Lifeboat Foundation

Without ensuring high levels of accuracy, any proposed CRISPR gene therapy becomes a genetic crapshoot.

Now, a team from Duke University may have found a universal workaround—a trick to fundamentally boost CRISPR’s accuracy in almost all its forms. Published this month in Nature Biotechnology, the team’s study tweaked the design of guide RNAs, the indispensable targeting “blood hound” of the CRISPR duo that hunts down specific DNA sequences before its partner Cas makes the cut.

The upgrade is deceptively simple: tag a “locking” structure to one end of the guide RNA so that only the targeted DNA can unleash the power of the Cas scissors. Yet exactly because the tweak is so easy, guide RNA 2.0 can fundamentally tune the accuracy of multiple CRISPR systems—not just those relying on the classic Cas9, but also newer diagnostic systems that deploy Cas12a and other flavors—by as much as 200-fold.

Continue reading “A Deceptively Simple Tweak to CRISPR Makes It 50 Times More Accurate” »

For the first time ever, a drone delivered a human organ for transplant.

The doctor who performed the kidney transplant surgery explains why it’s such a big deal.

Jeff Bezos and his rocket company have an odd way of building anticipation.

Star Trek’s famous holodeck is a virtual reality stage that simulates any object in 3D as if they were real. However, 3D holographic projection has never been realized. A team of scientists from Bilkent University, Turkey, has now demonstrated the first realistic 3D holograms that can be viewed from any angle.

When it reopens in 2021, the Large Hadron collider should be able to detect rare particles with possible links to the world of dark matter and energy.

We need more than engineers and computer scientists shaping the future of AI.

In 2022, if all goes well, NASA will launch Psyche, a space probe intended to visit the asteroid of the same name (16 Psyche is its formal designation). It’s a particularly exciting mission given Psyche’s unique nature and highly unusual composition.

The asteroid belt is composed of three types of asteroid: C-type (carbonaceous, ~75 percent of all asteroids), S-type (silicate-rich, ~17 percent of asteroids) and M-type (metal-rich), which are roughly 10 percent of the total population. The numbers, in this case, don’t add up to 100 percent because we aren’t sure of the exact ratios. 16 Psyche is an M-type asteroid made of iron-nickel. What makes it unusual is that it’s believed to be the now-exposed core of a protoplanet. It’s also estimated to be worth $10,000 quadrillion dollars, if anybody has a towing hitch handy.

Continue reading “NASA Preps Mission to Most Interesting Asteroid in Our Solar System” »

Just as the modern computer transformed our relationship with bits and information, AI will redefine and revolutionize our relationship with molecules and materials. AI is currently being used to discover new materials for clean-tech innovations, such as solar panels, batteries, and devices that can now conduct artificial photosynthesis.

Today, it takes about 15 to 20 years to create a single new material, according to industry experts. But as AI design systems skyrocket in capacity, these will vastly accelerate the materials discovery process, allowing us to address pressing issues like climate change at record rates. Companies like Kebotix are already on their way to streamlining the creation of chemistries and materials at the click of a button.

Atomically precise manufacturing will enable us to produce the previously unimaginable.

Continue reading “5 AI Breakthroughs We’ll Likely See in the Next 5 Years” »

The cosmos are filled with roughly Earth-sized exoplanets. Various moons, comets, and planets have stores of water, organic molecules, and amino acids like those that make up life on Earth.

Cathal O’Donnell, a 3D bioprinting researcher at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Melbournethose odds — he argues in The Conversation that the abundance of potentially habitable worlds out there makes the discovery of extraterrestrial life “inevitable and possibly imminent.”