Saturday, October 9, 2021

Greenland shark: 'The bridge between molecular and cellular worlds is being built. It’s a whole new world …' * * * * my mind kind of boggles when I try to envision Peter Norvig coding the Time Slider function in Google Street View at the cellular and molecular levels, in conversation with Harvard and MIT Professor of Genetics' George Church, and regarding his 1 minute 60 Minutes' video interview


'The bridge between molecular and cellular worlds is being built. It’s a whole new world …'


Dear Aubrey (Weigel), Tzumin (Lee), Ewan (Birney), Peter (Norvig), George (Church), Jukka-Pekka (Onnela), Elinor (Karlsson), Robert (Harrington MD), Ed (Smyth MD), Richard (Robb MD) All,  

Greetings from the SF Bay Area! I'm writing to you as President of, and Professor at, (impoverished) World University & School (which is like CC-4 MIT OCW in 4 languages, with Wikipedia in 300 languages, planned in ~200 countries for free-to-students' online Bachelor, PhD, Law, MD, and IB high school degrees, and as wiki schools in all 7,139 living languages), about a realistic virtual earth for genetics, and in a single realistic virtual earth for everything; think Google Street View with Time Slider, Maps, Earth, TensorFlowAI, Translate, and with realistic avatar bots and their electronic medical records (even for planning for the precision of tele-robotic surgery, in a realistic virtual earth for surgery
 - https://twitter.com/TheOpenBand/status/1304904656259182592?s=20), for all 7.8 billion people, and their genomes, and at the molecular and cellular levels too. Thanks Ewan for this following seminal Tweet (which is music to my eyes:),  

In these regards, thanks Ewan too for re-Tweeting Aubrey's great 2020 post with - 
"The bridge between molecular and cellular worlds is being built. It’s a whole new world …"

https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1446213948437639169?s=20

And thanks, Aubrey, for liking these 6 Tweets of World Univ & Sch's recently - 

! @avweigel
 What about bridges BETW molecular (eg genes) & the #Phenotypes of individuals (in #GoogleStreetView w #TimeSlider) & #species, & BETW the cellular world & #StreetView level too, with #MachineLearning in #RealisticVirtualEarthforGenetics in 1 #RealisticVirtualEarth ?

 



Languages - World University:

While I've blogged about these your Tweets, Ewan and Aubrey (below too), and much more here, yesterday - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/bowhead-whale-aging-reversal.html (in my daily blog), I'm interested in inquiring about and strategizing how these Artificial Intelligence, Information Technological developments relating to bridging the molecular with the cellular and the Street View 'worlds' might be designed for 1) aging reversal genetic engineering drug therapies' research, and for 2) longevity research, among other approaches to building out a single realistic virtual earth for genetics and evolutionary biology especially. 

And thanks, Tzumin Lee, for your fascinating digital 3D modeling of fly brains (https://www.janelia.org/lab/lee-tzumin-lab), and George Church, for your great presentations earlier this year in the CalTech Allen Institute Hindsight 2020 series (https://www.allen-lineage.org/portfolio-item.html).  

Thanks, too, Tzumin, for your answer to my questions in your CalTech presentation, and related to this fascinating Stanford Medicine Drug conference presentation, in April; here again are some of the questions I asked in your CalTech presentation - 

"Thank you for your fascinating talk, Tzumin, and the remarkable tools, and research you shared. Yesterday in a Stanford Medicine Drug Discovery conference (#SDDS2021 - https://med.stanford.edu/cvi/events/2021-drug-discovery-conference/event-recordings.html#day2), presenter Joan Mannick MD showed a video of 2 older mice (2 years+), one placebo, and the other with LAMPa (I’m not sure I have the name of this right), and the older mouse with Lampa was remarkably active, as well as had robust fur (where the old placebo mouse was losing fur). Have you studied LAMPa in mice, or flies? And could one add LAMPa to old Drosophila flies, and trace neuronal lineages with the remarkable tools you shared, in new ways - and observe lengthening of Drosophila lives too?"
(with a related blog post - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/04/golden-pheasant-stanford-medicine-drug.html). (As I think I mentioned, I couldn't find this Joan Mannick MD presentation on the Stanford website after her talk).

