Lifeboat Foundation

We’re only starting in this space.

Synthetic Biology (SynBio) includes a large field of applications. Within this area biochemists combine engineering concepts and techniques with biology to design new genes that produce a specific protein. When this protein is an enzyme, bacteria and yeast in which such a gene is implanted can produce specific chemicals through a fermentation process. A large and growing number of businesses is active in this field. This became apparent once again at the EFIB-conference in Glasgow, last October. The workshop was chaired by John Cumbers, founder of the American SynBioBeta, an internet-site dedicated to sharing information and news on synthetic biology.

JBEI researchers develop efficient and affordable method for plant DNA assembly.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in collaboration with Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Genomics & Systems Biology Division and the DOE Joint Genome Institute developed a versatile system (named jStack) which utilizes yeast homologous recombination to efficiently assemble DNA into plant transformation vectors. The new approach will impact plant engineering for the bioenergy, agricultural and pharmaceutical industries.

Although synthetic biology has provided solutions to many societal challenges, little research has been devoted to advancing synthetic biology in plants. Microbes, such as yeast and Escherichia coli (E. coli), have received much of the attention in developing synthetic biology tools due to their fast generation time and the ease of working with these organisms in laboratories. A shortage of characterized DNA parts, along with the difficulty of efficiently assembling multiple and large fragments of DNA into plant transformation vectors, has limited progress in studying and engineering plants to the same degree as their microbial counterparts.

A top Google researcher talks about computers that learn.

The onset of winter not only has serious implications for the residents of Westeros, but also for high performance athletes, given the higher chances of falling sick during this season while training outdoors. If you don’t mind looking a bit like a Mortal Kombat character, a new electric balaclava would let you keep training like a champ in the cold while lowering the risk of contracting chest infections.

A collaboration between researchers at Nottingham Trent University in the UK and German advanced knitting machine manufacturer Stoll GmBH, this 3D-knitted headpiece prototype features a built-in heating area around the nose and mouth made of electric-conductive yarn. A knitted power socket at the rear of the garment allows the wearer to insert a rechargeable cell battery to power the device.

Continue reading “Smart balaclava would help athletes avoid chest infections in the depths of winter” »

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — All the years of your parents saying “NO” to ice cream for breakfast may have actually stunted your brilliance.

According to The Telegraph, a new study performed by Yoshihiko Koga, a professor at Kyorin University in Tokyo, revealed that eating a certain amount of ice cream immediately after waking up in the morning can actually make you smarter.

No, you did not misread that!

Continue reading “Study: Ice Cream For Breakfast Boosts Brain Performance” »

You get out what you put in.

You are what you eat, the old saying goes, but why is that so? Researchers have known for some time that diet affects the balance of microbes in our bodies, but how that translates into an effect on the host has not been understood. Now, research in mice is showing that microbes communicate with their hosts by sending out metabolites that act on histones—thus influencing gene transcription not only in the colon but also in tissues in other parts of the body. The findings publish November 23 in Molecular Cell.

“This is the first of what we hope is a long, fruitful set of studies to understand the connection between the microbiome in the gut and its influence on host health,” says John Denu, a professor of biomolecular chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and one of the study’s senior authors. “We wanted to look at whether the gut microbiota affect epigenetic programming in a variety of different tissues in the host.” These tissues were in the proximal colon, the liver, and fat tissue.

Continue reading “Changes in the diet affect epigenetics via the microbiota” »

29th November in Berlin there is a meetup for LE enthusiasts.

Announcing our year-end meetup in Berlin.

Join our casual get together of like-minded people. We chat about extending our healthy lifespans and the latest developments in this exciting field.

Continue reading “Life Extension Meetup” »

One of the biggest puzzles in physics is that eighty-five percent of the matter in our universe is “dark”: it does not interact with the photons of the conventional electromagnetic force and is therefore invisible to our eyes and telescopes. Although the composition and origin of dark matter are a mystery, we know it exists because astronomers observe its gravitational pull on ordinary visible matter such as stars and galaxies.

Some theories suggest that, in addition to gravity, dark matter particles could interact with visible matter through a new force, which has so far escaped detection. Just as the electromagnetic force is carried by the photon, this dark force is thought to be transmitted by a particle called “dark” photon which is predicted to act as a mediator between visible and dark matter.

“To use a metaphor, an otherwise impossible dialogue between two people not speaking the same language (visible and dark matter) can be enabled by a mediator (the dark photon), who understands one language and speaks the other one,” explains Sergei Gninenko, spokesperson for the NA64 collaboration.

Destroying and replacing the immune system is one of the approaches to treat the aging process.

Fightaging! provides some commentary about the immune system in relation to aging. Addressing the decline of the immune system is one of the approaches SRF is interested in and is a cornerstone of rejuvenation biotechnology.

“Understanding exactly how aging progressively harms the intricate choreography of the immune response is a massive project, and nowhere near completion. It is possible to judge how far along researchers are in this work by the side effect of the quality of therapies for autoimmune disease, which are malfunctions in immune configuration, and largely incurable at the present time. From a practical point of view, and as mentioned above, the best prospects for effective treatments in the near future involve destroying and recreating the immune system. That works around our comparative ignorance by removing all of the problems that researchers don’t understand in addition to ones that they do.”

Continue reading “Some Adaptive Immune Cells Become More Innate-Like in the Aged Immune System” »