Tag: science

Chinese scientists claim to have engineered the world’s first mouse with fully reprogrammed genes

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) claim to have found a novel technique for programmable chromosome fusion successfully producing mice with genetic changes “that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale” in the laboratory.

The findings could shed light on how chromosome rearrangements—the tidy packages of organized genes provided in equal numbers by each parent, which align and trade or blend traits to produce offspring—influence evolution, reported Phys.org on Thursday.

“The laboratory house mouse has maintained a standard 40-chromosome karyotype—or the full picture of an organism’s chromosomes—after more than 100 years of artificial breeding,” said Li Zhikun, a researcher at CAS’s Institute of Zoology.

“Over longer time scales, however, karyotype changes caused by chromosome rearrangements are common. Rodents have 3.2 to 3.5 rearrangements per million years, whereas primates have 1.6,” added Li, co-first author of the study.

The mouse, known as Xiao Zhu, or “Little Bamboo,” was the world’s first mammal with fully reprogrammed genes, according to the South China Morning Post.

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Scientific American claims Western science made up two sexes in order to ‘reinforce gender and racial divisions’

Scientific American magazine was mocked and ridiculed over bizarre claims it made about binary sex roles in Western science in a series of tweets.

The claims were a part of a Twitter thread attempting to recast the binary sexual identities in order to fit the transgender agenda.

“Before the late 18th century, Western science recognized only one sex—the male—and considered the female body an inferior version of it. The shift historians call the ‘two-sex model’ served mainly to reinforce gender and racial divisions by tying social status to the body,” read the sixth tweet in the series of seven.

“It’s not just complex in the context of intersex,” read a quote from medical anthropologist Katrina Karkazis. “Our bodies are far more variable than our categories. Part of what’s happened is people become slotted into this binary framework.”

Critics of the claim lined up on social media to cast scorn on the science magazine and make their arguments against the claim.

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Laser manipulation turns white blood cells into medicinal microrobots

White blood cells can be harnessed as natural, biocompatible microrobots through the use of lasers, researchers from China have reported. The finding, which the team demonstrated in living zebrafish, could pave the way towards a new method of targeted drug delivery for precision treatment of diseases.

Medical microrobots have attracted considerable attention for their potential to deliver drugs to particular sites in the body and to help clear pathogens from the circulatory system.

In most medical microrobot concepts, the tiny tools are fabricated outside of the body and then either injected into the patient or packaged up in capsules and then swallowed. Trials in small animals, however, have revealed a problem – namely that these foreign objects have a tendency to trigger an immune response in their host body, with the result that the microrobots end up being removed from the body before they can fulfil their intended purpose.

To get around this, an alternative approach lies in taking cells that are already present in the body – and are therefore not at risk of setting off an immune response – and press ganging them into service as natural microrobots.

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Synthetic embryo with brain and beating heart is grown from mouse stem cells for the first time – and the technique could one day be used to create artificial human organs for transplantation

Researchers have created ‘synthetic’ embryos from mouse stem cells that have beating hearts as well as the foundations of brains and all other organs.

The models are intended to help the scientists at the University of Cambridge better understand the mechanisms of embryo development. 

While the research was carried out in mouse models, it is hoped the results could increase understanding of why some human embryos fail while others go on to develop into a healthy pregnancy.

Additionally, they could be used to guide the repair and development of synthetic human organs for transplantation, the experts suggest.

Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, said: ‘Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that go on to make up the body.

‘It’s just unbelievable that we’ve got this far.

‘This has been the dream of our community for years, and a major focus of our work for a decade and finally we’ve done it.’

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Strange new phase of matter created in quantum computer acts like it has two time dimensions

By shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time, the physicists report July 20 in Nature.

This mind-bending property offers a sought-after benefit: Information stored in the phase is far more protected against errors than with alternative setups currently used in quantum computers. As a result, the information can exist without getting garbled for much longer, an important milestone for making quantum computing viable, says study lead author Philipp Dumitrescu.

The approach’s use of an “extra” time dimension “is a completely different way of thinking about phases of matter,” says Dumitrescu, who worked on the project as a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics in New York City. “I’ve been working on these theory ideas for over five years, and seeing them come actually to be realized in experiments is exciting.”

Dumitrescu spearheaded the study’s theoretical component with Andrew Potter of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Romain Vasseur of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Ajesh Kumar of the University of Texas at Austin. The experiments were carried out on a quantum computer at Quantinuum in Broomfield, Colorado, by a team led by Brian Neyenhuis.

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DARPA and NIH-Funded ‘Neuroengineers’ Create ‘Wireless Technology to Remotely Activate Specific Brain Circuits’ Using Magnetic Fields and Nanoparticles

A team of scientists led by Rice University “neuroengineers” has created wireless technology to “remotely activate specific brain circuits” on the sub-second timescale. To demonstrate the capability, the neuroengineers used magnetic fields to “activate targeted neurons that controlled the body position of freely moving fruit flies in an enclosure.” The scientists say this research furthers the drive toward the “holy grail of neurotechnologies”: remote control of select neural circuits with magnetic fields.

Incredibly, this use of magnetic fields to control select brain circuits remotely is not new technology. The technique is referred to as “magnetogenetics” and this particular demonstration—outlined in Nature Materials—mainly aims to demonstrate “precise temporal modulation of neural activity” on sub-second timescales as well as “stimulation of different groups of neurons” using varying digital signals.