And thanks, Peter Norvig, as head of Google AI Engineering and Research, for Google Maps, Earth Street View with time slider, TensorFlowAI, and your textbook on AI, Search, and so much more creative artificial intelligence, information technological thinking.  

Appreciating, too, Peter, your thinking about bending "the long arc of the moral universe towards justice" (7:05 minute marker), - possibly in some of these genetic engineering question directions too - https://youtu.be/QCw_D7dr7Rw (which I Tweeted here - 
https://twitter.com/WUaSPress/status/1378397513674235905?s=20 - and where this is the WUaS Corporation), - and also in seeking to create a single realistic virtual earth / Harbin Hot Springs / universe for STEM research, and as WUaS classrooms, for all 7.8 billion people - https://twitter.com/hashtag/RealisticVirtualHarbin?src=hashtag_click -

So I'm writing further regarding connecting all the dots, or pixels, and with a focus on longevity and aging reversal, both actually and virtually, physically and digitally (an ongoing focus of mine in seeking to facilitate a single realistic virtual earth for everything). I'm wondering too, for example, about possibly exploring some of these questions with drosophila flies in a jar (in the laboratory), such as this -  

CRISPR for reversion! Exciting times 😇 #Drosophila
Focus on lifespan #Longevity with #AgingReversal? ~ #Drosophila ~ https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/03/wild-drosophila-melanogaster-fruit-fly.html #WUaSLongevity #WUaSagingReversal in a #RealisticVirtualEarthForCRISPR (think #GoogleStreetView with #TimeSlider with #AI at cell & molecular levels with #DigitalSpecies
@WorldUnivAndSch)

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1377070127976312838?s=20

(with more here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/03/wild-drosophila-melanogaster-fruit-fly.html) 

Stanford and Google's Tom Dean's contributions to the Connectome project focusing on fly brains are relevant here, having heard him talk at Stanford Medicine Grand Rounds, I think, about this some years ago - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2017/04/red-rainbowfish-mit-bachelors-degree-in.html. In what ways could, Aubrey, with you perhaps as Project Scientist, and Tzumin with your amazing modeling of fly brains, we all develop Actual-Virtual, Physical-Digital fly brain research, further - even with a Film-to-3D Application (at the cellular and molecular levels too) - in creating a single realistic virtual earth? And how could we focus this also on aging reversal as well as on longevity questions. A realistic virtual earth for digital species and individuals' phenotypes, and genetics, would create an amazing array of new genetic tools (way beyond CRISPR CaS9, I think). Peter, might we explore this in the Google (Street View with time slider) ecosystem? And Elinor, might we also apply these developments and tools to mammals? And George, could you please, in focusing, with your amazing knowledge, the coding of aging reversal genetic engineering tools, perhaps in conversation with Peter, as well as other Googlers? 

So, further, and in submitting an abstract for an upcoming Harvard "Smartphones, Wearables, and Health" Symposium, I'm interested in developing the information technology infrastructure for brain research, and regarding generating data, for my actual-virtual, physical digital Harbin Hot Springs' Ethnographic project, which would include brain research from the Harbin warm pool, in situ, into even avatar bot electronic medical records via wireless web streaming. This would include modeling people's phenotypes as well, which is a key focus of Harvard Professor Jukka-Pekka Onnela (see below, and "JP Onnela on Smartphone-Based Digital Phenotyping and Beiwe Research Platform (TIPS 2017)" 
- https://vimeo.com/252384345 ). In what ways could actual-virtual research and modeling of fly brains parallel and come into conversation with actual-virtual research and modeling of human brains - and in a single realistic virtual earth not only for genetics, but also for brain science? You'll find my abstract about this here - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/iceland-catshark-fettes-college.html.

