Lifeboat Foundation

Usually, when we’ve referred to Crispr, we’ve really meant Crispr/Cas9—a riboprotein complex composed of a short strand of RNA and an efficient DNA-cutting enzyme. It did for biology and medicine what the Model T did for manufacturing and transportation; democratizing access to a revolutionary technology and disrupting the status quo in the process. Crispr has already been used to treat cancer in humans, and it could be in clinical trials to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia as soon as next year.

But like the Model T, Crispr Classic is somewhat clunky, unreliable, and a bit dangerous. It can’t bind to just any place in the genome. It sometimes cuts in the wrong places. And it has no off-switch. If the Model T was prone to overheating, Crispr Classic is prone to overeating.

Even with these limitations, Crispr Classic will continue to be a workhorse for science in 2018 and beyond. But this year, newer, flashier gene editing tools began rolling off the production line, promising to outshine their first-generation cousin. So if you were just getting your head around Crispr, buckle up. Because gene-editing 2.0 is here.

https://becomingasuperhuman.com/mother-nature-superhuman-ira-pastor-bioquark/

The US federal government has lifted an enforced moratorium on funding research into how to make viruses deadlier and more transmissible.

The moratorium, which was imposed three years ago, froze funding for what’s called “gain of function” research: controversial experiments seeking to alter pathogens and make them even more dangerous. Now, the money is back on the table, giving those trials the green light once more.

The director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis S. Collins, announced the lifting of the moratorium on Tuesday, saying gain of function (GOF) research with viruses like influenza, MERS, and SARS could help us “identify, understand, and develop strategies and effective countermeasures against rapidly evolving pathogens that pose a threat to public health”.

Continue reading “The US Just Ended Its Own Ban on Engineering Deadly Viruses in The Lab” »

https://www.spreaker.com/user/talk4media/beyond-confidence-12-18-2017

https://www.spreaker.com/user/wholecarenetwork/aging-90-is-the-new-50

Every time there’s a new technology, criminals immediately take advantage of it, explains Steven Kotler. It’s only a matter of time before they find new, nefarious uses for 3D printing and synthetic biology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIVNjCpqCaY&feature=share

Brendan John Frey FRSC (born 29 August 1968) is a Canadian-born machine learning and genome biology researcher, known mainly for his work on factor graphs, the wake-sleep algorithm for deep learning, and using machine learning to model genome biology and understand genetic disorders. He founded Deep Genomics and is currently its CEO, and he is a Professor of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Toronto. He co-developed a new computational approach to identifying the genetic determinants of disease, was one of the first researchers to successfully train a deep neural network, and was a pioneer in the introduction of iterative message-passing algorithms.

Frey studied computer engineering and physics at the University of Calgary (BSc 1990) and the University of Manitoba (MSc 1993), and then studied neural networks and graphical models as a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Geoffrey Hinton (PhD 1997). He was an invited participant of the Machine Learning program at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, UK (1997) and was a Beckman Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (1999).

Continue reading “Brendan Frey — Genome Reprogramming” »

https://www.spreaker.com/user/theagingboomers/regenerations-…sode_title

https://www.spreaker.com/user/aquarianradio/ira-s-pastor-asc…sode_title