Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,659

Hachimoji DNA doubles the genetic code

Researchers in the US have built an “alien” DNA system from eight building block letters, so expanding the genetic code from four and doubling its information density. The new system meets all of the requirements for Darwinian evolution and can also be transcribed to RNA. It will be important for future synthetic biology applications and expands the scope of molecular structures that might be capable of supporting life, both here on Earth and more widely in the universe.

One of the main characteristics of life is that it can store and pass on genetic information. In modern-day organisms, this is done by DNA using just four building blocks: guanine, cytosine, adenine and thymine (G, A, C and T). Pairs of DNA strands form a double helix with A bonding to T and C bonding to G.

Four more building blocks .

A New Treatment Can Relieve Food Allergies, But Few Doctors Offer It

Because there’s not yet an FDA-approved version of this treatment, most medical providers don’t yet offer it. So most patients can get it only by enrolling in research studies, of which there have been dozens in recent years.

Patients Find Relief For Food Allergies In Oral Immunotherapy Treatment : Shots — Health News Many parents of kids with life-threatening food allergies live with fear, EpiPen in hand. Some are trying oral immunotherapy, a treatment that can help patients build tolerance to foods like peanuts.

Making New Drugs With a Dose of Artificial Intelligence

Universities and big pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to match those resources. But thanks to cloud computing services offered by Google and other tech giants, the price of computing power continues to drop. Dr. AlQuraishi urged the life-sciences community to shift more attention toward the kind of A.I. work practiced by DeepMind.

Researchers at DeepMind, owned by Google’s parent company, and other companies are applying their powerful A.I. systems to drug discovery research.

Forget the Blood of Teens. This Pill Promises to Extend Life for a Nickel a Pop

NIR BARZILAI HAS a plan. It’s a really big plan that might one day change medicine and health care as we know it. Its promise: extending our years of healthy, disease-free living by decades.

The more researchers learn about metformin, the more it seems like a medieval wonder drug that could extend lifespans in the 21st century.

Is Immortality Possible?

Firstly, it greatly depends on how you define immortality. If you define it as living forever and being indestructible as in a comic book, then, no, it is highly unlikely. However, if you define it in terms of showing no decline in survival characteristics, no increase in disease incidence and no increase in mortality with advancing age, then yes. The first is a science-fiction fantasy; the second is based on real-world biology that evolution has already selected for in certain species. We call this state negligible senescence.

Senescence and negligible senescence

Senescence refers to the gradual deterioration of aging and is typically very obvious in almost every species. More accurately, senescence refers to a decline of survival characteristics, such as strength, mobility, senses, and age-related increases in mortality along with a decrease in reproductive capability. Mortality rates for humans and most animals increase dramatically with age beyond reaching reproductive maturity.

A prosthetic that restores the sense of where your hand is

Researchers have developed a next-generation bionic hand that allows amputees to regain their proprioception. The results of the study, which have been published in Science Robotics, are the culmination of ten years of robotics research.

The next-generation bionic hand, developed by researchers from EPFL, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and the A. Gemelli University Polyclinic in Rome, enables amputees to regain a very subtle, close-to-natural sense of touch. The scientists managed to reproduce the feeling of proprioception, which is our brain’s capacity to instantly and accurately sense the position of our limbs during and after movement – even in the dark or with our eyes closed.

The new device allows to reach out for an object on a table and to ascertain an item’s consistency, shape, position and size without having to look at it. The prosthesis has been successfully tested on several patients and works by stimulating the nerves in the ’s stump. The nerves can then provide to the patients in real time – almost like they do in a natural hand.

Israeli team develops way to find genetic flaws in fetus at 11 weeks

Researchers at Tel Aviv University say they have developed a new, noninvasive method of discovering genetic disorders that can let parents find out the health of their fetus as early as 11 weeks into pregnancy.

A simple blood test lets doctors diagnose genetic disorders in fetuses early in pregnancy by sequencing small amounts of DNA in the mother’s and the father’s blood. A computer algorithm developed by the researchers analyzes the results of the sequencing and then produces a “map” of the fetal genome, predicting mutations with 99 percent or better accuracy, depending on the mutation type, the researchers said in a study published Wednesday in Genome Research.

The algorithm is able to distinguish between the genetic material of the parents and that of the fetus, said Prof. Noam Shomron of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine led the research, in a phone interview with The Times of Israel.

/* */