Lifeboat Foundation

DNA damage is constantly occurring in cells, either due to external sources or as a result of internal cellular metabolic reactions and physiological activities. Accurate repair of such DNA damages is critical to avoid mutations and chromosomal rearrangements linked to diseases including cancer, immunodeficiencies, neurodegeneration, and premature aging.

A team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the National Cancer Research Centre have identified a way to repair genetic damage and prevent DNA alterations using machine learning techniques.

The researchers state that it is possible to learn more about how cancer develops and how to fight it if we understand how DNA lesions originate and repair. Therefore, they hope that their discovery will help create better cancer treatments while also protecting our healthy cells.

The first humans emerged on Earth about 4 million years ago, but new evidence from the study of human evolution has revealed compelling evidence that a small group of these hominins was genetically modified by ancient alien visitors to create the first Homo sapiens.

Researcher and author Daniella Fenton has thoroughly analyzed humanity’s earliest origins and its sudden acceleration in brain development nearly 800,000 years ago, and this research has led to a major revelation.

“Homo sapiens is the creation of ancient astronauts who came through a wormhole in the Pleiades star cluster more than 780,000 years ago.”

Continue reading “Did aliens genetically engineer humans 780,000 years ago?” »

“The potential to deliver ‘one shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies,” analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. “While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.”

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Goldman Sachs warns sales from the most successful disease treatments are difficult to maintain.

Continue reading “Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: ‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’” »

Down syndrome is the most common genetic disorder, impacting about 1 in 700 newborns around the world. At some point during their first hours and days of embryonic development, their dividing cells fail to properly wriggle a chromosome pair away from each other, leaving an extra copy where it shouldn’t be. Although scientists have known for more than six decades that this extra copy of chromosome 21 causes the cognitive impairment people with Down syndrome experience, exactly how it happens remains a matter of debate.

But in recent years, scientists using new RNA sequencing techniques to study cells from pairs of twins — one with Down syndrome and one without — have repeatedly turned up a curious pattern. It wasn’t just the genes on chromosome 21 that had been cranked way up in individuals with Down syndrome. Across every chromosome, gene expression had gone haywire. Something else was going on.

On Thursday, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported in Cell Stem Cell that it may have found a surprising culprit: senescent cells, the same types implicated in many diseases of aging. The study was small and preliminary, and some experts want to see it replicated in samples from more individuals before buying into its interpretations. But they are nevertheless intriguing.

Continue reading “Provocative new findings suggest a surprising cause of Down syndrome: cells linked to aging” »

While doing their research, the teams had no knowledge of the other’s work, but after finding each other’s preprint proof-of-concept papers online, the two groups decided to submit their manuscripts for review together. “It’s insane that two groups did such similar studies in two places, but it’s also a very rare opportunity,” says Bohmann.

The fact the groups took different paths to find a similar result is particularly compelling, says Mark Johnson, who studies eDNA and Texas Tech University and was not involved in the work. “It’s really exciting looking at how both of these papers, done independently of each other, have produced, really, the same results,” says Johnson. “It adds that extra little bit of validation that what we’re seeing is real.” While hopeful about the future of airborne eDNA, Johnson notes huge leaps need to be made before the techniques used in the zoo can be applied in the field. Collecting eDNA in the wild adds a host of new variables, and enclosed spaces like caves may accumulate genetic material differently than open areas like grasslands. “The next step is to take it from the zoo into the natural environment and see what we find there,” says Johnson.

Clare and Bohmann anticipate that one of the best applications of airborne DNA could be to measure biodiversity in difficult-to-access places, such as burrows and caves. Fabian Roger, an eDNA researcher at ETH in Switzerland, is eager to see how the work could be applied to studying insects. “We have very little ways of monitoring them other than catching and killing them,” says Roger, who was not involved in the recent work. Using eDNA to detect insect species from a sample of air instead of trapping them could rapidly advance entomology research. The technique could also clue scientists into the presence or spread of an invasive species. Like Clare and Bohmann, Roger doesn’t see airborne eDNA as a replacement for traditional monitoring methods, but as another tool they can use. “Biodiversity science is sort of an all-hands-on-deck situation. It’s not one over the other, or one or the other,” says Roger.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing recently reported intriguing new evidence for a possible mouse origin of the Omicron variant. Their paper, posted on the BioRxiv preprint server, was quickly picked up and published a few days later by the Journal of Genetics and Genomics, and defies the prevailing theory which claims that the polymutant spike sequence of Omicron must have evolved under protracted infection in a severely immunocompromised patient.

