Lifeboat Foundation

A scientific experiment to reanimate dead brains could lead to humans enduring a ‘fate worse than death,’ an ethics lecturer has warned.

Last month Yale University announced it had successfully resurrected the brains of more than 100 slaughtered pigs and found that the cells were still healthy.

The reanimated brains were kept alive for up to 36 hours and scientists said the process, which should also work in primates, offered a new way to study intact organs in the lab.

Continue reading “Yale experiment to reanimate dead brains promises ‘living hell’ for humans” »

Archaeological discoveries of ancient humans keep pushing our knowledge about our species further back in time. The Americas haven’t been populated by people as long as other parts of the world, but exactly how long they’ve been here and how they got here are open subjects we still have a lot to learn about. Occasionally, a skeleton or a skull is found that dates back to the beginnings of their settlement. Real Clear Science give us a list of some of the biggest such discoveries.

Kennewick Man, perhaps the best known and most controversial ancient human remains in the United States, was found jutting from a patch of eroded dirt along the Columbia River near Kennewick Washington just 22 years ago. In life, roughly 9,000 years in the past, he spent much of his time moving around by water, hunting and eating marine animals and drinking glacial meltwater. In death, his remains were constantly the focus of lawsuits between indigenous peoples who sought to bury the remains and archaeologists who sought to learn from them. After DNA tests confirmed that Kennewick Man was closely related to modern day Native Americans, his remains were returned and reburied at an undisclosed location.

Read the stories of five other people who lived in thousands of years ago in what is now the United States at Real Clear Science.

Continue reading “Email This Post to a Friend ‘Six of the Oldest Human Remains Found in the U.S.’” »

On a recent BBC World Service program (News Hour Extra, 12.18.15), a group of space scientists were gathered to discuss these and other aspects of the post-human era. “What about the human soul”, the moderator asked, wondering whether or not these post-humans would still be human. None of the participants were particularly troubled by the question, since they all had assumed that the soul was no more than the particular configurations of DNA which resulted in varying degre…es of insight, intelligence, creativity, and sensitivity. Post-humans will be no different, they all agreed. Only their individual genomes will have been altered to produce a very different human reality – in other words a different human soul.

Once the human genome was completely sequenced; once efforts to recombine DNA had become a reality; and once a mind-computer interface had been realized, there was never any doubt that a post-human era was coming.

Continue reading “The Post-Human Generation–An Engineered Evolution” »

https://www.wired.com/…/biology-will-be-the-next-great-comp…

In some ways, Synthego looks like any other Silicon Valley startup. Inside its beige business park facilities, a five-minute drive from Facebook HQ, rows of nondescript black server racks whir and blink and vent. But inside the metal shelving, the company isn’t pushing around ones and zeros to keep the internet running. It’s making molecules to rewrite the code of life.

Crispr, the powerful gene-editing tool, is revolutionizing the speed and scope with which scientists can modify the DNA of organisms, including human cells. So many people want to use it—from academic researchers to agtech companies to biopharma firms—that new companies are popping up to staunch the demand. Companies like Synthego, which is using a combination of software engineering and hardware automation to become the Amazon of genome engineering. And Inscripta, which wants to be the Apple. And Twist Bioscience, which could be the Intel.

Continue reading “Biology Will Be the Next Great Computing Platform” »

A compelling study from a team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen has demonstrated a way to completely stop a body’s ability to store fat. In experiments with mice, the team showed that genetically deleting a single enzyme resulted in the animal not being able to gain weight, even when fed a fatty diet.

An enzyme dubbed NAMPT has been connected to obesity in both human and animal models by several studies. Its presence in fat tissue has been found to increase metabolic functionality in numerous body tissues, including fat tissue, which enhances the body’s ability to store fat.

“NAMPT in fat tissue was likely once an extraordinary benefit to our ancestors but in today’s society full of high-fat, calorically-dense foods, it may now pose a liability,” says Zachary Gerhart-Hines, a corresponding author on the study.

Continue reading “Deletion of single enzyme stops mice getting fat, no matter the diet” »

A new study published by researchers at Western University and Lawson Health Research Institute has shown a link between the gut microbiome and atherosclerosis.

During the study, the team examined blood levels of metabolic products in the gut microbiomes of 316 people from three groups: those with regular levels of plaque for their age, those who had low levels of plaque despite being at high risk, and those who had unusually high levels of plaque.

They discovered that in the patients with unusually high levels of plaque, there were significantly higher blood levels of harmful metabolic products. Specifically, these were the metabolites TMAO, p-cresyl sulfate, p-cresyl glucuronide, and phenylacetylglutamine, which are created by gut bacteria. They also assessed the development of plaques in the arteries via carotid ultrasound.

Continue reading “The Gut Microbiome Contributes to Atherosclerosis” »

If you’re like most people, the first biological cell you ever saw was flat: a diagram in a book, or maybe a microscope image on a slide if you were lucky. Same goes for scientists. It’s hard enough to zoom in on something so small, much less capture a 3D image of the thing. As a result, it’s easy to imagine that there are a multitude of two-dimensional discs filling your blood vessels and fighting your infections. That’s why this new development is so eye-opening. Researchers have made an imaging breakthrough that lets them capture 3D footage of cells doing their thing inside the body — and it may look nothing like what you imagined.

The video below depicts the inner ear of a zebrafish — you know, that little inch-and-a-half (4-centimeter) striped thing you see in pet store fish tanks? Suffice it to say, the objects in this footage are very, very small. Here, a fiery yellow immune cell rolls on through gobbling up bright-blue particles of sugar.

Continue reading “Watch the First-Ever HD Footage of a Cell Moving Through the Body” »

Researchers have successfully mimicked the blastocyst stage of development in an artificial embryo created using stem cells.