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Researchers from AgeX Therapeutics and other organizations have proved the feasibility of reprogramming banked cells derived from a supercentenarian. Their discovery portends exciting new possibilities for aging research.

What is cellular reprogramming?

Cellular reprogramming is the process of reverting mature, specialized cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which can develop into any cell type found in the human body. Cellular reprogramming technology was pioneered in 2006 by Drs. Takahashi and Yamanaka, who achieved this impressive result by overexpressing just four genes, Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc (OSKM), which became collectively known as the Yamanaka factors. For this breakthrough, Yamanaka was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2012. Fun fact: Yamanaka called these cells iPSCs – with a small “i” – as a nod to the iPod and similarly named devices.

The news did not sit well with Chinese scientists, who are still recovering from the CRISPR baby scandal. “It makes you wonder, if their reason for choosing to do this in a Chinese laboratory is because of our high-tech experimental setups, or because of loopholes in our laws?” lamented one anonymous commentator on China’s popular social media app, WeChat.

Their frustration is understandable. Earlier in April, a team from southern China came under international fire for sticking extra copies of human “intelligence-related” genes into macaque monkeys. And despite efforts to revamp its reputation in biomedical research ethics, China does have slacker rules in primate research compared to Western countries.

If you’re feeling icked out, you’re not alone. The morality and ethics of growing human-animal hybrids are far from clear. But creepiness aside, scientists do have two reasons for wading into these uncomfortable waters.

Human vascular progenitor cells (green), made from Zambidis’ lab-grown naive stem cells, engraft into blood vessels (red) in a mouse retina. Credit: Elias Zambidis, Johns Hopkins Medicine.

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So much emphasis has been placed on human genome editing that other types of genetic editing are falling through the cracks.

Always up-to-date numbers about the COVID-19 cases that you can embed in your own articles.

Proponents of the technology claim it can get people off of opioids, improve their sex lives, and make them smarter. Critics say it’s bunk.

Foldit is crowdsourcing a cure and needs lots new players. All Transhumanist should participate.

The University of Washington is taking a novel approach to combat the spread of coronavirus around the world.

A new puzzle game from the university challenges scientists and the public alike to build a protein that could block the virus from infiltrating human cells. The game is on Foldit, a 12-year-old website created by the university’s Center for Game Science designed to crowdsource contributions to important protein research from more than 200,000 registered players.

Continue reading “University of Washington coronavirus puzzle game aims to crowdsource a cure” »

We may be one step closer to a universal flu vaccine, according to a new study.

Since 2012, the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 has enabled scientists to target and modify DNA with remarkable precision. But one constraint of this technique has been that it’s only able to make changes within single genes. Now, scientists have developed new tools that allow them to cut and splice large chunks of chromosomes, and to assemble new synthetic genomes from distinct strains.

The findings, published in a paper on August 30 in Science, likely have major implications for fields such as synthetic biology, computational biology, and biological computing, and could lead to better treatments for a wide array of diseases.

“This new paper is incredibly exciting and a huge step forward for synthetic biology,” Anne Meyer, a synthetic biologist at the University of Rochester in New York who was not involved in the paper, told Science.