Artificial cells created inside the lab have taken another major step forward, with scientists developing cells that are able to produce their own chemical energy and synthesise parts of their own construction.
That makes these artificial cells a lot more like real, biological cells – cells that can construct and organise their own building blocks naturally.
Not only could this help us understand how real cells work and come into being in the first place, it could also be vital for a host of other areas of research – such as ongoing efforts to produce artificial organs and other body tissue to fight back against disease.
All the genome sequences of organisms known throughout the world are stored in a database belonging to the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the United States. As of today, the database has an additional entry: Caulobacter ethensis-2.0. It is the world’s first fully computer-generated genome of a living organism, developed by scientists at ETH Zurich. However, it must be emphasised that although the genome for C. ethensis-2.0 was physically produced in the form of a very large DNA molecule, a corresponding organism does not yet exist.
Scientists for the first time have found strong evidence that RNA and DNA could have arisen from the same set of precursor molecules even before life evolved on Earth about four billion years ago.
Children born through IVF have a greater risk of developing childhood cancer, the largest study of its kind has found.
Researchers in the US found that the risk of childhood cancer increases from 1.9 cases in 10,000 youngsters to 2.5 in those born through fertility treatment, an increase of around 31 per cent.
Although the study is only observational, previous research has suggested that drugs used to stimulate the ovaries to produce eggs during fertility treatment, or the nutritious chemical soup in which embryos are grown may cause disease.
Outcome-based education. This is about a man who is involved in a system designed to train and assess the skills of computer programmers, but I wonder if the ideas could be applied to other types of learning.
For that matter, it strikes me that merit badges in the Boy Scouts may work along similar lines.
Nathan chose all-in, investing his entire life savings in a single stock-market exchange, and made enough money to keep the business alive. The past several years have been full of similar tests of commitment but Nathan and his business partner have weathered them all, building a groundbreaking company called Qualified.
Qualified has developed a new format for training and assessing coding skills, one that achieves greater effectiveness through an immersive, real-world experience. This allows companies to identify the best potential employees and educators to improve student evaluation.
A personal report from the recent Undoing Aging conference in Berlin by Nicola Bagalà. The event saw many of the leading figures in aging research and rejuvenation biotechnology attend a packed conference which celebrates its second successful year.
Last Wednesday, I landed in Berlin, Germany at around 12:30. About an hour later, I was briefly in Cafè Alex, right next to the tapering TV Tower, where I met some of my colleagues from LEAF—some of whom I had never seen in person before—as well as other volunteers and members of HEALES, our friend organization. We were all there to attend the Undoing Aging 2019 conference, which would take place over the course of the next three days, bringing together experts and researchers from all over the world to discuss the latest advances, network, and share views on the biology of aging.
Thanks to video calls, meeting people face-to-face whom you’d only known through the Internet isn’t all that strange, but meeting people whom you had only read about or seen on YouTube still feels a little unreal, especially if these people are celebrities in their own field. Shortly after leaving Cafè Alex, we headed to our hotel to check in; Steve Hill and his wife Fatima—whose help over the course of my stay has been invaluable—were talking to the receptionist while Elena Milova and I were waiting right behind them. Elena and I were chatting about various things when a man who looked somewhat familiar walked through the doors; I wasn’t sure he was whom I thought he was, and as I glanced to Elena to ask for confirmation, I understood that he was indeed stem cell pioneer and AgeX CEO Mike West, who has been in the gerontology scene for quite a while now.
PARIS (AP) — The French government has outlined measures to ensure early diagnostic testing for young children with autism and help for them going to school.
In a statement following a Cabinet meeting Monday, the government promised that expenses linked to diagnostic testing will be fully reimbursed.
Measures include opening specific classes at preschools and elementary schools, and putting in place teacher and medical staff training and research to better understand autism, a neurodevelopmental disorder.
Major depression, obesity and chronic pain are all linked to the effects of one protein, called “FK506-binding protein 51,” or FKBP51. Until now, efforts to inhibit this target have been hampered by the difficulty of finding something specific enough to do the job and not affect similar proteins. Now a research group has developed a highly selective compound that can effectively block FKBP51 in mice, relieving chronic pain and having positive effects on diet-induced obesity and mood. The new compound also could have applications in alcoholism and brain cancer.
Wang and his colleagues found that many cancers that get switched into overdrive and boost tumor growth have jumping genes that function as a kind of stealthy “on switch.” These cryptic switches can force a gene to be turned on all the time, even though it should be off.
Mistakes in DNA are known to drive cancer growth. But a new study, from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, heavily implicates a genetic phenomenon commonly known as “jumping genes” in the growth of tumors.
The study is published March 29 in the journal Nature Genetics.
Since jumping genes aren’t mutations—mistakes in the letters of the DNA sequence—they can’t be identified by traditional cancer genome sequencing. As such, this study opens up new lines of research for future cancer therapies that might target such genes.
After being sold out this year with nearly 500 participants, we will be back in 2020!
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