Lifeboat Foundation

‘Pain does not occur only in the skin’s nerve fibres, but also in this pain-sensitive organ’

A team of scientists at UC San Francisco and the National Institutes of Health have achieved another CRISPR first, one which may fundamentally alter the way scientists study brain diseases.

In a paper published August 15 in the journal Neuron, the researchers describe a technique that uses a special version of CRISPR developed at UCSF to systematically alter the activity of genes in human neurons generated from stem cells, the first successful merger of stem cell-derived cell types and CRISPR screening technologies.

Though mutations and other genetic variants are known to be associated with an increased risk for many neurological diseases, technological bottlenecks have thwarted the efforts of scientists working to understand exactly how these genes cause disease.

A new study outlines multiple ways in which epiblast stem cells can be reprogrammed back into a fully pluripotent state, paving the way for a better understanding of epigenetics.

The role of epigenetics

Epigenetics are why our cells, which all have the same DNA, differ in function. A bone cell has the same genetics as a nerve cell, but its epigenetic switches instruct it to perform the functions of a bone cell and not a nerve cell. Epigenetic alterations, however, are one of the primary hallmarks of aging. As we age, harmful epigenetic switches are activated and beneficial ones are deactivated, causing age-related dysfunction. This may even lead to inflammation, which causes further epigenetic damage, leading to a dangerous feedback loop.

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Ronald Kohanski, PhD. is the Deputy Director of the Division of Aging Biology at the National Institute on Aging, and he gave the keynote for day two of our recent conference in New York City.

Promise yields hype; hype yields false promises.

Engineer.ai says it uses artificial intelligence to help automate app-development. Current and former staffers say the company inflates its technical prowess to attract customers and investors.

LinkSpace’s test flight on Saturday came on the heels of a historic delivery of a satellite into orbit last month by privately owned Chinese firm iSpace.

BEIJING (Reuters) — Chinese startup LinkSpace on Saturday completed its third test of a reusable rocket in five months, stepping up the pace in China’s race to develop a technology key to cheap space launches in an expected global boom in satellite deployment.

A new organ involved in the sensation of pain has been discovered by scientists, raising hopes that it could lead to the development of new painkilling drugs.

Researchers say they have discovered that the special cells that surround the pain-sensing nerve cells that extend into the outer layer of skin appear to be involved in sensing pain – a discovery that points to a new organ behind the feeling of “ouch!”.

There is no good evidence that our universe even had a beginning, a startling proposition that means the cosmos could collapse in about 100 billion years.

A research group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has made it possible to edit hundreds of genes at once with CRISPR gene editing.

CRISPR gene editing has revolutionized the biotech industry by providing an easy and quick way to genetically modify organisms. So far, however, CRISPR techniques have only managed to edit a maximum of seven genes at once. This limits the potential of the technique in creating cell therapies, since whole networks of genes need to be reprogrammed to control each cell’s fate.

The Swiss research group devised a way to overcome this limitation with a CRISPR technique able to edit 25 genes in one go. This number could also be increased to up to hundreds of genes at a time. This method therefore makes it possible to edit gene networks, and reprogram stem cells to become cell therapies such as skin cells or insulin-producing pancreatic cells.