Lifeboat Foundation

A team of physicists has discovered how DNA

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).

Many people develop Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia as they get older. However, others remain sharp well into old age, even if their brains show underlying signs of neurodegeneration.

Among these cognitively resilient people, researchers have identified education level and amount of time spent on intellectually stimulating activities as factors that help prevent dementia. A new study by MIT researchers shows that this kind of enrichment appears to activate a gene family called MEF2, which controls a genetic program in the brain that promotes resistance to cognitive decline.

The researchers observed this link between MEF2 and cognitive resilience in both humans and mice. The findings suggest that enhancing the activity of MEF2 or its targets might protect against age-related dementia.

Evolutionary genomics approach identifies genes that enable plants to live in the Atacama Desert, offering clues for engineering more resilient crops to face climate change.

An international team of researchers has identified genes associated with plant survival in one of the harshest environments on Earth: the Atacama Desert in Chile. Their findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may help scientists breed resilient crops that can thrive in increasingly drier climates.

“In an era of accelerated climate change, it is critical to uncover the genetic basis to improve crop production and resilience under dry and nutrient-poor conditions,” said Gloria Coruzzi, Carroll & Milton Petrie Professor in the New York University (NYU) Department of Biology and Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, who co-led the study with Rodrigo Gutiérrez.

Rare diseases aren’t so rare. Collectively, up to 30 million Americans, many of them children, are born with one of the approximately 7,000 known rare diseases. Most of these millions of people also share a common genetic feature: their diseases are caused by an alteration in a single gene.

Many of these alterations could theoretically be targeted with therapies designed to correct or replace the faulty gene. But there have been significant obstacles in realizing this dream. The science of gene therapy has been making real progress, but pursuing promising approaches all the way to clinical trials and gaining approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still very difficult. Another challenge is economic: for the rarest of these conditions (which is most of them), the market is so small that most companies have no financial incentive to pursue them.

To overcome these obstacles and provide hope for those with rare diseases, we need a new way of doing things. One way to do things differently—and more efficiently—is the recently launched Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC). It is a bold partnership of NIH, the FDA, 10 pharmaceutical companies, and several non-profit organizations [1]. Its aim: optimize the gene therapy development process and help fill the significant unmet medical needs of people with rare diseases.

It’s the dog days of summer. You bite down on a plump, chilled orange. Citrus juice explodes in your mouth in a refreshing, tingling burst. Ahh.

And congratulations—you’ve just been vaccinated for the latest virus.

That’s one of the goals of molecular farming, a vision to have plants synthesize medications and vaccines. Using genetic engineering and synthetic biology, scientists can introduce brand new biochemical pathways into plant cells—or even whole plants—essentially turning them into single-use bioreactors.

“De-Extinction” Biotechnology & Conservation Biology — Ben Novak, Lead Scientist Revive & Restore

Ben Novak is Lead Scientist, at Revive & Restore (https://reviverestore.org/), a California-based non-profit that works to bring biotechnology to conservation biology with the mission to enhance biodiversity through the genetic rescue of endangered and extinct animals (https://reviverestore.org/what-we-do/ted-talk/).

Continue reading “Ben Novak, Lead Scientist, Revive & Restore — De-Extinction Biotechnology & Conservation Biology” »

VR can soon become perceptually indistinguishable from the physical reality, even superior in many practical ways, and any artificially created “imaginary” world with a logically consistent ruleset of physics would be ultrarealistic. Advanced immersive technologies incorporating quantum computing, AI, cybernetics, optogenetics and nanotech would make this a new “livable” reality within the next few decades. Can this new immersive tech help us decipher the nature of our own “b… See more.

Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have designed a way to selectively turn on gene expression in target cells, including human cells. Their technology can detect specific mRNA sequences (represented in the center of the illustration), which triggers production of a specific protein (bottom right). Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT, with figures from iStockphoto.

“This brings new control circuitry to the emerging field of RNA therapeutics, opening up the next generation of RNA therapeutics that could be designed to only turn on in a cell-specific or tissue-specific way,” says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study.

This highly targeted approach, which is based on a genetic element used by viruses to control gene translation in host cells, could help to avoid some of the side effects of therapies that affect the entire body, the researchers say.

A commonly available oral diuretic pill approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may be a potential candidate for an Alzheimer’s disease treatment for those who are at genetic risk, according to findings published in Nature Aging. The research included analysis showing that those who took bumetanide — a commonly used and potent diuretic — had a significantly lower prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease compared to those not taking the drug. The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, advances a precision medicine approach for individuals at greater risk of the disease because of their genetic makeup.

The research team analyzed information in databases of brain tissue samples and FDA-approved drugs, performed mouse and human cell experiments, and explored human population studies to identify bumetanide as a leading drug candidate that may potentially be repurposed to treat Alzheimer’s.

“Though further tests and clinical trials are needed, this research underscores the value of big data-driven tactics combined with more traditional scientific approaches to identify existing FDA-approved drugs as candidates for drug repurposing to treat Alzheimer’s disease,” said NIA Director Richard J. Hodes, M.D.