Lifeboat Foundation

As generative AI gains traction and companies rush to incorporate it into their operations, concerns have mounted over the ethics of the technology. Deepfake images have circulated online, such as ones showing former President Donald Trump being arrested, and some testers have found that AI chatbots will give advice related to criminal activities, such as tips for how to murder people.

AI is known to sometimes hallucinate — make up information and continuously insist that it’s true — creating fears that it could spread false information. It can also develop bias and in some cases has argued with users. Some scammers have also used AI voice-cloning software in attempts to pose as relatives.

“How do you develop AI systems that are aligned to human values, including morality?,” Pichai said. “This is why I think the development of this needs to include not just engineers, but social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, and so on.”

DNA writing is an aspect of our industry that I’ve been closely watching for several years because it is a critical component of so many groundbreaking capabilities, from cell and gene therapies to DNA data storage. At the SynBioBeta Conference in 2018, the co-founder of a new startup that was barely more than an idea gave a lightning talk on enzymatic DNA synthesis — and I was so struck by the technology the company was aiming to develop that I listed them as one of four synthetic biology startups to watch in 2019. I watched them, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Ansa Biotechnologies, Inc. — the Emeryville, California-based DNA synthesis startup using enzymes instead of chemicals to write DNA — announced in March the successful de novo synthesis of a 1005-mer, the world’s longest synthetic oligonucleotide, encoding a key part of the AAV vector used for developing gene therapies. And that’s just the beginning. Co-founder Dan Lin-Arlow will be giving another lightning talk at this year’s SynBioBeta Conference in just a few weeks. I caught up with him in the lead up and was truly impressed by what Ansa Biotechnologies has accomplished in just 5 years.

Synthetic DNA is a key enabling technology for engineering biology. For nearly 40 years, synthetic DNA has been produced using phosphoramidite chemistry, which facilitates the sequential addition of new bases to a DNA chain in a simple cyclic reaction. While this process is incredibly efficient and has supported countless innovative breakthroughs (a visit to Twist Bioscience’s website will quickly educate you on exciting advances in drug discovery, infectious disease research, cancer therapeutics, and even agriculture enabled by synthetic DNA) it suffers from two main drawbacks: its reliance on harsh chemicals and its inability to produce long (read: complex) DNA fragments.

Eight years after the technology was approved by government authorities, it can be reported that at least one child with DNA from three different people has been born to parents in the United Kingdom.

The announcement isn’t exactly ‘new’ knowledge, but reporters at The Guardian were able to prompt an official confirmation with a freedom of information request.

The University of Newcastle in collaboration with the Newcastle Fertility Center are pioneers in what is known as mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), a special form of in vitro fertilization (IVF) designed to prevent severe genetic diseases in future babies.

There is an army of dormant cells in our eyes that prefer to stay asleep. However, waking them up in patients living with degenerative retinal disease can prevent blindness.

Researchers at the Université de Montréal (UdeM) have proposed a novel treatment strategy that promises to restore vision in patients living with degenerative retinal disease, an inherited medical condition that gradually impairs a person’s ability to read text, sense colors, see objects that are placed sideways, and eventually makes them completely blind.

Continue reading “Scientists identify genes that can repair the retina and reverse vision loss in humans” »

A new study in Nature hunted down another piece to the aging puzzle. In five species across the evolutionary scale—worms, flies, mice, rats, and humans—the team honed in on a critical molecular process that powers every single cell inside the body and degrades with age.

The process, called transcription, is the first step in turning our genetic material into proteins. Here, DNA letters are reworked into a “messenger” called RNA, which then shuttles the information to other parts of the cell to make proteins.

Scientists have long suspected that transcription may go awry with aging, but the new study offers proof that it doesn’t—with a twist. In all five of the species tested, as the organism grew older the process surprisingly sped up. But like trying to type faster when blindfolded, error rates also shot up.

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Continue reading “Vitamin B6: Did It Increase NAD? (Test Results)” »

Incapable of replicating on their own, viruses must hijack other organisms, like bacteria, to continue their existence. Little wonder, then, that bacteria had to develop ways to fight back.

Among them is CRISPR, a kind of an immune system that keeps DNA records of previous infections and then uses a protein called Cas to attack viruses that show up again. When Cas reaches a targeted virus, it cleaves the viral DNA, protecting the bacteria from infection.

Researchers have harnessed that targeted, DNA-snipping ability as a gene editing tool for all kinds of organisms. CRISPR can now be found in a variety of fields doing a variety of jobs, from helping to fight sickle cell and high cholesterol in humans to gene editing animals and crops. It’s proven to be an amazingly versatile tool.

American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced last week that it had seen encouraging clinical trial results of its new Alzheimer’s medication.

According to the company, their experimental drug, donanemab, was shown in a late-stage trial to slow cognitive decline by 35 percent.

While these results do sound promising, the full data is not yet released, so there’s still a lot we don’t know.

Never heard of this fellow before but if you have a spare 50 minutes it’s a good listen. A summary of aging and what we might do about it with the goal (after about 26 minutes) of making an aging vaccine.

Lecture given by Dr. Ronjon Nag at “The Peter Wells Memorial Lecture 2023″ which took place in London on May 3rd, 2023.
https://events.theiet.org/events/the-peter-wells-memorial-lecture-2023/

Continue reading “Can We Live Longer than 120? Lecture” »