Lifeboat Foundation

Occam’s razor—the principle that when faced with competing explanations, we should choose the simplest that fits the facts—is not just a tool of science. Occam’s razor is science, insists a renowned molecular geneticist from the University of Surrey.

In a paper published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Professor Johnjoe McFadden argues Occam’s razor—attributed to the Surrey-born Franciscan friar William of Occam (1285–1347)—is the only feature that differentiates science from superstition, pseudoscience or fake news.

Professor McFadden said, “What is science? The rise of issues such as vaccine hesitancy, climate skepticism, alternative medicine, and mysticism reveals significant levels of distrust or misunderstanding of science among the general public. The ongoing COVID inquiry also highlights how scientific ignorance extends into the heart of government. Part of the problem is that most people, even most scientists, have no clear idea of what science is actually about.”

A microbial sensor that helps identify and fight bacterial infections also plays a key role in the development of blood stem cells, providing a valuable new insight in the effort to create patient-derived blood stem cells that could eliminate the need for bone marrow transplants.

The discovery by a research team led by Raquel Espin Palazon, an assistant professor of genetics, development and cell biology at Iowa State University, is published in Nature Communications. It builds on prior work by Espin Palazon showing that the inflammatory signals that prompt a body’s immune response have an entirely different role in the earliest stages of life, as vascular systems and blood are forming in embryos.

Espin Palazon said knowing that embryos activate the microbial sensor, a protein known as Nod1, to force vascular endothelial cells to become blood stem cells could help develop a method to make blood stem cells in a lab from a patient’s own blood.

Optogenetics has revolutionized neuroscience understanding by allowing spatiotemporal control over cell-type specific neurons in neural circuits. However, the sluggish development of noninvasive photon delivery in the brain has limited the clinical application of optogenetics. Focused ultrasound (FUS)-derived mechanoluminescence has emerged as a promising tool for in situ photon emission, but there is not yet a biocompatible liquid-phase mechanoluminescence system for spatiotemporal optogenetics. To achieve noninvasive optogenetics with a high temporal resolution and desirable biocompatibility, we have developed liposome (Lipo@IR780/L012) nanoparticles for FUS-triggered mechanoluminescence in brain photon delivery. Synchronized and stable blue light emission was generated in solution under FUS irradiation due to the cascade reactions in liposomes.

A team of researchers around Berlin mathematics professor Michael Joswig is presenting a novel concept for the mathematical modeling of genetic interactions in biological systems. Collaborating with biologists from ETH Zurich and Carnegy Science (U.S.), the team has successfully identified master regulators within the context of an entire genetic network.

The research results provide a coherent theoretical framework for analyzing biological networks and have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It is a longstanding goal of biologists to determine the key genes and species that have a decisive impact on evolution, ecology, and health. Researchers have now succeeded in identifying certain genes as master regulators in biological networks. These key regulators exert greater control within the system and steer essential cellular processes. Previous studies have mainly focused on pairwise interactions within the system, which can be strongly affected by genetic background or biological context.

USC Dornsife’s CReATiNG technique revolutionizes synthetic biology by facilitating the cost-effective construction of synthetic chromosomes, promising significant advancements in various scientific and medical fields.

A groundbreaking new technique invented by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Science may revolutionize the field of synthetic biology. Known as CReATiNG (Cloning Reprogramming and Assembling Tiled Natural Genomic DNA), the method offers a simpler and more cost-effective approach to constructing synthetic chromosomes. It could significantly advance genetic engineering and enable a wide range of advances in medicine, biotechnology, biofuel production, and even space exploration.

Simplifying Chromosome Construction

In a new paper, Sinclair and his co-authors outline a theory arguing that epigenetic changes are the underlying cause of aging [1].

It is not every day that one of the most prominent geroscientists presents a new theory of aging. David Sinclair of Harvard, along with two co-authors, Yuancheng Ryan Lu and Xiao Tian, have just published “The Information Theory of Aging” in Nature Aging. This theory was proposed by Sinclair years ago [2], and this new paper is an attempt to summarize it based on the most recent research.

The ability to store and retrieve information is central to life, which relies on the constant reproduction of complex organisms using DNA blueprints. However, on top of that digital genetic code, there is a much messier realm of epigenetics, which regulates how genetic information is translated into proteins.

DNA is the building block of life, and the genetic alphabet comprises just four letters or nucleotides. These biochemical building blocks comprise all types of DNA, and scientists have long wondered whether creating working artificial DNA would be possible. Now, a breakthrough may finally provide the answer.

The main goal of a new study, the findings of which were published in Nature Communications this month, shows that scientists may finally be able to create new medicines for certain diseases by creating DNA with new nucleotides that can create custom proteins.

Being able to create artificial DNA could open the door for several important uses. Being able to expand the genetic code could very well diversify the “range of molecules we can synthesize in the lab,” the study’s senior author Dong Wang, Ph.D., explained (via Phys.org).

In this episode, I am joined by Dr. David Sinclair, tenured Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and an expert researcher in the field of longevity. Dr. Sinclair is also the author of the book Lifespan: Why We Age & Why We Don’t Have To, and the host of the Lifespan Podcast, which launches January 5, 2022. In this interview, we discuss the cellular and molecular mechanisms of aging and what we all can do to slow or reverse the aging process. We discuss fasting and supplementation with resveratrol, NAD, metformin, and NMN. We also discuss the use of caffeine, exercise, cold exposure, and why excessive iron load is bad for us. We discuss food choices for offsetting aging and promoting autophagy (clearance of dead cells). And we discuss the key blood markers everyone should monitor to determine your biological versus chronological age. We also discuss the future of longevity research and technology. This episode includes lots of basic science and specific, actionable protocols, right down to the details of what to do and when. By the end, you will have in-depth knowledge of the biology of aging and how to offset it. #HubermanLab #DavidSinclair #Longevity

Nearly two in five U.S. adults have high cholesterol, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Untreated, high cholesterol can lead to heart disease and stroke, which are two of the top causes of death in the U.S. Worldwide; cardiovascular diseases claim nearly 18 million lives every year, according to the World Health Organization.

A new vaccine developed by researchers at The University of New Mexico School of Medicine could be a game-changer, providing an inexpensive method to lower “bad” LDL cholesterol, which creates dangerous plaques that can block blood vessels.

In a recent study published in npj Vaccines, a team led by Bryce Chackerian, Ph.D., Regents’ Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology, reported the vaccines lowered LDL cholesterol almost as effectively as an expensive class of drugs known as PCSK9 inhibitors.