Previously, the neuroengineers note in their paper, in vivo (in the body) response time of thermal magnetogenetics was on the order of tens of seconds, and was not able to stimulate different groups of neurons.

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The Story of Otis T. Carr: The Man Who Supposedly Invented An ‘Anti-Gravity’ Vehicle In The 1950s

It’s astonishing how the topic of “anti-gravity” technology is still placed in the “conspiracy theory” realm by some. This isn’t the stuff of conspiracy theories or “fringe” science, it’s a field full of reputable scientists, scholars, and real-world examples that have come not only from hard evidence but from extremely credible witness testimony.  History is littered with supposed examples that are surrounded by controversy. This article explores the story of a man by the name of Otis T. Carr (1904-1982).

In the late 1950s, OTC Enterprises, Inc. of Baltimore, Maryland put out a statement that was published in the April 3rd edition of the Baltimore Enterprise. The statement came in the form of a claim that the company was ready to manufacture a flying saucer that was capable of travelling outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. All that was needed was a massive amount of funding, approximately 20 million dollars. The equivalent to that today is probably several billion.

Now, keep in mind that this is the 1950s. There was a big wave of UFO sightings at this time, especially after the atomic bomb was dropped in Japan. The topic was getting a lot of mainstream media attention. Rumors of “crashed craft, and bodies recovered,” that Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell claimed were real were running rampant at this time. President Harry Truman even said, on national television, that they discuss these “UFOs” at every conference his government has had with the military. According to him at the time, “there’s always stuff like that going on.”

In March 2019, astrophysicist Eric W. Davis, who spent years working as a consultant for the Pentagon UFO program and is now a defense contractor, gave a classified briefing to the Defense Department on what he called “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”

Did ‘the powers that be’ or ‘the military-industrial complex’ have flying saucer technology when Carr was alive? It’s not far fetched if you sift through the literature. Take, for example, this document from the Central Intelligence Agency’s Electronic reading room. The agency was keeping tabs on news regarding the topic abroad. There are tens and thousands of files that have been declassified showing this, including ones pertaining to Carr which we will get to later. The document reads as follows:

“A German newspaper recently published an interview with George Klein, famous German engineer and aircraft expert, describing the experimental construction of ‘flying saucers’ carried out by him from 1941 to 1945.”

The document goes on to describe how many people believed ‘flying saucers’ to be a postwar development and what it was capable of.

 “The “flying saucer” reached an altitude of 12,400 meters within 3 minutes and a speed of 2,200 kilometers per hour. Klein emphasized that in accordance with German plans, the speed of these “saucers” would reach 4,000 kilometers per hour. One difficulty, according to Klein, was the problem of obtaining the materials to be used for the construction of the “saucers,” but even this had been solved by German engineers toward the end of 1945, and construction on the objects was scheduled to begin, Klein added.”

Otis T. Carr had similar claims. These claims, although few in number, were global. Apparently, Carr put on numerous demonstrations for the public and amassed millions of dollars from extremely wealthy people to do so. If they did not believe him and if he had not shown some promise, how did he receive all of this funding?

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Humanized Yeast: Scientists Create Yeast With Important Human Genes

Delft University of Technology scientists have created baker’s yeast with human muscle genes.

Human muscle genes were successfully inserted into the DNA of baker’s yeast by biotechnologist Pascale Daran-Lapujade and her team at Delft University of Technology. For the first time, scientists have effectively inserted a crucial human characteristic into a yeast cell. Their research was recently published in the journal Cell Reports.

Daran-Lapujade’s lab introduced a characteristic to yeast cells that is regulated by a collection of 10 genes that humans cannot live without; they carry the blueprint for a process known as a metabolic pathway, which breaks down sugar to gather energy and produce cellular building blocks within muscle cells. Because this mechanism is involved in many disorders, including cancer, the modified yeast could be used in medical studies.

“Now that we understand the full process, medical scientists can use this humanized yeast model as a tool for drug screening and cancer research,” Daran-Lapujade says.

Humans and yeast are similar

According to Daran-Lapujade, there are a lot of similarities between yeast and a human being: “It seems weird since yeast lives as single cells and humans consist of a substantially more complex system, but the cells operate in a very similar way.”

As a result, scientists often transfer human genes into yeast. Because yeast removes all other interactions that may exist in the human body, it creates a clean environment in which researchers can analyze a single process.

“As compared to human cells or tissues, yeast is a fantastic organism for its simplicity to grow and its genetic accessibility: its DNA can be easily modified to address fundamental questions,” Daran-Lapujade explains. “Many pivotal discoveries such as the cell division cycle, were elucidated thanks to yeast.”

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This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting

In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage versions of people in order to harvest tissues for use in transplant treatments.

The company, Renewal Bio, is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs demonstrated by Jacob Hanna, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Earlier this week, Hanna showed that starting with mouse stem cells, his lab could form highly realistic-looking mouse embryos and keep them growing in a mechanical womb for several days until they developed beating hearts, flowing blood, and cranial folds. 

It’s the first time such an advanced embryo has been mimicked without sperm, eggs, or even a uterus. Hanna’s report was published in the journal Cell on Monday.

“This experiment has huge implications,” says Bernard Siegel, a patient advocate and founder of the World Stem Cell Summit. “One wonders what mammal could be next in line.”  

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