So thanks Jukke-Pekka (whom I met at Stanford Medicine around 2017), for this Harvard Medical School "Smartphones, Wearables, and Health" data science conference - 
"Our 3rd annual Data Science symposium will take place in Boston on Nov 5 with the theme "Smartphones, Wearables, and Health". Speakers from the NIH, academia, and industry. Registration is now open! Abstract submission deadline Oct 5.
https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cnoc-symposium "

https://twitter.com/jponnela/status/1431351496013238281?s=20
which abstract submission I posted here - 

Aubrey, Tzumin, Ewan, Peter, George, Jukka-Pekka, Elinor, Jim, Larry, Dick, All, how might we explore some of these questions further? And would you be interested, Aubrey, in becoming the Project Scientist organizer, for some of this too, if we could begin to grow such a single realistic universe for aging reversal, genetics, for species, evolutionary biology, STEM science, and everything? And might I even begin to touch on some of these new IT developments and emergences in my planned Harvard "Smartphones, Wearables, and Health" on November 5th?  

Looking forward to communicating further about this. Thank you.

All the best, Scott



some related recent Tweets ... 

1
At scale #Genomics? w "The bridge betw #molecular & #cellular worlds is being built. It’s a whole new world " @ewanbirney https://www.genome.gov/player/dCTxYJpilwQ/PL1ay9ko4A8sk0o9O-YhseFHzbU2I2HQQp in 1 #RealisticVirtualEarthForGenetics >http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/bowhead-whale-aging-reversal.html w #FilmTo3D App & #TextInTheSidebar of #StreetView for new publishing?




2
! @ewanbirney What about bridges BETW molecular (eg genes) & the #Phenotypes of individuals (in #GoogleStreetView w #TimeSlider) & #species, & BETW the cellular world & #StreetView level too, with #MachineLearning in #RealisticVirtualEarthforGenetics in 1 #RealisticVirtualEarth ?

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1446542987115171840?s=20




3
! @avweigel What about bridges BETW molecular (eg genes) & the #Phenotypes of individuals (in #GoogleStreetView w #TimeSlider) & #species, & BETW the cellular world & #StreetView level too, with #MachineLearning in #RealisticVirtualEarthforGenetics in 1 #RealisticVirtualEarth ?

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1446543264421593088?s=20



4
We are proud to share our work on segmenting up to 35 organelles & macromolecular structures in whole cell isotropic FIB-SEM at 4 & 8nm resolution https://biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.14.382143v1 1/12

https://twitter.com/avweigel/status/1328688972793585664?s=20





--


-- 
- Scott GK MacLeod  
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
World Univ & Sch (WUaS) - PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516 
1) non-profit World University and School - http://worlduniversityandschool.org  
2) for profit general stock company WUaS Corporation in CA - http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html

(m) 412 478 0116 - sgkmacleod@gmail.com 

World Univ & Sch Innovation Research -  scottmacleod.com 

- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization. 




* 

Dear Aubrey (Weigel), Tzumin (Lee), Ewan (Birney), Peter (Norvig), George (Church), Jukka-Pekka (Onnela), Elinor (Karlsson), Robert (Harrington MD), Ed (Smyth MD) All,  

I posted this email in my blog today - 

Greenland shark: 'The bridge between molecular and cellular worlds is being built. It’s a whole new world …'
which could make it easier to read some of the links. 

Best wishes, Scott
virtual earth blog label in daily blog - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/virtual%20earth

Minutes for the 9/18/21 open WUaS Monthly Business Meeting (conducted loosely in the manner of Friends / Quakers) - 
https://worlduniversityandschool.blogspot.com/2021/09/minutes-for-91821-world-univ-sch-wuas.html - and please see Minute 13 regarding Harvard / MIT Professor of Genetics' George Church - 

13
Regarding Jumpstarting the genetic engineering revolution further over the past 18 months (of non-SARS-CoV2 non-epidemic coronavirus pandemic self-quarantine, and alienation???)


What are some Implications for aging reversal genetic drug therapies ...and even in a realistic virtual earth for genetics, think Google Street View with Time Slider esp?

