Stepping Stones to Space

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mskhelad:

Feb 28, 1953:
Watson and Crick discover chemical structure of DNA.
Rosalind Franklin controversy. 

A larger controversy arose over the use Watson and Crick made of research done by another DNA researcher, Rosalind Franklin, whose colleague Maurice Wilkins showed her X-ray diffraction images of DNA to Watson just before he and Crick made their famous discovery.

Her data, according to Francis Crick, was “the data we actually used” to formulate Crick and Watson’s 1953 hypothesis regarding the structure of DNA. Franklin’s X-ray diffraction images confirming the helical structure of DNA were shown to Watson without her approval or knowledge.

Franklin, who died in 1958 of ovarian cancer and was thus ineligible for the award, never learned of the role her photos played in the historic scientific breakthrough.

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Filed under science biology medicine ADN DNA history

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Do Age-Defying Worms Hold Key to Immortality? Researchers from The University of Nottingham have demonstrated how a species of flatworm overcomes the ageing process to be potentially immortal.The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is part of a project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC)and may shed light on the possibilities of alleviating ageing and age-related characteristics in human cells. Planarian worms have amazed scientists with their apparently limitless ability to regenerate. Researchers have been studying their ability to replace aged or damaged tissues and cells in a bid to understand the mechanisms underlying their longevity. Dr Aziz Aboobaker from the University’s School of Biology, said: “We’ve been studying two types of planarian worms; those that reproduce sexually, like us, and those that reproduce asexually, simply dividing in two. Both appear to regenerate indefinitely by growing new muscles, skin, guts and even entire brains over and over again.  “Usually when stem cells divide — to heal wounds, or during reproduction or for growth — they start to show signs of ageing. This means that the stem cells are no longer able to divide and so become less able to replace exhausted specialised cells in the tissues of our bodies. Our ageing skin is perhaps the most visible example of this effect. Planarian worms and their stem cells are somehow able to avoid the ageing process and to keep their cells dividing.”One of the events associated with ageing cells is related to telomere length. In order to grow and function normally, cells in our bodies must keep dividing to replace cells that are worn out or damaged. During this division process, copies of the genetic material must pass on to the next generation of cells. The genetic information inside cells is arranged in twisted strands of DNA called chromosomes. At the end of these strands is a protective ‘cap’ called a telomere. Telomeres have been likened to the protective end of a shoelace which stops strands from fraying or sticking to other strands. Read more  

Do Age-Defying Worms Hold Key to Immortality?


Researchers from The University of Nottingham have demonstrated how a species of flatworm overcomes the ageing process to be potentially immortal.The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is part of a project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC)and may shed light on the possibilities of alleviating ageing and age-related characteristics in human cells.

Planarian worms have amazed scientists with their apparently limitless ability to regenerate. Researchers have been studying their ability to replace aged or damaged tissues and cells in a bid to understand the mechanisms underlying their longevity.

Dr Aziz Aboobaker from the University’s School of Biology, said: “We’ve been studying two types of planarian worms; those that reproduce sexually, like us, and those that reproduce asexually, simply dividing in two. Both appear to regenerate indefinitely by growing new muscles, skin, guts and even entire brains over and over again.

 
“Usually when stem cells divide — to heal wounds, or during reproduction or for growth — they start to show signs of ageing. This means that the stem cells are no longer able to divide and so become less able to replace exhausted specialised cells in the tissues of our bodies. Our ageing skin is perhaps the most visible example of this effect. Planarian worms and their stem cells are somehow able to avoid the ageing process and to keep their cells dividing.”

One of the events associated with ageing cells is related to telomere length. In order to grow and function normally, cells in our bodies must keep dividing to replace cells that are worn out or damaged. During this division process, copies of the genetic material must pass on to the next generation of cells. The genetic information inside cells is arranged in twisted strands of DNA called chromosomes. At the end of these strands is a protective ‘cap’ called a telomere. Telomeres have been likened to the protective end of a shoelace which stops strands from fraying or sticking to other strands.

