Looking at DNA in a tissue sample is now all you need to accurately work out the age of almost any mammal, and this reveals something fundamental about ageing.
In nature, evolutionary chromosomal changes may take a million years, but scientists have recently reported a novel technique for programmable chromosome fusion that has successfully created mice with genetic changes that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale in the laboratory. The findings might shed light on how chromosomal rearrangements – the neat bundles of structured genes provided in equal numbers by each parent, which align and trade or mix characteristics to produce offspring – impact evolution.
In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers show that chromosome level engineering is possible in mammals. They successfully created a laboratory house mouse with a novel and sustainable karyotype, offering crucial insight into how chromosome rearrangements may influence evolution.
“The laboratory house mouse has maintained a standard 40-chromosome karyotype — or the full picture of an organism’s chromosomes — after more than 100 years of artificial breeding,” said co-first author Li Zhikun, researcher in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Zoology and the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology. “Over longer time scales, however, karyotype changes caused by chromosome rearrangements are common. Rodents have 3.2 to 3.5 rearrangements per million years, whereas primates have 1.6.”
IRVINE, Calif., Sept. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — AIVITA Biomedical, Inc., a biotech company specializing in innovative cell applications, today announced that chairman and CEO Hans Keirstead, Ph.D., will deliver a keynote address at AI for Good, a program dedicated to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals through practical AI applications. Details for the keynote are as follows:
Keynote title: AI in healthcare is an infant. Intelligence augmentation is an athlete. When: Wednesday, September 14, 2022, 15:00 CEST (9:00 EDT) Where: Switzerland — Virtual Presentation
The AI for Good meeting is organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies, in partnership with 40 United Nations sister agencies.
The biotech platform that is leveraging one of the cornerstones of evolution – mitochondria.
Mitochondria play a crucial role in the aging process, activating factors and metabolic pathways involved in longevity. Their dysfunction impacts on both lifespan and healthspan, and whilst they have been identified as disease targets for some time, mitochondria have proven difficult to treat.
With the aid of physics and a minuscule magnet, researchers have discovered a new structure of telomeric DNA. Telomeres are sometimes seen as the key to living longer. They protect genes from damage but get a bit shorter each time a cell divides. If they become too short, the cell dies. The new discovery will help us understand aging and disease.
Physics is not the first scientific discipline that springs to mind at the mention of DNA. But John van Noort from the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) is one of the scientists who found the new DNA structure. A biophysicist, he uses methods from physics for biological experiments. This also caught the attention of biologists from Nanyan Technological University in Singapore. They asked him to help study the DNA structure of telomeres. They have published the results in Nature.
To begin with, it will only run at a fraction of its eventual three-quadrillion-watt maximum output.
A laser at the University of Michigan, which is set to be the most powerful in the United States, is preparing to send its first laser pulses into an experimental target, a press statement explains.
Only two of the top 10 billionaires registered gains.
The world’s top richest people collectively lost $50 billion of their personal fortune as the New York Stock Exchange slumped on Tuesday amidst fears of rising inflation and looming inflation. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Google Guys, nobody was spared as prices of stock held by them tumbled, Market Insider.
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In many cases, medicine has found ways to treat the symptoms of these degenerative conditions – such as using analgesics to alleviate osteoarthritis pain or corrective lenses or surgery to improve vision. But medicine still has not found a way to cure the underlying diseases.
Making stem cells from a patient’s adult cells – rather than human embryos – is one of the holy grails in modern medicine treatments. New research brings us two steps closer.
Biotech start-up Pretzel Therapeutics launched Monday with $72.5 million in Series A financing to develop novel, mitochondria-based therapies for rare genetic disorders and diseases of aging.
Pretzel plans to target mitochondrial diseases, a highly heterogenous group of conditions caused by DNA mutations in the mitochondria or the nucleus. These disorders are very rare, afflicting around one in 5,000 people.
Pretzel CEO Jay Parrish told BioSpace the funding “should enable us to get close to the clinic if not into the clinic with one or more programs.”
