All DNA/RNA nucleobases were identified in carbonaceous meteorites. Having been provided to the early Earth as a component in carbonaceous meteorites, these molecules might have played a role for the emergence of genetic functions in early life.
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A team of international researchers have identified a genetic cause of lupus. Researchers of the study pinpointed that DNA mutations in a gene that senses viral RNA represents one cause of the chronic condition, affecting approximately 1 in 1,000 people living in the UK. It is important to note that this genetic cause is not the sole trigger for everyone affected by lupus.
Researchers of the study sequenced the whole DNA genome of a juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (JSLE) patient called Gabriela, who was diagnosed with severe lupus at the age of seven. A severe case such as this, with early onset of symptoms, is a rarity and is commonly associated with a single genetic cause, unlike adult-onset lupus.
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Earlier this month, we brought you the news that epigenetic reprogramming startup YouthBio Therapeutics had emerged from stealth. The company shed some light on its plans to develop epigenetic reprogramming therapies for age-related diseases by rejuvenating certain cells in our bodies. YouthBio aims to achieve this rejuvenation by developing gene therapies that enable partial cellular reprogramming – an area of longevity science that is now attracting significant commercial interest.
Longevity. Technology: Cellular reprogramming refers to the process of returning adult cells to a “pluripotent” state: blank, embryonic-like cells that can become any cell in the body. This reprogramming can be achieved using techniques based on the discovery of Yamanaka factors.
These key building blocks of life were found in space rocks, scientists confirm.
Key building blocks of DNA that previous research mysteriously failed to discover in meteorites have now been discovered in space rocks, suggesting that cosmic impacts might once have helped deliver these vital ingredients of life to ancient Earth.
DNA is made of four main building blocks — nucleobases called adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine © and guanine (G). DNA’s sister molecule, RNA, also uses A, C and G, but swaps out thymine for uracil (U). Scientists wondering whether meteorites might have helped deliver these compounds to Earth have previously looked for nucleobases in space rocks, but until now, scientists had only detected A and G in space rocks, and not T, C or U.
Eradicating Cancer With A Universal Preventative Cancer Vaccine — Dr. Stephen Johnston, Ph.D., ASU Biodesign Institute / Calviri
Dr. Stephen Johnston, Ph.D. (https://biodesign.asu.edu/stephen-johnston) is the Director for the Center for Innovations in Medicine (https://biodesign.asu.edu/Research/Centers/innovations-medicine), a Professor in the School of Life Sciences, and Director of the Biological Design Graduate Program at The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.
A series of interviews recorded in August of 2021 with Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski.
Watch 2016 Movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_7LZ8GLerI
Full Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLiRbQrj-gBow6VdLajWxaw.
https://www.burzynskimovie.com/
Notes from Dr. Burzynski:
1. Cancer is the disease of information processing which I described in the article in.
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Next, we aimed to determine whether the model type, i.e., a linear regression vs. a neural network, would significantly impact the performance. We, therefore, compared the aforementioned linear models with the neural network AltumAge using the same set of features. AltumAge outperformed the respective linear model with Horvath’s 353 CpG sites (MAE = 2.425 vs. 3.011, MSE = 32.732 vs. 46.867) and ElasticNet-selected 903 CpG sites (MAE = 2.302 vs. 2.621, MSE = 30.455 vs. 39.198). This result shows that AltumAge outperforms linear models given the same training data and set of features.
Lastly, to compare the effect of the different sets of CpG sites, we trained AltumAge with all 20,318 CpG sites available and compared the results from the smaller sets of CpG sites obtained above. There is a gradual improvement in performance for AltumAge by expanding the feature set from Horvath’s 353 sites (MAE = 2.425, MSE = 32.732) to 903 ElasticNet-selected CpG sites (MAE = 2.302, MSE = 30.455) to all 20,318 CpG sites (MAE = 2.153, MSE = 29.486). This result suggests that the expanded feature set helps improve the performance, likely because relevant information in the epigenome is not entirely captured by the CpG sites selected by an ElasticNet model.
Overall, these results indicate that even though more data samples lower the prediction error, AltumAge’s performance improvement is greater than the increased data effect. Indeed, the lower error of AltumAge when compared to the ElaticNet is robust to other data splits (Alpaydin’s Combined 5x2cv F test p-value = 9.71e−5).
NEW ORLEANS— Donated immune cells mixed with a molecule that helps them home in on tumor cells have dramatically shrunk tumors in most of the 22 people with blood cancer who received experimental infusions. The results, reported yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), are a new twist on cell therapies that harness a patient’s own immune cells to treat cancer. The new treatment is simpler to make than other cell therapies for advanced lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph system, the study’s leaders say.
“It’s an interesting idea,” says hematologist and oncologist Jeffrey Miller of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, who was a panelist at the plenary session where the work was presented.
CAR-T cells, immune cells genetically modified to carry a surface protein that helps them home in on cancer cells, are the best known cancer cell therapy. Although approved for some types of leukemia and lymphoma, CAR-T cells can cause serious side effects and must be custom-made from a person’s own T cells.
This is not the first successful research on de-ageing cells. Earlier, Shinya Yamanaka, a Nobel prize-winning stem cell researcher, genetically reprogrammed the mouse skin cells and turned them into induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, back in 2006. These cells type had the potential to form any cell type in the body. Yamanaka’s method took 50 days and completely reprograms cells to the biological age of an embryo. Gill’s method only took 13 days.
In a statement, Gill said, “Our results represent a big step forward in our understanding of cell reprogramming. We have proved that cells can be rejuvenated without losing their function and that rejuvenation looks to restore some function to old cells.”
