Lifeboat Foundation

The idea struck Robert Ietswaart, a research fellow in genetics at Harvard Medical School, while he was trying to determine how an experimental drug slowed the growth of lung cancer cells.

This is a potential game changer in medicine.

Over the past two decades, gene therapy has come of age, but there are different means of delivering genetic payload.

Cells in a lab. But very good news.

Researchers from the Reik lab at the Babraham Institute have used the four Yamanaka reprogramming factors (OSKM) in order to epigenetically rejuvenate cells by 30 years, according to one epigenetic clock. […]

Between glimpses of a medical cure and winning science’s shiniest prize, this proved to the gene-editing technology’s biggest year yet.

Many believe that drug companies should already be updating their vaccines to target mutated versions of the Covid-19 spike protein. But can the patterns of mutations scientists are seeing popping up in Covid-19 around the world offer any clues about how the virus will continue to evolve?

“It is hard to speculate, but it is interesting that all of a sudden there does seem to be a lot of mutations appearing that could be associated with immune escape or immune recognition,” says Brendan Larsen, a PhD student working with Worobey in Arizona. He recently identified a new variant of Covid-19 circulating in Arizona that has the H69/V70 deletion seen in several other versions of the virus. While still only spreading at a relatively low level there and in other states of the US, it suggests that this particular mutation is recurring independently around the world.

Every time the coronavirus passes from person to person it picks up tiny changes to its genetic code, but scientists are starting to notice patterns in how the virus is mutating.

Continue reading “Will Covid-19 evolve resistance to vaccines?” »

Gearing up for the interview with Harold Katcher!

Epigenetic age reversed by 54%. Scientific trial by Horvath Clock.

Continue reading “Reverse Aging Over 54% Study | Horvath Clock” »

An anthropologist dives into the world of genetic engineering to explore whether gene-editing tools such as CRISPR fulfill the hope of redesigning our species for the better.

The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans by Eben Kirksey. St. Martin’s Press, November 2020. Excerpt previously published by Black Inc.

Continue reading “The Dawn of CRISPR Mutants” »

Building a corn cob—cell by cell, gene by gene.

Corn hasn’t always been the sweet, juicy delight that we know today. And, without adapting to a rapidly changing climate, it is at risk of losing its place as a food staple. Putting together a plant is a genetic puzzle, with hundreds of genes working together as it grows. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor David Jackson worked with Associate Professor Jesse Gillis to study genes involved in corn development. Their teams analyzed thousands of individual cells that make up the developing corn ear. They created the first anatomical map that shows where and when important genes turn on and off during key steps in development. This map is an important tool for growing better crops.

Using CRISPR technology, researchers are tracking the lineage of individual cancer cells as they proliferate and metastasize in real-time.

When cancer is confined to one spot in the body, doctors can often treat it with surgery or other therapies. Much of the mortality associated with cancer, however, is due to its tendency to metastasize, sending out seeds of itself that may take root throughout the body. The exact moment of metastasis is fleeting, lost in the millions of divisions that take place in a tumor. “These events are typically impossible to monitor in real time,” says Jonathan Weissman, MIT professor of biology and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research member.

Now, researchers led by Weissman, who is also an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, have turned a CRISPR tool into a way to do just that. In a paper published on January 212021, in Science, Weissman’s lab, in collaboration with Nir Yosef, a computer scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, and Trever Bivona, a cancer biologist at the University of California at San Francisco, treats cancer cells the way evolutionary biologists might look at species, mapping out an intricately detailed family tree. By examining the branches, they can track the cell’s lineage to find when a single tumor cell went rogue, spreading its progeny to the rest of the body.