Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists led by Dr. Manuel Serrano have observed symptoms of rejuvenation in the pancreas, liver, spleen, and blood of mice after applying one cycle of cell reprogramming.

To achieve this, the researchers have characterized rejuvenation by studying molecular marks in the DNA, gene expression, and cell metabolism. The study has been published in the journal Aging Cell.

Continue reading “Researchers Rejuvenate Mouse Organs Through Cellular Reprogramming” »

HPE has launched its Swarm Learning and Machine Learning Development System whilst Salesforce announced further integration with Slack, Tableau, and Mulesoft.

BlackRock announced on Wednesday its new iShares Blockchain and Tech ETF (IBLC), which allows investors to gain exposure to the blockchain sector without any direct investments in cryptocurrencies.

The exchange-traded fund tracks US and international companies involved in the “development, innovation, and utilization of blockchain and crypto technologies,” BlackRock said. Currently, the fund has over $4.7 million in net assets across 34 holdings, excluding cash positions and derivative exposures.

The ETF is a “gradual entry point into the blockchain ecosystem” and includes holdings like crypto exchanges, crypto miners, and underlying technologies, said Rachel Aguirre, BlackRock’s head of US iShares product, at a Wednesday panel event.

In physics, as in life, it’s always good to look at things from different perspectives.

Since the beginning of quantum physics, how light moves and interacts with matter around it has mostly been described and understood mathematically through the lens of its energy. In 1900, Max Planck used energy to explain how light is emitted by heated objects, a seminal study in the foundation of quantum mechanics. In 1905, Albert Einstein used energy when he introduced the concept of photon.

But light has another equally important quality, known as momentum. And as it turns out, when you take momentum away, light starts behaving in really interesting ways.

Scientists are searching for a cosmic phenomena called the Unruh effect. They may be close.

The sun is moving into the hyperactive phase of its roughly 11-year cycle when sunspots, solar flares and all other sorts of tumultuous heliocentric happenings become more common. Case in point: A vortex of fire as tall as 10 Earths stacked on top of each other could be seen doing a quick dance on the sun’s surface late Tuesday.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an eruption from the sun that swirled like a tornado as it produced a bright coronal mass ejection, or CME. Astronomer Tony Phillips clipped the below footage for Spaceweather.com.

CMEs are blasts of charged plasma that often accompany solar flares. When they’re directed at Earth, they can produce bright auroras when they collide with our magnetosphere. This particular CME that started with the rare solar twister was not directed at Earth.

Engineers at MIT have developed an ultra-thin speaker that could be used to make entire surfaces produce sound. The unique design should be energy efficient and easy to produce at scale, the team says.

In a basic sense, speakers work by vibrating a membrane, which manipulates the air above it to produce sound waves. In speakers commonly found in audio systems or headphones, that’s done using electrical currents and magnetic fields.

Continue reading “Ultra-thin speakers roll out like wallpaper for sound-blasting surfaces” »

I have created an educational guide to the adenovirus capsid! The adenovirus is one of the most frequently used types of viruses for gene therapy (along with AAV and lentivirus). It is a powerful vehicle for delivering DNA to cells in the body. But to work with adenovirus as a technology, it is important to understand its fundamental biological structure and function. This guide will help you to gain a more holistic comprehension of a particularly important part of adenovirus biology: the capsid. I made the images using PyMol.

PDF version: Guide to the Structure and Function of the Adenovirus Capsid

For this guide, I will explain the fundamental biology of adenovirus capsid proteins with an emphasis on the context of gene therapy. While the guide is meant primarily for readers with an interest in applying adenovirus to gene therapy, it will not include much discussion of the techniques and technologies involved in engineering adenoviruses for such purposes. If you are interested in learning more about adenovirus engineering, you may enjoy my review paper “Synthetic Biology Approaches for Engineering Next-Generation Adenoviral Gene Therapies” [1]. Here, I will focus mostly on the capsid of human adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) since it is the most commonly used type of adenovirus employed in gene therapy research, but I will occasionally describe other types of adenoviruses when necessary. Many of the presented concepts remain the same or similar across other types of adenoviruses.

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With an aging global population, time is of the essence to find novel targets and therapies for age-related diseases.