Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,610

Do Coffee Drinkers Live Longer?

Caffeinated coffee might be protective to overall health, but so is decaf. For example, a 2,019 systematic review published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics aiming to “investigate the association of caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption and all-cause mortality” found “similar inverse associations [between] caffeinated coffee and decaffeinated coffee [and all-cause mortality.]”

But is coffee healthy? And do coffee drinkers live longer than non-coffee drinkers?

At the turn of the 20th century, it was considered common knowledge that coffee was unhealthy—there were advertising claims that coffee drinking caused blindness and that “you can recover from any ordinary disease by discontinuing coffee.” And while that may obviously be untrue, there are continuing fears about whether coffee is actually healthy or not. Google receives 4,400 queries a month about” why coffee is bad for you” (for context, “why coffee is good for you” gets only 1,300 queries a month).

So with human life extension in mind, I decided to dig into the research. Can coffee consumption actually help spanners extend their healthspan and lifespan? How much is the right dose? How much is too little?

MIT Researchers Devised a Way To Program Memories Into Bacterial Cells

For several years, Lu’s lab has been working on ways to use DNA to store information such as memory of cellular events. In 2,014 he and Farzadfard developed a way to employ bacteria as a “genomic tape recorder,” engineering E. coli to store long-term memories of events such as a chemical exposure.

Technique for editing bacterial genomes can record interactions between cells, may offer a way to edit genes in the human microbiome.

Biological engineers at MIT

MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances.

Frequent Peanut Consumption May Increase Cancer Spread in Patients

The possible impact of heavy peanut consumption by cancer patients on survival will need to be investigated in further population-based epidemiological studies.

Summary: A new study reports cancer patients who frequently eat peanuts may be at increased risk of their cancer spreading. Researchers found Peanut agglutinin (PNA), a carbohydrate-binding protein that enters blood circulation after a peanut is eaten, interacts with endothelial cells to produce cytokines. Some of the cytokines are recognized promoters of cancer metastasis.

Source: University of Liverpool

A study by University of Liverpool researchers has identified new factors accompanying previous findings that frequent consumption of peanuts by cancer patients could increase risk of cancer spread.

The study, published in Carcinogenesis, shows that Peanut agglutinin (PNA) — a carbohydrate-binding protein that rapidly enters into the blood circulation after peanuts are eaten — interacts with blood vascular wall (endothelial) cells to produce molecules called cytokines.

Mirror image enzyme constructs longest ever mirror DNA strand

Researchers have synthesised a mirror image enzyme that allowed them to constructing the longest ever strand of mirror DNA. The team also demonstrated how this L-DNA could be used as a robust biorthogonal information repository.

Louis Pasteur first proposed the idea of a mirror image version of biological systems more than 160 years ago, following the discovery of molecular chirality. All natural DNA contains the D form of the chiral sugar deoxyribose, but it may be possible for a mirror system to be built using L-deoxyribose instead.

What does M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’ say about aging and our society?

Still, the timing of this film is remarkable, not only because the pandemic slowed us all down, but because we do live in an aging society. We also live in a time of accelerating technological transformation and precision medicine. It is no secret that transhumanist thinking is proliferating, and not just each time a billionaire flies into space. No less than The World Economic Forum has implicitly endorsed aspects of transhumanism’s agenda under the banner of “human enhancement” and more recently via “The Great Reset.”

The new film opened last Friday.

Lightning No Match for Wind Turbine Blade Protection System

Standing hundreds of feet above ground, wind turbines — like tall trees, buildings, and telephone poles — are easy targets for lightning. Just by virtue of their height, they will get struck.

Lightning protection systems exist for conventional wind turbine blades. But protection was needed for blades made from a new type of material—thermoplastic resin composites — and manufactured using an innovative thermal (heat-based) welding process developed by scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Thermoplastic materials, like plastic bottles, can be more easily recycled than the thermoset materials commonly used to make wind turbine blades today. While thermoset materials need to be heated to cure, thermoplastics cure at room temperature, which reduces both blade manufacturing times and costs.

Nutritional Supplements Could Help Treat PTSD

Since DNMT3A increases DNA methylation, the researchers used a natural product that donates methyl groups S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) and to activate the retinoic acid receptor they treated the animals with vitamin A. They found that combined treatment with the methyl donor SAM and retinoic acid reversed PTSD-like behaviors.

Summary: Combining two natural products that modulate the epigenome, researchers believe they have identified a feasible approach to reversing symptoms of PTSD in animal models that could be effective in humans.

Source: Bar Ilan University

Exposure to a traumatic experience can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an incapacitating disorder in susceptible persons with no reliable therapy. Particularly puzzling is understanding how transient exposure to trauma creates persistent long-term suffering from PTSD and why some people are susceptible to PTSD while others that were exposed to the same trauma remain resilient.

Epigenetic modifications are chemical marks on genes that program their activity. These marks are written into DNA during fetal development to correctly program how our genes function in different organs. However, research in the last two decades has suggested that these marks could also be modulated by experiences and exposures at different point of time in life.