Their main idea is that a mouse could have somehow been infected with the human virus by “reverse zoonotic transfer,” whereupon the virus evolved all or many of its 45 novel mutations, and then subsequently was transferred back to humans. While this theory might explain why Omicron appears so anomalous when plotted on a phylogenetic tree against the usual suspects, there is one major problem: The mouse homolog of the human ACE2 receptor (hACE2), which the virus typically uses to gain entry into cells, has little affinity for the standard issue SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

So little in fact, that in order to study the virus in this preferred research animal, scientists must artificially introduce hACE2 in order to create mice that show any significant respiratory distress upon infection. These transgenic mice are made in several ways, each showing unique tissue tropisms, penetrance and correspondingly different effects. Researchers have conducted knock-in experiments in which the human hACE2 sequence is integrated into the host genome and induced under the control of a number of different promoters. Adenoviruses can also be used to infect cells and create replicating plasmids that propagate the hACE2 code.

Unlocking The Secrets Of Salamander Regeneration For Regenerative Therapies — Dr. Maximina Yun, Ph.D., CRTD / Center for Regenerative Therapies TU Dresden, Technische Universität Dresden.

Dr. Maximina Yun, Ph.D. (https://tu-dresden.de/cmcb/crtd/forschungsgruppen/crtd-forsc…oup-leader) is Research Group Leader at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), Technical University Dresden, jointly affiliated with Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG).

Continue reading “Dr. Maximina Yun, Ph.D. — Unlocking Secrets Of Salamander Regeneration For Regenerative Therapies” »

A cheap, widely available drug used to treat mental illness cuts both the risk of death from COVID-19 and the need for people with the disease to receive intensive medical care, according to clinical-trial results1. The drug, called fluvoxamine, is taken for conditions including depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. But it is also known to dampen immune responses and temper tissue damage, and researchers credit these properties with its success in the recent trial. Among study participants who took the drug as directed and did so in the early stages of the disease, COVID-19-related deaths fell by roughly 90% and the need for intensive COVID-19-related medical care fell by roughly 65%.

Study co-author Angela Reiersen, a psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, has long been interested in using fluvoxamine to treat a rare genetic condition. While monitoring the fluvoxamine literature before the pandemic, she came across a 2019 study showing that fluvoxamine reduced inflammation in mice with sepsis². When COVID-19 hit, “I immediately thought back to that paper with the mice,” she says.

Reiersen and her colleagues partnered with the organizers of the TOGETHER Trial, which aims to identify approved drugs that can be repurposed to treat COVID-19. The team’s study included 1,497 people in Brazil who had COVID-19 and were at high risk of severe disease. Roughly half received fluvoxamine, and the rest received a placebo.

Continue reading “Common antidepressant slashes risk of COVID death, study says” »

Many Christians have rejected the scientific theory of evolution in part because they think it rules out the existence of a historical Adam and Eve. Yet some scientists and theologians argue that recent breakthroughs in genetics make a historical Adam and Eve compatible with evolution, and that this development may help bridge what many see as a conflict between faith and science.

“For over 160 years, the societal conflict over evolution has been deep and stubborn. But now, in a surprise twist, evolutionary science is making space for Adam and Eve,” S. Joshua Swamidass, an associate professor at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, told Fox News Digital. “It turns out that the theological questions are about genealogical ancestry, not genetics. In this paradigm shift, we are finding a better way forward, a better story to tell.”

In his book “The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry,” Swamidass argues that genetics and evolutionary theory do not conflict with the existence of Adam and Eve, universal ancestors of all humans whom Jesus died to save.