Lifeboat Foundation

Synthetic biology is an emerging and rapidly evolving engineering discipline. Within the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering, Scientists from Bernese have developed a version of the light-driven proton pump proteorhodopsin, which is chemically switchable and it is also an essential tool to efficiently power synthetic cells and molecular factories.

Synthetic biology is a highly complex field with numerous knowledge branches that incorporate physics, biology, and chemistry into engineering. It aims to design synthetic cells and molecular factories with innovative functions or properties that can be applied in medical and biological research or healthcare, industry research.

These artificial systems are available in the nanometer scale and are developed by assembling and combining current, synthetic or engineered building blocks (e.g., proteins). Molecular systems are applicable for a wide range of applications, for instance these systems can be used for waste disposal, medical treatment or diagnosis, energy supply and chemical compound synthesis.

Hmmm.

With the advent of CRISPR genetic engineering technology, humanity is on the cusp of an evolutionary revolution. We now possess the technology to modify our own genetic code (DNA). In a few more years, it will become more reliable, less expensive, and more available.

Continue reading “Why Humans Should Be Genetically Engineering Their Children Now” »

While existing methods like cold, flash and cloud storage are trying to remake themselves in the age of Big Data, there are also a number of alternative methods being developed that suggest looking outside of traditional methods could be our best bet for storing and managing such unprecedented amounts of data.

Here are three methods to look out for:

We are about to witness a data storage breakthrough in which digital information could be embedded into the primary fabric of our being: the double helix of DNA. As a storage system, DNA is both compact and durable, with a single gram of DNA able to store almost a zettabyte of digital data. Now that scientists can successfully create synthetic DNA, it follows that we will be able to control what information gets stored on those strands.

Continue reading “3 Innovative Ways we Could Soon Store The World’s Data” »

In a set of studies in mice bearing human tumors, nanoparticles designed to bind to a protein called P-selectin successfully delivered both chemotherapy drugs and targeted therapies to tumor blood vessels. Targeting the blood vessels improved the delivery of drugs to tumor tissue, causing the tumors to shrink and improving how long the mice lived.

A tumor’s blood vessels can serve as a barrier to engineered drug-delivery systems like nanoparticles, which may not be able to cross the blood vessel wall. However, the same blood vessels may express proteins—such as P-selectin—that researchers can potentially exploit, by engineering their nanoparticles to recognize and latch onto those proteins, which enables them to reach the tumor.

With only 9 days left on the SENS cancer fundraiser here is an article from Fightaging! that explains why finding novel solutions to treating cancer is critical in the roadmap to longer healthier lives.

This year’s SENS rejuvenation research crowdfunding event puts the spotlight on the SENS Research Foundation’s cancer program. So far more than 300 people have donated, and more than $26,000 has been raised; with ten days left to go, it won’t take that much more of an effort to reach the same number of donors and the same level of support given to last year’s fundraiser, and which led to the success in that research program. As for all of the SENS research initiatives in the science of aging, the SENS Research Foundation’s work on cancer aims to support a big, bold goal in medicine: to build a single type of therapy that can be used to effectively treat all forms of cancer. When achieved, that will greatly increase the pace of progress towards control of cancer, the goal of finally ending cancer as a threat to health. At present the cancer research community spends much of its time and funding on approaches that are highly specific to only one or only a few of the hundred of subtypes of cancer. That is no way to win any time soon, as even with the vast funding devoted to cancer research, there are just too many forms of cancer and too few researchers. What is needed is to change the strategy, to focus on approaches to the treatment of cancer that are no more expensive to develop, but that far more patients can benefit from.

The most promising approach to a universal cancer therapy is to block telomere lengthening in cancerous tissues. Telomeres are a part of the mechanism that limits cell division in all human cells other than stem cells, repeating DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes that shorten every time a cell divides. In order to achieve unfettered growth all cancers must bypass this limit by continually lengthening their telomeres, a goal that is achieved through mutations that allow cancer cells to use telomerase or the alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) processes. If both telomerase and ALT can be blocked in cancer tissue, then the cancer will wither; this is such a fundamental piece of cellular machinery that there is no expectation that cancer cells could find a way around it. Block only one of these two methods of telomere lengthening, however, and the cancer will probably switch to use the other. This has been observed in mice.

Continue reading “Crowdfunding a Universal Cancer Treatment: Only a Few Days Left in the Fundraiser” »

Crispr is a biotechnology that’s making genetic editing easier, cheaper, and far more accessible, but it has also been called a major security threat. Do such advances in biotechnology make the bioweapons convention obsolete?

Now, there is a question that must be asked when it comes to atheletes and CRISPR. As we have seen over the years with doping/ atheletic enhancing drugs, etc. how will we know for sure that an athelete from China, Russia, or even US was not enhanced as an embryo with CRISPR to be a superior athelete? Sure we can claim to set up a world wide database; however, in lile all things done before not everyone plays by the rules.

The future of sport, and how technology and genetics may change it, and the lesson for business.

Nice.

This summer, more than a million tons of chardonnay grapes are plumping on manicured vineyards around the world. The grapes make one of the most popular white wines, but their juicy fruit and luscious leaves are also targets for diseases such as downy mildew, a stubborn fungus-like parasite.

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Continue reading “CRISPR May End the Use of Pesticides” »

The main goal of a tumour cell is, above all, to survive, even at the cost of damaging the health of the organism to which it belongs.

To do this, it is equipped with skills that healthy cells do not have, including the ability to continue surviving when glucose levels are very low.

This could be one of the reasons why widely-used anti-angiogenic agents often fail to eliminate cancer, no matter how much they starve it by hindering the development of the blood vessels that provide nutrients in general and glucose in particular.

Continue reading “Cancer cell survival without glucose illucidated” »