Lifeboat Foundation

Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.

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Wyss Institute scientists believe that synthetic gene drives, if researched responsibly, might be used in the future to render mosquito populations unable to transmit malaria (credit: CDC)

An international group of 26 experts, including prominent genetic engineers and fruit fly geneticists, has unanimously recommended a series of preemptive measures to safeguard gene drive research from accidental (or intentional) release from laboratories.

RNA-guided gene drives are genetic elements — found naturally in the genomes of most of the world’s organisms — that increase the chance of the gene they carry being passed on to all offspring. So they can quickly spread through populations if not controlled.

Continue reading “Move over, autonomous AI weapons, there’s a new risk in town: ‘gene drives’” »

Leukocyte (white blood cell) telomere length in study participants up to 115 years of age. Statistical regression lines belonging to these groups are indicated by the same color as the data. (credit: Yasumichi Arai et al./EBioMedicine)

Scientists say they have cracked the secret of why some people live a healthy and physically independent life over the age of 100: keeping inflammation down and telomeres long.

Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing in the U.K. and Keio University School of Medicine note that severe inflammation is part of many diseases in the old, such as diabetes or diseases attacking the bones or the body’s joints, and chronic inflammation can develop from any of them.

Continue reading “Scientists reveal secrets for reaching age 100 (or more)” »

Eating a group of specific foods — known as the MIND diet — may slow cognitive decline among aging adults, even when the person is not at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center.

This finding supplements a previous study by the research team, reported by KurzweiliAI in March, that found that the MIND diet may reduce a person’s risk in developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The researchers’ new study shows that older adults who followed the MIND diet more rigorously showed an equivalent of being 7.5 years younger cognitively than those who followed the diet least. Results of the study were recently published online in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

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A human rejuvenation trial is set to go ahead in October, in which victims
of Alzheimer’s disease will be given a transfusion of young blood.

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Study uncovers a role for a protein that works as a master regulator of regeneration in the skin.

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via The Spudd.

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Peter Thiel, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Maris, Mark Zuckerberg…investment in biotech by leading figures in the world of technology is reaching new heights, with the regenerative medicine market projected to reach $20 billion by 2025 and the overall anti-aging market $345.8 billion by 2018.

These forecasts combined with a recent biotech boom mean that the economic reasons for investing are becoming clear and rising demand is virtually inevitable as the proportion of older individuals continues to grow to unparalleled levels. Bill Gates may have labelled anti-aging efforts as ‘egocentric’, but the investment doesn’t appear to be due to economic reasons alone; there is also a strong humanitarian and aspirational aspect that links some of these individuals together — the desire to utilise technology to create a better society.

‘With all being from a scientific background, Page, Brin and Maris particularly are clear in their belief that science holds the key to radically improving both the human condition and the world we live in — the pinnacle of this being radically prolonging human lifespan. In a recent Bloomberg interview Maris points out we live in an era where science can make all the tools available for any audacious vision out there…To these tech billionaires, evolution is meant to be transcended, and the resources put into organ regeneration, drugs that control ageing, or reprogramming DNA reflects their conviction that people have the right to lead better lives.’

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Misfolding proteins and aggregates are a serious problem for a cell; a great range of research has been able to link poor protein ‘quality control’ with a whole range of diseases, perhaps most famously Alzheimer’s disease. Recent work also suggests that the ‘heat shock’ response, a mechanism that protects against misfolding and corrects badly made proteins, may also become impaired with aging. This gradual deterioration could turn out to be one of the most significant drivers of both aging and age-related disease.

In research that support this theory, a recent paper provides evidence that the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), a cellular compartment which is responsible for creating and correctly forming protein structures, loses its oxidative power with age. This means that it loses the ability to form a type of bond called a disulphide bridge, a strong chemical bond which normally stabilises protein structures and holds them in particular shapes. The chemical environment within the ER was shown to change with age, disrupting the delicate equilibrium in the cell and leading to increased oxidative damage in other areas. Proteins moving through the ER on a production line often require disulphide linkages to mature correctly and stabilise their structure, but without this step they’re unable to do so and remain unstable.

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