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Archive for the ‘genetics’ category: Page 251

May 14, 2021

What’s the Farthest Anyone Has Ever Run Without Stopping?

Posted by in category: genetics

You know you’re a little different when the family tags along for your run in an RV fully equipped for a multi-day road trip.


Have you tried pulling an all-nighter recently? It hurts. A once-common event in college – thanks to studying or partying or midnight hikes that turned into sunrise missions – becomes increasingly debilitating the older you get. It’s like your first run after some time off: You might feel okay doing it, but you’ll pay the next day.

Unless you’re the genetically blessed aberration that is Dean Karnazes, 53, one of the most well known runners of our time.

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May 14, 2021

Episode 50 — Bioengineering Our Human Species To Reach The Stars

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, genetics, space

Great new episode with renowned geneticist Christopher Mason who talks about his book on how we will need to bioengineer our own species in order to expand beyond our solar system.


Geneticist Christopher Mason chats about his new book, “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds” from MIT Press. We discuss both the nuts and bolts and the philosophy driving our expansion offworld. Mason’s goal is to preserve our species by expanding to an Earth 2.0 in order to avoid our star’s own Red Giant endgame.

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May 11, 2021

New genetic ‘CopyCatchers’ detect efficient and precise CRISPR editing in a living organism

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

These studies provide a clear proof of principle for a new type of gene therapy in which one copy of a mutated gene could be repaired from a partially intact second copy of the gene,” said Bier, senior author of the Nature Communications study and science director for the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society-UC San Diego. “The need for such a design occurs in genetic situations with patients with inherited genetic disorders, if their parents were carriers for two different mutations in the same gene.


Researchers at the University of California San Diego have laid the groundwork for a potential new type of gene therapy using novel CRISPR-based techniques.

Working in fruit flies and , research led by UC San Diego Postdoctoral Scholar Zhiqian Li in Division of Biological Sciences Professor Ethan Bier’s laboratory demonstrates that new DNA repair mechanisms could be designed to address the effects of debilitating diseases and damaged cell conditions.

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May 11, 2021

People Who Live Beyond 105 Have Better DNA Repair

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

Not sure how novel.


People who live beyond 105 years are more efficient at repairing DNA, according to a study published today in eLife.

Paolo Garagnani and colleagues, in collaboration with several research groups in Italy and a research team led by Patrick Descombes at Nestlé Research in Lausanne, Switzerland, recruited 81 semi-supercentenarians (those aged 105 years or older) and supercentenarians (those aged 110 years or older) from across the Italian peninsula. They compared these with 36 healthy people matched from the same region who were an average age of 68 years old.

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May 10, 2021

The process of combining maternal and paternal genetic information is surprisingly error-prone

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

Only one in three fertilizations leads to a successful pregnancy. Many embryos fail to progress beyond early development. Cell biologists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany), together with researchers at the Institute of Farm Animal Genetics in Mariensee and other international colleagues, have now developed a new model system for studying early embryonic development. With the help of this system, they discovered that errors often occur when the genetic material from each parent combines immediately after fertilization. This is due to a remarkably inefficient process.

Human somatic cells typically have 46 , which together carry the genetic information. These chromosomes are first brought together at fertilization, 23 from the father’s sperm, and 23 from the mother’s egg. After fertilization, the parental chromosomes initially exist in two separate compartments, known as pronuclei. These pronuclei slowly move towards each other until they come into contact. The pronuclear envelopes then dissolve, and the parental chromosomes unite.

The majority of human embryos, however, end up with an incorrect number of chromosomes. These embryos are often not viable, making erroneous genome unification a leading cause of miscarriage and infertility.

May 10, 2021

The Science of Aliens, Part 2: What Kind of Genetic Code Would Extraterrestrials Have?

Posted by in categories: alien life, chemistry, genetics, science

Some thoughts about the genetic code aliens would use in the 2nd part of the series: The Science of Aliens:


Alien life would likely have different biochemistry, which may change the way it reproduces.

May 10, 2021

Scientists resurrect mysterious Judean date palms from biblical era

Posted by in category: genetics

Methuselah the tree was grown from a 2000-year-old seed found at Masada. Now more have been grown and genetic analysis finds a twist in the origin story of the ‘Judean date’.

May 10, 2021

Reversing a Genetic Cause of Poor Stress Tolerance

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

Stress management.


Everyone faces stress occasionally, whether in school, at work, or during a global pandemic. However, some cannot cope as well as others. In a few cases, the cause is genetic. In humans, mutations in the OPHN1 gene cause a rare X-linked disease that includes poor stress tolerance. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Linda Van Aelst seeks to understand factors that cause specific individuals to respond poorly to stress. She and her lab studied the mouse gene Ophn1, an analog of the human gene, which plays a critical role in developing brain cell connections, memories, and stress tolerance. When Ophn1 was removed in a specific part of the brain, mice expressed depression-like helpless behaviors. The researchers found three ways to reverse this effect.

To test for stress, the researchers put mice into a two-room cage with a door in between. Normal mice escape from the room that gives them a light shock on their feet. But animals lacking Ophn1 sit helplessly in that room without trying to leave. Van Aelst wanted to figure out why.

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May 10, 2021

Blind Patients Hope Landmark Gene-Editing Experiment Will Restore Their Vision

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

The unprecedented study involves using the gene-editing technique CRISPR to edit a gene while it’s still inside a patient’s body. In exclusive interviews, NPR talks with two of the first participants.

May 10, 2021

Autism-related conditions linked to altered visual perception

Posted by in categories: genetics, neuroscience

Autistic people tend to switch between images more slowly than non-autistic people do, a previous study shows. And they spend more time seeing a combination of the two images.


Children with genetic conditions linked to autism perform atypically on a test of binocular rivalry, according to a new unpublished study.

Researchers presented the work virtually today at the 2021 International Society for Autism Research annual meetin g. (Links to abstracts may work only for registered conference attendees.)

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