Archive for the ‘genetics’ category: Page 508
Dec 12, 2015
Technology Will Save Our Future, According To Japanese SF Author Taiyo Fujii
Posted by Phillipe Bojorquez in categories: augmented reality, engineering, genetics, security
I’ve been increasingly interested in translated science fiction novels, and one of the best ones that I picked up this year was Taiyo Fujii’s debut Gene Mapper.
Gene Mapper takes place in a future where augmented reality and genetic engineering is commonplace. When a freelance gene mapper named Hayashida finds that a project that he had worked on is collapsing, he believes that it’s being sabotaged. Determined to fix it, he travels to Vietnam where he finds that there’s more behind the problem than he initially thought.
You can read a tie-in story over on Lightspeed Magazine, ‘Violation of the TrueNet Security Act’.
Dec 11, 2015
Britain should lead way on genetically engineered babies, says Chief Scientific Adviser
Posted by Amnon H. Eden in category: genetics
But at a conference in London yesterday, Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said he believed there were ‘circumstances’ in which the genetic editing of human embyros could be ‘acceptable’.
Dec 4, 2015
Geneticists Are Concerned Transhumanists Will Use CRISPR on Themselves
Posted by Zoltan Istvan in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, transhumanism
A informative article by Vice Motherboard:
The biggest debate at the International Summit on Human Genome Editing is where to draw the line between “medical treatment” and “body enhancement.”
Dec 1, 2015
Biologists induce flatworms to grow heads and brains of other species
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience
Tufts biologists induced one species of flatworm —- G. dorotocephala, top left — to grow heads and brains characteristic of other species of flatworm, top row, without altering genomic sequence. Examples of the outcomes can be seen in the bottom row of the image. (credit: Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology, School of Arts and Sciences, Tufts University.)
Tufts University biologists have electrically modified flatworms to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm — without altering their genomic sequence. This suggests bioelectrical networks as a new kind of epigenetics (information existing outside of a genomic sequence) to determine large-scale anatomy.
Besides the overall shape of the head, the changes included the shape of the brain and the distribution of the worm’s adult stem cells.
Nov 29, 2015
Scientists show that gene editing can ‘turn off’ human diseases
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
Gene editing has already been used to fight diseases, but there’s now hope that it might eliminate the diseases altgether. Researchers have shown that it’s possible to eliminate facial muscular dystrophy using a newer editing technique, CRISPR (Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) to replace the offending gene and ‘turn off’ the condition. The approach sends a mix of protein and RNA to bind to a gene and give it an overhaul.
This doesn’t mean that doctors suddenly have a cure-all on their hands. They haven’t tried CRISPR on real live people, and there’s no guarantee that it’d work with every genetic condition under the Sun. The initial test was only 50 percent effective, too. If this gene mending is useful in the field, though, it could do a lot to transform medicine. Doctors could treat the root cause of a genetic disease rather than deal with the symptoms, and possibly wipe it out entirely — or at least, make it more bearable.
[Image credit: Getty Images].
Nov 24, 2015
Hacking the Brain — Restoring Lost Abilities With the Latest Neurotechnologies
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, computing, cyborgs, genetics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, Ray Kurzweil
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Ray Kurzweil’s wild prediction that in the 2030s, nanobots will connect our brains to the cloud, merging biology with the digital world.
Let’s talk about what’s happening today.
Over the past few decades, billions of dollars have been poured into three areas of research: neuroprosthetics, brain-computer interfaces and optogenetics.
Nov 20, 2015
Scientists Crack the Code to Protein Self-Assembly
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, computing, genetics
New findings out of Duke University will allow medical researchers to act like computer programmers except with genetic code rather than digital.
Nov 15, 2015
Lost And Found: Can We Restore Forgotten Memories?
Posted by Robert James Powles in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience
Memories are priceless, and the plight of dementia patients highlights how important they are to forming what makes us, well us. Now a new study has provided hope we may one day be able to restore lost memories.
Clearing the mist
A paper from researchers at MIT has demonstrated the reactivation of memories in amnesia patients with optogenetics — in which cell activity is controlled by bursts of light.
Nov 13, 2015
Uncovering the secret of turning back time
Posted by Montie Adkins in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, genetics, life extension
I had read about Singapore in genetic engineering way back in the 90’s. I think they were 1st or 2nd in making immortal skin cells at the time.
Singapore scientists have unravelled a mystery that could pave the way for turning back the clock on ageing.
A recent study led by Dr Ng Shyh Chang of the Genome Institute of Singapore at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) has found a gene in human egg cells that suppresses an enzyme causing cells to age.
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