Lifeboat Foundation

As investors await results from the first U.S. clinical trials of the gene-editing system known as Crispr, scientists are focused on finding ways to administer it directly into humans, according to the technology’s co-inventor, Jennifer Doudna.

Right now, in studies using Crispr that have treated patients, researchers have had to extract their cells to be able to make edits to faulty DNA before infusing them back into the body for treatment. Being able to do precise edits directly inside humans, animals or plants could open the door to new applications, Doudna said.

Squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, amphibians, and chameleon lizards are among the animals that can change the color of their skin in a blink of an eye. They have photoreceptors in their skin that operate independently of their brain. The photoreceptors are part of a family of proteins known as opsins.

Mammals have opsins, too. They are the most abundant proteins in the retina. These light-sensing photopigments are responsible for color vision (cone opsins) and vision in dim light (rhodopsin). While previous studies have suggested that mammals might express opsin proteins outside the eye, there was little information on what functions they might influence.

A study published Oct. 10 in Current Biology has now found that a type of opsin known as neuropsin is expressed in the hair follicles of mice and synchronize the skin’s circadian clock to the light-dark cycle, independent of the eyes or brain.

Outfield Technologies is a Cambridge-based agri-tech start-up company which uses drones and artificial intelligence, to help fruit growers maximise their harvest from orchard crops.

Outfield Technologies’ founders Jim McDougall and Oli Hilbourne have been working with Ph.D. student Tom Roddick from the Department’s Machine Intelligence Laboratory to develop their technology capabilities to be able to count the blossoms and apples on a tree via drones surveying enormous apple orchards.

Continue reading “Predicting fruit harvest with drones and artificial intelligence” »

Listen to The A Level Biologist Podcasts episodes free, on demand. As we enter the golden age of life science we should not just keep getting sick and dying. Too much to ask for?Learn more about Aubrey and SRF at https://www.sens.orgFull transcript: https://thealevelbiologist.co.uk/indefinite-health-with-dr-aubrey-de-grey/The A Level Biologist Podcasts is brought to you by The A Level Biologist — Your Hub @ https://thealevelbiologist.co.ukSupport the show. The easiest way to listen to podcasts on your iPhone, iPad, Android, PC, smart speaker – and even in your car. For free. Bonus and ad-free content available with Stitcher Premium.

A chance finding 10 years ago led to the creation by researchers of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) of the first mice born with much longer telomeres than normal in their species. Telomeres shorten throughout life, so older organisms have shorter telomeres. Given this relationship between telomeres and aging, the scientists launched a study generating mice in which 100 percent of their cells had hyper-long telomeres. The findings are published in Nature Communications and show only positive consequences: The animals with hyper-long telomeres live longer and in better health, free from cancer and obesity. This marks the first time that longevity has been significantly increased without any genetic modification.

“This finding supports the idea that, when it comes to determining longevity, genes are not the only thing to consider,” says Maria Blasco, head of the CNIO Telomeres and Telomerase Group and intellectual author of the paper. “There is margin for extending life without altering the genes.”

Telomeres form the ends of chromosomes in the nucleus of each cell in the body. Their function is to protect the integrity of the genetic information in DNA. Whenever the cells divide the telomeres, they are slightly shortened, so one of the main characteristics of aging is the accumulation of shorter telomeres in cells. “Telomere shortening is considered to be one of the primary causes of aging, given that short telomeres cause aging of the organism and reduce longevity,” the authors write in a paper published in Nature Communications.

Are you ready for the future? A Transhumanist future? One where everyone around you—friends, family, and neighbors—has dipped into the transhumanist punch bowl. A future of contact lenses that see in the dark, endoskeleton attached artificial limbs that lift a half-ton, and brain chip implants that read your thoughts and instantly communicate them to others. Sound crazy? Indeed, it does. Nevertheless, it’s coming soon. Very soon. In fact, much of the technology already exists. Some of it’s being sold commercially at your local superstore or being tested in laboratories right now around the world.

We’ve all heard about driverless test cars on the roads and how doctors in France are replacing people’s hearts with permanent robotic ones, but did you know there’s already a multi-billion dollar market for brain wave reading headsets? Using electroencephalography (EEG) sensors that pick up and monitor brain activity, NeuroSky’s MindWave can attach to Google Glass and allow you to take a picture and post it to Facebook and Twitter just by thinking about it. Other headsets allow you to play video games on your iPhone just with your thoughts too. In fact, well over a year ago now, the first mind-to-mind communication took place. A researcher in India projected a thought to a colleague in France, and using their headsets, they understood each other. Telepathy went from science fiction to reality.

The history of transhumanism—the burgeoning field of science and radical tech used to describe robotic implants, prosthetics, and cyborg-like enhancements in the human being and its experience—has come a long way since scientists began throwing around the term a half century ago. What a difference a generation or two makes. Today a thriving pro-cyborg medical industry is setting the stage for trillion-dollar markets that will remake the human experience. Five million people in America suffer from Alzheimer’s, but a new surgery that involves installing brain implants is showing promise in restoring people’s memory and improving lives. The use of medical and microchip implants, whether in the brain or not, are expected to surge in the coming years. Some experts surmise as many as half of Americans will have implants by 2020. I already have one in my hand. It’s truly a new age for humans.

Dessie is a hundred years old.

By most standards this is a ripe old age, one most of us would be grateful to be given. Assuming our health remained decent, most of us would be content to live for seventy or eighty years.

Help Them See the Future, a joint venture between Integrated Health Systems and Maximum Life Foundation, created a campaign to give Dessie gene therapies designed to halt or potentially reverse some of the hallmarks of aging. We are sad to announce that, after suffering a stroke shortly after the campaign was launched, Dessie is no longer a suitable candidate for treatment.

Engineering biology is already transforming technology and science, and a consortium of researchers across many disciplines in the international Genome Project-write is calling for more discussion among scientists, policy makers and the general public to shepherd future development. In a policy forum article published in the October 18 issue of Science, the authors outline the technological advances needed to secure the transformative future of synthetic biology and express their concerns that the implementation of the relatively new discipline remains safe and responsible.

Two researchers with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture are co-authors on the piece titled “Technological challenges and milestones for writing genomes: synthetic genomics requires improved technologies.” Neal Stewart and Scott Lenaghan with the UTIA departments of Plant Sciences and Food Science, respectively, join Nili Ostrov, a Ph.D. research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School, and 18 other leading scientists from a number of institutions and disciplines, in outlining a potential timeline for the development of what they call transformative advances to science and society.

Stewart and Lenaghan are the co-directors of the UT Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology (CASB). Formed in 2018, Stewart says CASB is the first synthetic biology center in the world aimed specifically at improved agriculture. A professor of plant sciences in the UT Herbert College of Agriculture, Stewart also holds the endowed Racheff Chair of Excellence in Plant Molecular Genetics. Lenaghan is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science who also holds an adjunct position in the UT Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) Department.

Humanity is poised to take a huge leap forward, as a convergence of next-gen technologies combine to give us unprecedented power over our own biology. Here’s a roadmap to the key technologies and how it’s going to play out in the coming decades.