new field that is now termed tissue engineering was born. As more scientists from different fields came together with the common goal of tissue replacement, the field of tissue engineering became more formally established. Tissue engineering is now defined as an interdisciplinary field which applies the principles of engineering and life sciences towards the development of biological substitutes that aim to maintain, restore or improve tissue function.

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Neural tissue engineering is premised on the integration of engineered living tissue with the host nervous system to directly restore lost function or to augment regenerative capacity following nervous system injury or neurodegenerative disease. Disconnection of axon pathways – the long-distance fibers connecting specialized regions of the central nervous system or relaying peripheral signals – is a common feature of many neurological disorders and injury. However, functional axonal regeneration rarely occurs due to extreme distances to targets, absence of directed guidance, and the presence of inhibitory factors in the central nervous system, resulting in devastating effects on cognitive and sensorimotor function.

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In recent years, biomedical devices have proven to be able to target also different neurological disorders. Given the rapid ageing of the population and the increase of invalidating diseases affecting the central nervous system, there is a growing demand for biomedical devices of immediate clinical use. However, to reach useful therapeutic results, these tools need a multidisciplinary approach and a continuous dialogue between neuroscience and engineering, a field that is named neuroengineering. This is because it is fundamental to understand how to read and perturb the neural code in order to produce a significant clinical outcome.

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Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have developed brain organoids — 3D, brain-like structures grown from human stem cells — that show organized waves of activity similar to those found in living human brains.

Then, while studying organoids grown from stem cells derived from patients with the neurological disorder Rett syndrome, the scientists were able to observe patterns of electrical activity resembling seizures, a hallmark of the condition.

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The study, published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, broadens the list of brain conditions that can be studied in organoids and further illustrates the value of these human cell–based models in investigating the underlying causes of diseases and testing potential therapies.

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