Here's one -

"Better targeting in gene therapy
One of the most critical challenges in gene therapy is the specificity of delivery: How to target therapeutic replacement genes to their intended tissues—but only those tissues. It’s like giving a pizza man an exact street address as opposed to having them drop off pies at any white-picket-fence house along the way. Now a team of researchers at Harvard University has developed a way to use directed evolution to engineer small adeno-associated virus vectors, a standard FDA-approved platform for gene therapy, to target skeletal muscle cells in mice and non-human primates. Their approach could be used to target lots of different human diseases in many specific organs, they say, without delivering pizzas all over the body. Cell"
By Harvard / MIT Professor of Genetics' George Church, Jane Metcalfe et al.
https://neo.life/dispatches/09-09-21/
- and glad to find for the FIRST time that there's an URL


Thnx @geochurch @aurmanARK >#TwitterTalk 9/29/21 Searched on '#CRISPRCas9 #simulations #WUASVirtualReality #cell #molecule #StreetView levels' FOUND: 'CRISPR-#VR Walkthrough' https://youtu.be/WlyoJTlpITY
0 m> human
3m> cell
4:40m> hemoglobin #molecular #RealisticVirtualEarthForCRISPR~

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1443326651505381380?s=20

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1443331315688882177?s=19

https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1443326844791504896?s=20

https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/1443330293419560964?s=19

https://twitter.com/WUaSPress/status/1443330610420871169?s=19

https://twitter.com/TheOpenBand/status/1443331070271766528?s=19

https://twitter.com/sgkmacleod/status/1443330718566785024?s=19



-- 
- Scott GK MacLeod  
Founder, President, CEO & Professor
World Univ & Sch (WUaS) - PO Box 442, Canyon, CA 94516 
1) non-profit World University and School - http://worlduniversityandschool.org  
2) for profit general stock company WUaS Corporation in CA - http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html

(m) 412 478 0116 - sgkmacleod@gmail.com 

World Univ & Sch Innovation Research -  scottmacleod.com 

- CC World University and School - like CC Wikipedia with best STEM-centric CC OpenCourseWare - incorporated as a nonprofit university and school in California, and is a U.S. 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt educational organization. 

 



* * * * 

Sunday, September 10, 2021


Scott MacLeod

12:24 PM (16 minutes ago)

to weigela, gchurch, Peter, leet, Jukka-Pekka, birney, Larry, Jim, Jo, Elinor.Karlsson, Dick, Edward, Robert


Dear Aubrey (Weigel), Tzumin (Lee), Ewan (Birney), Peter (Norvig), George (Church), Jukka-Pekka (Onnela), Elinor (Karlsson), Robert (Harrington MD), Dick (Robb MD), Ed (Smyth MD) All,  ...

As a further follow up to - Greenland shark: 'The bridge between molecular and cellular worlds is being built. It’s a whole new world …' ~ https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html ... 

my mind kind of boggles when I try to envision Peter Norvig coding the Time Slider function in Google Street View at the cellular and molecular levels, in conversation with Harvard and MIT Professor of Genetics' George Church, and regarding his 1 minute 60 Minutes' video interview - 

https://youtu.be/bnCEIPQFNnk - and the ~ 8 proven ways that aging reversal already works ...  perhaps mice and dogs are a great starting point, since they're not quite as complex mammals as humans. :)

Will I be able to time slide back, aging reversal-wise, my realistic avatar bot electronic medical record with my fully-sequenced genome, to age 30 (from about twice this), and then once successful (in all this amazing complexity ... chemistry and particle-physics' wise) upload a different genetic code of mine into my physical body mind - with a vaccine even? 

And how can we develop this single realistic virtual earth for genetics' conversation, with aging reversal, further? And how to build out the Actual-Virtual, Physical-Digital coding conversation in these regards in particular regarding Google Street View with time slider, and Brick Street View, referring to Lego BRICKS, and even regarding CC-4 MIT OCW's course - https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/experimental-study-group/es-293-lego-robotics-spring-2007/ - (so am thinking conceptually also in terms of 'WUaS Home Robotics,' in terms of physical and virtual Lego Robotics' bricks, and these 3 Lego kits - Mindstorms, Spike Prime, and WeDo 2.0, of which the WUaS Bookstore, Computer Store, Robotics' store, hospital technologies' distribution center - http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html - .... so the WUaS Educational Services' stores - with Academic Press planned in 7,139 languages with machine learning and translation -  are an authorized reseller in the USA only so far).