Read more  

(Source: gclaudia)

Filed under biology dna genetics immortality medical research medicine octopus ride science worms scientists

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Learning to Live: A Case Study in Bioethics - Please Respond!

dreaminventor:

Case Study: 12 year old girl presents with Pediatric Acute Liver Failure in 1996 as a result of Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestasis. Within 2 months, a 16 year old female beating heart cadaver becomes available for liver donation at the same hospital and the liver is a match. The…

Filed under biology bioethics medicine ethics healthcare Medical disclosure Cancer early death preventable illness malpractice true story case study United States Healthcare Liver Transplants

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Brain cells created from patients' skin cells

shychemist:
Neural stem cells. Credit: Yichen Shi (Livesey Lab) University of Cambridge
Cambridge scientists have, for the first time, created cerebral cortex cells – those that make up the brain’s grey matter – from a small sample of human skin. The researchers’ findings, which were funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Wellcome Trust, were published today in Nature Neuroscience.
Diseases of the range from developmental conditions, such as epilepsy and autism, to neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s. Today’s findings will enable scientists to study how the human cerebral cortex develops, how it ‘wires up’ and how that can go wrong (a common problem leading to learning disabilities).
It will also allow them to recreate brain diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, in the lab. This will give them previously impossible insight, allowing them to both watch the diseases develop in real time and also develop and test new drugs to stop the diseases progressing.
Dr. Rick Livesey of the Gurdon Institute and Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, principal investigator of the research, said: “This approach gives us the ability to study human brain development and disease in ways that were unimaginable even five years ago.”
For their research, the scientists took skin biopsies from patients and then reprogrammed the cells from the skin samples back into . These stem cells as well as human embryonic stem cells were then used to generate cerebral cortex cells.
Dr. Livesey added: “We are using this system to recreate Alzheimer’s disease in the lab. Alzheimer’s disease is the commonest form of dementia in the world, and dementia currently affects over 800,000 people in the UK. It’s a disease that primarily affects the type of nerve cell we’ve made in the lab, so we’ve the perfect tool to create a full, human model of the disease in the lab.”
Dr. Simon Ridley, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, the UK’s leading dementia research charity, said: “We are really pleased to have contributed funding for this work and the results are a positive step forward. Turning stem cells into networks of fully functional nerve cells in the lab holds great promise for unravelling complex diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
“Dementia is the greatest medical challenge of our time – we urgently need to understand more about the condition and how to stop it. We hope these findings can move us closer towards this goal.”
Provided by University of Cambridge (news : web)

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ralphewig:

2B: The Era of Flesh is Over - A trailer on the upcoming feature film on transhumanism. If artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and other technologies will allow human beings to transcend the limitations of the body, how will our world fundamentally change under those conditions?

2B, directed by Richard Kroehling, is a World Premiere future narrative film portraying a decaying world on the cusp of great transformation. Based upon real science and evolving technologies, 2B’s script brings to life the ‘technohuman’ conundrum. Designed to confront the most controversial topic of the 21st century, 2B explores moral and religious questions raised by the biotech revolution, forcing its audience to deeply question their definitions of life itself.

(Source: ieet.org)

Filed under transhuman

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i-love-the-future: FutureTimeline.net : a speculative timeline of future history Sooo this is what I’ve spent the last 4 days reading; a collection of predictions about the future, from politics of the 21st century to the terraforming of Mars to the heat death of the universe. It’s got tons of exciting stuff, such as an extrapolation of Moore’s law that predicts superhuman man-made AIs by 2060 - along with a bunch of things that are not to love about the future, like the Earth very probably going barren within the next few centuries. Anyway, a sweet read that got me thinking.

i-love-the-future:

FutureTimeline.net : a speculative timeline of future history

Sooo this is what I’ve spent the last 4 days reading; a collection of predictions about the future, from politics of the 21st century to the terraforming of Mars to the heat death of the universe.
It’s got tons of exciting stuff, such as an extrapolation of Moore’s law that predicts superhuman man-made AIs by 2060 - along with a bunch of things that are not to love about the future, like the Earth very probably going barren within the next few centuries.

Anyway, a sweet read that got me thinking.

Filed under transhumanism space technology