Lifeboat Foundation

What happens when you no longer own your own DNA sequencing and the person who has it refuses to release it to you?.

Having your genome sequenced doesn’t always mean you have full access to the data.

Frankly, in the US this makes me really nervous. Placing drug making 3D printers in your local pharmacies. I hope that the manufacturer has a mechanism setup to cause the machine not to work if it is stolen by the local drug gangs.

The brave new world of 3D-printed drugs in the healthcare industry is heating up.

The company’s CEO, Andy Conrad: The most important tool in medicine is a computer.

The researchers sequenced bacteria samples sourced from all over the world to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree and learn how it evolved to have multidrug resistance.

Finding the missing link in RNAi Pathways.

By comparing Cryptococcus genomes, Duke researchers found that C. deuterogattii lacks certain RNAi pathway genes, possibly contributing to its high virulence.

Using his knowledge of how genes are organized and repaired in human cells, Dr. Graham Dellaire, Dalhousie Medical School’s Cameron Research Scientist in Cancer Biology, has developed a technique that could make gene therapy more effective and safer to use. His work was recently published in Nucleic Acids Research and Nature.

CRISPR, named 2015’s breakthrough discovery of the year, stands for “Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.” It can accurately target and edit DNA, offering the potential to cure genetic diseases and find new treatments for cancer.

To apply CRISPR in non-dividing cells—such as those in muscle and brain tissue—researchers must first make them behave like cells that divide. They do this by turning on a cellular process called homologous recombination, which protects DNA; the recombination allows a cell’s genes to be manipulated and rearranged without the possibility of causing more harm than good.

Veritas Genetics, a Boston-based biotech company co-founded by Harvard geneticist George Church, is claiming it can now sequence your entire genome — the genetic blueprint inside all your cells that makes you who and what you are — for less than $1,000. That price tag includes an interpretation of the results and genetic counseling.

If the claim is true, it would shatter a long-held barrier in genetic medicine.

Reaching the $1,000 genome

Continue reading “This genetics company claims it just achieved a major milestone in biology — and it could transform personalized medicine” »

A 3D-printed layered structure that incorporates neural cells to mimic the structure of brain tissue has been created by researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) in Australia, and it could have major consequences in studying and treating conditions such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s. The three-dimensional structure will allow scientists to better understand the complex nature of the brain and its 86 billion nerve cells. We look at the benefits and risks of this scientific breakthrough on the Lip News with Jose Marcelino Ortiz and Jo Ankier.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/researchers-are-getting-clo…ing-brains

Continue reading “3D-Printed Brain Tissue a Success” »

P-Dots v. Q-Dots;

Virus-sized particles that fluoresce in every colour could revolutionize applications from television displays to cancer treatment.