Year 2018 đđ Biological singularity here we come đ đ đ
Building a computer out of the skeletons that hold our cells together could make them smaller and far more energy efficient.
Category: biological – Page 114
Asteroid discovery suggests ingredients for life on Earth came from space
March 21 (Reuters) â Two organic compounds essential for living organisms have been found in samples retrieved from the asteroid Ryugu, buttressing the notion that some ingredients crucial for the advent of life arrived on Earth aboard rocks from space billions of years ago.
Scientists said on Tuesday they detected uracil and niacin in rocks obtained by the Japanese Space Agencyâs Hayabusa2 spacecraft from two sites on Ryugu in 2019. Uracil is one of the chemical building blocks for RNA, a molecule carrying directions for building and operating living organisms. Niacin, also called Vitamin B3 or nicotinic acid, is vital for their metabolism.
The Ryugu samples, which looked like dark-gray rubble, were transported 155 million miles (250 million km) back to Earth and returned to our planetâs surface in a sealed capsule that landed in 2020 in Australiaâs remote outback for analysis in Japan.
Researchers develop method for deciphering positional rules in splicing
A research team led by Prof. Xue Yuanchao from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a new method for global profiling of in-situ RNAâRNA contacts associated with a specific RNA-binding protein (RBP) and revealed positional mechanisms by which PTBP1-associated RNA loops regulate cassette exon splicing.
This study was published online in Molecular Cell on March 22.
In eukaryotes, the same pre-mRNA can produce multiple protein isoforms to execute similar or different biological functions through alternative splicing. Several longstanding models proposed that RBPs may regulate alternative splicing by modulating long-range RNAâRNA interactions (RRI). However, direct experimental evidence was lacking.
Scientists at DeepMind and Meta Press Fusion of AI, Biology
âAlphaFold was a huge advance in protein structure prediction. We were inspired by the advances they made, which led to a whole new wave of using deep learning,â said Professor David Baker, a biochemist and computational biologist at the University of Washington.
âThe advantage of ESMFold is that it is very fast, and so can be used to predict the structures of a larger set of proteins than AlphaFold, albeit with slightly lower accuracy, similar to that of RoseTTAFold,â Dr. Baker said, referring to a tool that emerged from his lab in 2021.
DeepMind open-sourced the code for AlphaFold2, making it freely available to the community. Nearly all proteins known to scienceâabout 214 millionâcan be looked up in the public AlphaFold Protein Structure Database. Metaâs ESM Metagenomic Atlas includes 617 million proteins.
Lab-Grown Brain Learns Pong â Is This Biological Neural Network âSentientâ?
A leading neuroscientist claims that a pong-playing clump of about a million neurons is âsentientâ. What does that mean? Why did they teach a lab-grown brain to play pong? To study biological self-organization at the root of life, intelligence, and consciousness. And, according to their website, âto see what happens.â
CORRECTIONS/Clarifications:
- The cells arenât directly frozen in liquid nitrogen â they are put in vials and stored in liquid nitrogen: https://www.atcc.org/products/pcs-201-010
- The sentience of some invertebrates, like octopuses, is generally agreed upon. Prominent scientists affirmed non-human consciousness in the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness: https://philiplow.foundation/consciousness/
DISCLAIMER: The explanations in this video are those proposed by the researchers, or my opinion. We are far from understanding how brains, or even neurons, work. The free energy principle is one of many potential explanations.
Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/IhmCurious.
Footage from Cortical Labs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neV3aZtTgVM
NASJAQâs interview with founder Hon Weng Chong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1R5k5QWPsY
Cortical Labs website: https://corticallabs.com.
Full paper on DishBrain: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-6
New DART VADAR system allows development of precision RNA-based therapies
DART VADAR can automatically sense and respond to molecular triggers in cells.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the term mRNA was brought to the publicâs attention. It is, however, not a new medical technology, having been identified in 1961.
These mRNA vaccines were developed to generate a full-body immune response in order to protect the human body from the deadly coronavirus and its variants.
Dr_Microbe / iStock.
The rapid development of mRNA-based vaccines saved millions of lives worldwide. Since the beginning of the pandemic, up to twelve billion doses of mRNA vaccines have been administered globally.
These French Fries Last 90 Days Outside the Fridge or Freezer
Food tech startup Farther Farms has developed a process that keeps foods that would normally need to be refrigerated or frozen fresh at room temperature â and their first product is a bag of shelf-stable French fries.
The cold chain: Microorganisms are a major cause of food spoilage, and they thrive at room temperature. By keeping some foods cold, we can slow the growth of these microbes, extending the life of the food.
To do that, the foods must be prepared, shipped, and stored along a temperature-controlled supply chain (a âcold chainâ). If the cold chain is broken at any point along the way, the food may quickly become unsafe to eat.
GPT-4 Beats 90% Of Lawyers Trying To Pass The Bar
đČ
In 1997, IBMâs Deep Blue defeated the reigning world champion chess player, Garry Kasparov. In 2016, Googleâs AlphaGo defeated one of the worlds top Go players in a five-game match. Today, OpenAI released GPT-4, which it claims beats 90% of humans who take the bar to become a lawyer, and 99% of students who compete in the Biology Olympiad, an international competition that tests the knowledge and skills of high school students in the field of biology.
In fact, it scores in the top ranks for at least 34 different tests of ability in fields as diverse as macroeconomics, writing, math, and â yes â vinology.
âGPT-4 exhibits human-level performance on the majority of these professional and academic exams,â says OpenAI.
Dr. Emily Osborne Ph.D. â Research Scientist â Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division â NOAA/AOML
Studying Our Oceanâs History To Understanding Its Future â Dr. Emily Osborne, PhD, Ocean Chemistry & Ecosystems Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Dr Emily Osborne, Ph.D. (https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/people/emily-osborne/) is a Research Scientist, in the Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division, at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), a federal research laboratory, is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationâs (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), located in Miami in the United States. AOMLâs research spans tropical cyclone and hurricanes, coastal ecosystems, oceans and human health, climate studies, global carbon systems, and ocean observations. It is one of ten NOAA Research Laboratories.
With a B.S. in Geology from the College of Charleston and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from University of South Carolina, Dr. Osborne is currently involved in investigating regional and global biogeochemical issues related to ocean health and climate through the use of a combination of paleoceanographic approaches, new autonomous sensors, and conventional measurements on large multi-disciplinary oceanographic cruises.
Paleoceanography is the study of the history of the oceans in the geologic past with regard to circulation, chemistry, biology, geology and patterns of sedimentation and biological productivity. Paleoceanographic studies using environment models and different proxies enable the scientific community to assess the role of the oceanic processes in the global climate by the re-construction of past climate at various intervals.