Lifeboat Foundation

OAHU, HAWAI’I —(ENEWSPF)–September 1, 2016. As thousands of government representatives and conservationists convene in Oahu this week for the 2016 World Conservation Congress, international conservation and environmental leaders are raising awareness about the potentially dangerous use of gene drives — a controversial new synthetic biology technology intended to deliberately cause targeted species to become extinct.

Members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), including NGOs, government representatives, and scientific and academic institutions, overwhelmingly voted to adopt a de facto moratorium on supporting or endorsing research into gene drives for conservation or other purposes until the IUCN has fully assessed their impacts. News of the August 26 digital vote comes as an important open letter to the group is being delivered.

Scientists and environmental experts and organizations from around the globe have advocated for a halt to proposals for the use of gene drive technologies in conservation. Announced today, a long list of environmental leaders, including Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, genetics professor and broadcaster Dr. David Suzuki, Dr. Fritjof Capra, entomologist Dr. Angelika Hilbeck, Indian environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva and organic pioneer and biologist Nell Newman, have lent their support to the open letter: “A Call for Conservation with a Conscience: No Place for Gene Drives in Conservation.” The letter states, in part: “Gene drives, which have not been tested for unintended consequences, nor fully evaluated for ethical and social impacts, should not be promoted as conservation tools.”

In a video uploaded to YouTube on August 3rd (below), engineers from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, proposed an orbiter and lander mission to Ganymede. The video suggests a launch could come in the next decade. Although the commentary is in Russian, the video appears to suggest that Ganymede may be as good a candidate or better for life than Europa.

Singularity University Global Summit is the culmination of the Exponential Conference Series and the definitive place to witness converging exponential technologies and understand how they’ll impact the world.

How many cyborgs did you see during your morning commute today? I would guess at least five. Did they make you nervous? Probably not; you likely didn’t even realize they were there.

In a presentation titled “Biohacking and the Connected Body” at Singularity University Global Summit, Hannes Sjoblad informed the audience that we’re already living in the age of cyborgs. Sjoblad is co-founder of the Sweden-based biohacker network Bionyfiken, a chartered non-profit that unites DIY-biologists, hackers, makers, body modification artists and health and performance devotees to explore human-machine integration.

Continue reading “Biohacking Will Let You Connect Your Body to Anything You Want” »

Luv this article because it hits a very important topic of how will things change with BMI/ mind control technology in general. For example with BMI will we need wearable devices? if so, what type and why? Also, how will banking, healthcare, businesses, hospitality, transportation, media and entertainment, communications, government, etc. in general will change with BMI and AI together? And, don’t forget cell circuitry, and DNA storage and processing capabilities that have been proven to date and advancing.

When you take into account what we are doing with synthetic biology, BMI, AI, and QC; we are definitely going to see some very amazing things just within the next 10 years alone.

Continue reading “What Mind-Controlled Drones Mean for the Future of Digital Marketing” »

Excellent opportunity.

Dolomite microfluidic chips are helping researchers from the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (ASU) to develop novel enzymes capable of polymerising synthetic nucleotides.

Using these chips, the team has created a droplet-based optical polymerase sorting (DrOPS) technique allowing rapid screening for novel polymerase activities in uniform water-in-oil microcompartments. The team’s leader, Professor John C. Chaput – formerly at ASU and currently at the University of California, Irvine – explained: “The creation of synthetic nucleic acids is of great interest to synthetic biologists but, because they are not found in nature, wild type polymerases struggle to process them. To overcome this issue, we are developing novel polymerases using directed evolution in water-in-oil microcompartments. The DrOPS methodology has significant advantages over traditional methods, which are both labour intensive and impractical to perform on a large scale due to the amount of precious artificial nucleotide reagents required for screening.”

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Researchers genetically modify piglets to be resistant to an incurable disease plaguing hog farms, Porcine Reproductive Respiratory Syndrome (PRSS). The researchers cut out a specific gene to cure the pigs.

A team of researchers from MIT have developed a new technique on the genome-editing system known as CRISPR, which offers precise manipulation of when and where gene editing occurs.

It’s an add-on for CRISPR.

Researchers have created a new genome editing technique called Target-AID, which induces point mutations instead of cutting DNA

Gene editing technology has fantastic potential, but there are remaining issues and questions over safety and specificity. The major contender is currently CRISPR-Cas9, but this induces a double stranded break in DNA which is a slightly riskier approach — particularly if it cuts in other locations too that you don’t want it to. Research teams across the world are both optimising and customising the CRISPR system; creating more accurate versions or versions that regulate gene expression as opposed to editing it. One such team has now built an add-on to CRISPR, Target-AID.

Continue reading “Safer Gene Editing Without Cleaving DNA” »

From selective breeding to genetic modification, our understanding of biology is now merging with the principles of engineering to bring us synthetic biology.

Written, animated and directed by James Hutson, Bridge8.

Continue reading “Synthetic Biology Explained” »