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Archive for the ‘genetics’ category: Page 438

Dec 15, 2016

Babies made from three people approved in UK

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Babies made from two women and one man have been approved by the UK’s fertility regulator.

The historic and controversial move is to prevent children being born with deadly genetic diseases.

Doctors in Newcastle — who developed the advanced form of IVF — are expected to be the first to offer the procedure and have already appealed for donor eggs.

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Dec 14, 2016

Monster-wheat grown by Oxford could revolutionise farming

Posted by in categories: energy, food, genetics

A crop spray which can boost farmer’s wheat yields by one fifth, without the need for genetic modification, has been developed by scientists at Oxford University.

Researchers have found a molecule which helps plants make the best use of the sugary fuel that they generate during photosynthesis. And with more fuel, the plants can produce bigger grains.

Other scientists in Britain have developed ways to genetically modify crops to increase yields, and the Department of Environment is currently deciding whether to allow a field trial for GM wheat in Hertfordshire.

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Dec 14, 2016

CellAge: Senescent Cell Targeting Technology Video

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, finance, genetics, health, life extension

Synthetic biology meets senolytics at Lifespan.io

We are developing tools to help researchers accurately target and remove dysfunctional cells in the body that have entered a state called “senescence”, and thereby assist in restoring it to youthful functionality. Please subscribe, share, and fund our campaign today! ►Campaign Link: https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/cellage-targeting-senescen…c-biology/ ►Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/LifespanIO?sub_confirmation=1

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Dec 14, 2016

CellAge: Dr. Aubrey de Grey Endorsement Video

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, finance, genetics, health, life extension

Dr. Aubrey de Grey from the SENS Research Foundation was kind enough to talk in support of CellAge and their campaign on Lifespan.io

We are developing tools to help researchers accurately target and remove dysfunctional cells in the body that have entered a state called “senescence”, and thereby assist in restoring it to youthful functionality. Please subscribe, share, and fund our campaign today! ►Campaign Link: https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/cellage-targeting-senescen…c-biology/ ►Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/user/LifespanIO?sub_confirmation=1

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Dec 13, 2016

Genetic Editing Could Cause the Next Cold War

Posted by in categories: genetics, government, transhumanism

My new article on the future geopolitical challenges of genetic editing: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/genetic-editing-could-cause-the-next-cold-war #transhumanism


If China pursues human genetic enhancement and the US retreats under a conservative government, it could create a divide between the modified and the not, sewing the seeds of global conflict.

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Dec 12, 2016

CellAge AMA: Targeting Senescent Cells with Synthetic Biology for Human Longevity : Futurology

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

The CellAge AMA is open for questions, come along and ask about biotechnology, senolytics and so on.


Welcome to the CellAge AMA with Mantas Matjusaitis, PhD student in synthetic biology and founder of CellAge. I am here to talk about our work to improve the targeting of dysfunctional “senescent” cells in the body, and thereby aid in their eventual removal. This is important because removal of these cells has been shown to be a critical component in the effort to improve healthy human lifespan.

In short, CellAge is going to develop synthetic DNA promoters which are specific to senescent cells, as the promoters that are currently used for this purpose, such as the p16 gene promoter, suffer from various issues and limitations (not comprehensively targeting all senescent cells, collateral damage in targeting some cells that are not senescent, etc.). You can find more details in our technology video here, and on our Lifespan.io information page.

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Dec 9, 2016

Ginkgo Bioworks – Nanobots Are Finally Here

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, nanotechnology

We recently wrote an article about how we need to redefine what “nanotechnology” means in the context of looking for “nanotech” companies to invest it. When you can use synthetic biology and gene editing to change the way that bacteria function by genetically modifying them, the result are microscopic biological machines. These tiny biological machines sound a whole lot like the nanobots that we were promised which would go around doing cool things without even being visible to the human eye. Earlier this year we profiled three companies that we claimed were working on building nanobot factories that create designer organisms on demand. Let’s take a closer look at one of these companies called Ginkgo Bioworks.

ginkgo-bioworks-logo

Founded in 2008, Massachusetts based startup Ginkgo Bioworks has taken in a total of $154 million in funding so far with their latest $100 million Series C round closing in summer of this year. The Company refers to themselves as “the organism company” and their value proposition has attracted investment from a whole slew of investors who realize the potential of developing new organisms that can replace technology with biology. In their own words, Ginkgo Bioworks is doing “programming without a debugger, manufacturing without CAD, and construction without cranes” which requires a whole lot of intellectual firepower and may be why they have 5 founders:

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Dec 9, 2016

An anti-CRISPR for gene editing

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

Researchers have discovered a way to program cells to inhibit CRISPR-Cas9 activity. “Anti-CRISPR” proteins had previously been isolated from viruses that infect bacteria, but now University of Toronto and University of Massachusetts Medical School scientists report three families of proteins that turn off CRISPR systems specifically used for gene editing. The work, which appears December 15 in Cell, offers a new strategy to prevent CRISPR-Cas9 technology from making unwanted changes.

“Making CRISPR controllable allows you to have more layers of control on the system and to turn it on or off under certain conditions, such as where it works within a cell or at what point in time,” says lead author Alan Davidson, a phage biologist and bacteriologist at the University of Toronto. “The three anti-CRISPR proteins we’ve isolated seem to bind to different parts of the Cas9, and there are surely more out there.”

CRISPR inhibitors are a natural byproduct of the evolutionary arms race between viruses and bacteria. Bacteria use CRISPR-Cas complexes to target and cut up genetic material from invading viruses. In response, viruses have developed proteins that, upon infection, can quickly bind to a host bacterium’s CRISPR-Cas systems, thus nullifying their effects.

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Dec 6, 2016

Advanced Radioactive Threat Detection System Completes First Large-Scale Citywide Test

Posted by in categories: genetics, mobile phones, terrorism

The following press release was written and and published by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and originally published on their website. Click here to see the original version of this post.

On a recent sunny fall day in the nation’s capital, several hundred volunteers—each toting a backpack containing smartphone-sized radiation detectors—walked for hours around the National Mall searching for clues in a “whodunit” scavenger hunt to locate a geneticist who’d been mysteriously abducted. The geneticist and his abduction were fictitious. But the challenge this scavenger hunt was designed to address is real: The need to detect even small quantities of radioactive material that terrorists might try to bring into an urban area with the intent of detonating a “dirty bomb,” or worse. By getting volunteers to walk all day looking for clues, the DARPA-sponsored exercise provided the largest test yet of DARPA’s SIGMA program, which is developing networked sensors that can provide dynamic, real-time radiation detection over large urban areas.

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Dec 6, 2016

Logic of Signaling

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, genetics, neuroscience

Why Synbio computing is where we ultimately want to more and more progress towards especially once the basic infrastructure is updated with technology like QC.


Cells are often likened to computers, running an operating system that receives signals, processes their input, and responds, according to programming, with cellular output. Yet untangling computer-like pathways in cells is anything but simple, say Denise Montell, professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Aviv Regev, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute. However, both are eager to try and will outline their latest efforts at the “Logic of Signaling” symposium at the 2016 ASCB Annual Meeting.

“My lab is understanding how cells maintain and build normal tissues. We’re studying cellular behaviors that underlie normal behavior and tumor metastasis, a great unsolved question in cancer,” Montell said. Her lab recently discovered that cells can bounce back from the brink of apoptotic cell death. “This wasn’t known before so now we’re looking at how cells do it, when do they do it, under what circumstances, and what does it mean,” Montell said.

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