Lifeboat Foundation

Fixing breaks in genes with speed and perfection can be a matter of life and death for most organisms. Even the simplest changes in a sequence risk catastrophe, especially if the altered code is responsible for a critical function.

Over the past half a century, biologists have studied the mechanisms involved to piece together most of the major steps involved in making faithful repairs in DNA. Yet, one part of the process has remained frustratingly unclear.

By marking key enzymes and DNA with fluorescent tags and watching the repair process unfold in real-time in an Escherichia coli model, researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden have filled in missing details on how bacteria find the templates they rely on to keep genetic repairs error-free.

New #preprint from JAX’s Nadia Rosenthal and researchers at Rocky Mountain Laboratories: “Genetically diverse mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 infection recapitulate clinical variation and cytokine responses in COVID-19”

The preprint, which has yet to be peer reviewed, shows that mice with different genetic backgrounds exhibit highly variable responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection, mirroring the large differences in #COVID19 disease severity seen in humans:

Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, tremendous progress has been made in developing effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and in treating ill patients. Nonetheless, much more needs to be learned about SARS-CoV-2 infectivity and COVID-19 progression to lessen the continuing threat of infection, as the recent emergence and rapid spread of the delta variant has emphasized.

Among thousands of the earliest survivors of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, nearly half had at least one persistent symptom a full year after being released from the hospital, according to a new study published in JAMA Network Open.

The study followed up with 2,433 adult patients who had been hospitalized in one of two hospitals in Wuhan early on in the pandemic. Most had nonsevere cases, but a small number had severe COVID-19 and required intensive care. All of the patients were discharged between February 12 and April 10 2020, and the study follow-up took place in March of 2021.

Overall, 45 percent of the patients reported at least one symptom in that one-year follow-up. The most common symptoms were fatigue, sweating, chest tightness, anxiety, and myalgia (muscle pain). Having a severe case of COVID-19 increased the likelihood of long-lingering symptoms; 54 percent of the 680 severe cases reported at least one symptom after a year. But persistent symptoms were also common among the nonsevere cases, with 41.5 percent of 1,752 nonsevere cases reporting at least one symptom a year later.

Accounting and consulting firm PwC told Reuters on Thursday it will allow all its 40,000 U.S. client services employees to work virtually and live anywhere they want in perpetuity, making it one of the biggest employers to embrace permanent remote work.

The policy is a departure from the accounting industry’s rigid attitudes, known for encouraging people to put in late nights at the office. Other major accounting firms, such as Deloitte and KPMG, have also been giving employees more choice to work remotely in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

$100 million a year. All you gotta do is apply for funding.

A consortium of biotech founders, clinicians, and leading longevity research institutions announced today the launch of the Longevity Science Foundation. The new Swiss foundation has committed to distributing more than $1 billion over the next ten years to research, institutions and projects advancing healthy human longevity and extending the healthy human lifespan to more than 120 years.

Longevity. Technology: The Foundation is advised by a aptly-named “Visionary Board” of leading longevity researchers, led by Evelyne Bischof and joined by Andrea B Maier, Eric Verdin, Matt Kaeberlein and Alex Zhavoronkov, all key opinion leaders who be top picks for a longevity dream team.

Continue reading “$1B longevity fund launches to pursue 120+ lifespan” »

In a cave on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, an international team of researchers has unearthed a jawbone that represents the oldest human remains ever found in Wallacea. The group has published a paper describing their find on the open-access site PLoS ONE.

Over the past several decades, archaeologists have found evidence of ancient people living in Wallacea, a cluster of Indonesian islands relatively near to Australia. In a cave called Leang Bulu Bettue, they found tools, trinkets and cave art, but little in the way of human remains. In this new effort, the researchers found a jawbone with three molars attached. Dating of ornaments, pigments and portable art surrounding the find suggests the remains were from a modern human living in the area between 16,000 and 25,000 years ago, during the Ice Age. The find could shed light on the people who lived in the area during that time—scientists believe they were ancestors of people who arrived by boat thousands of years before, and the forebears of the first modern people to arrive in Australia.

Study of the jawbone showed that the person, whose gender is still unknown, suffered from a host of oral maladies. The molars were ground down, suggesting the person had used them as a tool for some purpose. And there was evidence of tooth loss, gum disease and cavities. This suggests the person’s diet was carbohydrate-heavy. Additionally, the person was likely older, and had small teeth, suggesting that, like other early island human species, those living on Sulawesi were likely small in stature compared to those living in Europe.

Excerpt of an interview made in May 2021 by “Richard”, who runs the Modern Healthspan YouTube Channel, to George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), among many other responsibilities as a hardwork geneticist.

In this segment, George Church gives his view on whether age reversal in humans and LEV may be achieved during his lifetime.

Continue reading “George Church views on Human Age Reversal and LEV (videoclip con S/T en Español)” »

A ransomware gang called Vice Society claims it grabbed confidential data such as patient benefits, financial documents and lab results.

Another health care provider has apparently been the victim of a ransomware attack that exposed private patient information and other sensitive data. A ransomware group known as Vice Society has claimed responsibility for an August attack against United Health Centers that allegedly impacted all of its locations. The incident reportedly led to the theft of patient data and forced the organization to shut down its entire network, BleepingComputer reported on Friday.

Metabolism and total energy expenditure change throughout our lives, and now a new study documents a series of distinct, related changes in unprecedented detail. The data – drawn from a large cohort of humans spanning from birth to old age – shed new light on human development and aging and could help shape targeted nutrition and health strategies across the human lifespan.

The complex machine that is the human body requires a substantial amount of energy to fuel day-to-day physical activity and sustain life. However, while energy use is central to understanding many aspects of human health and physiology, including daily nutritional requirements and metabolic investment in myriad activities, very little is known about total energy expenditure in humans or how it varies over the human lifespan.

Most large-scale surveys of human energy expenditure have focused on basal expenditure, which only accounts for roughly half of total expenditure. And, while doubly labeled water (DLW) studies can provide a measure of total energy expenditure in free-living individuals, they, too, are often limited in sample size and diversity.