Lifeboat Foundation

Rotifers are multicellular, microscopic marine animals that live in soils and freshwater environments. They are transparent and can be easily grown in large numbers. As such, they have been used in some laboratories as research subjects for many years. Now scientists have found a way to manipulate the rotifer genome, which can make them far more useful for many different research applications.

In new work reported in PLOS Biology, scientists used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing tool to alter two rotifer genes. These edits were then passed down to future generations of rotifers. This effort can now help others use these organisms in their laboratories.

Sensing, shape-morphing devices take aim at medical and consumer applications.

Disclaimer: It’s important to note that this article is solely intended for educational and informational purposes, and no affiliate links are included. The outline for this article was written with the help of AI. All information is open and available to the public.

Emerging Threat: EG.5 Variant Raises Global Concerns

Continue reading “Fast-Spreading EG.5 Coronavirus Variant Sparks Global Concerns” »

The fight against deadly diseases has always been a tough one. While vaccines have been the gold standard in warding off threats like diphtheria, tetanus, and measles, ensuring everyone gets a dose is no small feat. The answer to this might lie in an audacious new approach: transmissible vaccines.

It’s like using fire to combat fire – but can we control it?

When a large portion of a community gets vaccinated, we achieve herd immunity. However, ensuring global vaccination, especially in areas with inadequate health facilities, is an uphill task.

Scientists may have successfully spotted the brain center for the male libido responsible for sexual interest and mating in mouse models. The discovery may lead to improved drugs for sexual function.

This is according to a report by Medical Xpress published on Friday.

Senior researcher Dr. Nirao Shah, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, in California, said in the article that the newly-discovered region is responsible for recognizing the sex of other mice.

Researchers led by a team at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified cellular and molecular features of the brain that set modern humans apart from their closest primate relatives and ancient human ancestors. The findings, published in Nature, offer new insights into human brain evolution.

“Most evolutionary studies on the human brain have focused on neurons because this cell type was thought to be responsible for our intelligence and enhanced cognitive abilities. This study gives us a renewed appreciation for other cells involved in brain function and the role they have played both in advancing cognition and our susceptibility to a number of cognitive diseases,” said study leader Genevieve Konopka, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience and a member of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at UT Southwestern.

Since ancient times, people have been curious about what gives humans abilities that other animals don’t have, such as speech and language, Dr. Konopka explained. A range of previous studies have sought to answer this question by examining brain anatomy or performing genetic or molecular studies on whole brains or sections, experiments that provide a view of thousands of cells at a time.

Talk kindly contributed by Michael Levin in SEMF’s 2022 Spacious Spatiality.

https://semf.org.es/spatiality.

Continue reading “Michael Levin | Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces” »

Though almost every cell in your body contains a copy of each of your genes, only a small fraction of these genes will be expressed, or turned on. These activations are controlled by specialized snippets of DNA called enhancers, which act like skillful on-off switches. This selective activation allows cells to adopt specific functions in the body, determining whether they become—for example—heart cells, muscle cells, or brain cells.

However, these enhancers don’t always turn on the right genes at the right time, contributing to the development of genetic diseases like cancer and diabetes. A team of Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers has developed a machine-learning model that can predict which enhancers play a role in normal development and disease—an innovation that could someday power the development of enhancer-targeted therapies to treat diseases by turning genes on and off at will. The study results appeared in Nature Genetics.

“We’ve known that enhancers control transitions between cell types for a long time, but what is exciting about this work is that mathematical modeling is showing us how they might be controlled,” said study leader Michael Beer, a professor of biomedical engineering and genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Reichman University’s new Innovation Institute, which is set to formally open this spring under the auspices of the new Graziella Drahi Innovation Building, aims to encourage interdisciplinary, innovative and applied research as a cooperation between the different academic schools. The establishment of the Innovation Institute comes along with a new vision for the University, which puts the emphasis on the fields of synthetic biology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Advanced Reality (XR). Prof. Noam Lemelshtrich Latar, the Head of the Institute, identifies these as fields of the future, and the new Innovation Institute will focus on interdisciplinary applied research and the ramifications of these fields on the subjects that are researched and taught at the schools, for example, how law and ethics influence new medical practices and scientific research.

Synthetic biology is a new interdisciplinary field that integrates biology, chemistry, computer science, electrical and genetic engineering, enabling fast manipulation of biological systems to achieve a desired product.

Prof. Lemelshtrich Latar, with Dr. Jonathan Giron, who was the Institute’s Chief Operating Officer, has made a significant revolution at the University, when they raised a meaningful donation to establish the Scojen Institute for Synthetic Biology. The vision of the Scojen Institute is to conduct applied scientific research by employing top global scientists at Reichman University to become the leading synthetic biology research Institute in Israel. The donation will allow recruiting four world-leading scientists in various scopes of synthetic biology in life sciences. The first scientist and Head of the Scojen Institute has already been recruited – Prof. Yosi Shacham Diamand, a leading global scientist in bio-sensors and the integration of electronics and biology. The Scojen Institute labs will be located in the Graziella Drahi Innovation Building and will be one part of the future Dina Recanati School of Medicine, set to open in the academic year 2024–2025.