And how to import great science beyond a Film-to-3D App (regarding Google Poly, a library of virtual objects, now closed, but re the potential for digital items, IP-wise, drugs, etc ... Put little cameras on the end of billions of syringe needles, and in the vaccine substances themselves, as they stream genetically through people's bodies, - 7.8 billion people), into a single realistic virtual earth for STEM? .. and re Elinor's recent Tweet - 

https://twitter.com/eenork/status/1447034661616734208?s=20 - as she heads off to an in person face-to-face science conference, the first after about 18 months

Thoughts, ideas, questions, suggestions?  New I.T. 'tools' re new knowledge generation in so many ways will be invaluable here. 

Best regards, 

Scott

https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html ... 


'virtual earth' blog label - https://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/virtual%20earth 




There are lots of related #HashTags herein - 


World Univ and Sch Twitter - http://twitter.com/WorldUnivandSch

WUaS Press - https://twitter.com/WUaSPress


Scott MacLeod - https://twitter.com/scottmacleod

Languages - World Univ - http://twitter.com/sgkmacleod


“Naked Harbin Ethnography” book (in Academic Press at WUaS) - http://twitter.com/HarbinBook

OpenBand (Berkeley) - https://twitter.com/TheOpenBand


https://ocw.mit.edu/



* 

Regarding 'AI shuttles' especially ...

Methinks this is a recently updated reply to my "Thoughts ...?" question this morning 10/10/21 to @geochurch, @ewanbirney, #PeterNorvig, @JimSpohrer, @eenork & friends in yesterday's blog post - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html) "Dr. George Church: #AgeReversal "





 
 Dr. George Church: Age Reversal
Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church is “turning on” youth-promoting genes. In this exclusive interview Dr. Church explains how he expects to achieve human age reversal in the foreseeable future.


Scott


"... Dr. Church: If our idea is correct, we should be able to impact all of them at the same time when we target the core causes of aging. When you’re rejuvenating cells, you’re also boosting all their repair mechanisms. It’s possible that certain negative biological changes are rather permanent and hard to restore, but they would be incredibly drastic. The challenge for the near future is using artificial intelligence to design “delivery shuttles” that carry gene therapy where you want it to go. But if we can convince the cells that they’re young by giving them a dose of youth-promoting genes, their own repair factory should kick in and restore lots of damage from aging. ..."

https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/9/george-church-age-reversal



Dr. George Church: Age Reversal

Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church is “turning on” youth-promoting genes. In this exclusive interview Dr. Church explains how he expects to achieve human age reversal in the foreseeable future.

Scientifically reviewed by: Dr. Amanda Martin, DC, on August 2020. Written By Dr. Shelly Xuelai Fan.

I first described the work of Harvard geneticist George Church in 2015.

Dr. Church predicted that human aging could be eradicated by the year 2030.

Many of our advisors concurred.

The therapy that aims to reverse aging in people involves gene modification at the cellular level.

Human Rejuvenation Goes Mainstream

60 Minutes Title Card

On December 8, 2019, CBS News 60 Minutes reported on Dr. Church’s pioneering research that aims to make humans immune from all viruses and reverse biological aging.

This 60 Minutes broadcast represents a transformational tipping point as it relates to the concept of human age reversal. Until recent years, no one thought that old people could grow biologically younger.

To view the 60 Minutes program, visit www.LifeExtension.com/60minutes

This website enables you to view the 60 Minutes segment about Dr. Church’s age reversal research.

It provides a link to subscribe to CBS All Access with a free 7-day trial available.

Scott Pelley: “We Need Age Reversal”

The following excerpt from Dr. Church’s 60 Minutes interview (© CBS NEWS) is an example of how the mainstream is embracing the science of age reversal:

Scott Pelley: One of the things your lab is working on is reversing aging.

Dr. Church: That’s right.

Scott Pelley: How is that possible?

Dr. Church: Reversing aging is one of these things that is easy to dismiss to say either we don’t need it or is impossible or both.

Bill Faloon: Dr. Church expected the typical inane question as to why we want to reverse aging. Look at Scott Pelley’s reply:

Scott Pelley: Oh, we need it.

Bill Faloon: Scott Pelley clearly states, “we need to reverse it,” i.e. aging. This succinct answer represents a gigantic leap forward in the mainstream’s view on aging research.

Dr. Church: Okay. We need it. That’s good. We can agree on that. Well, aging reversal is something that’s been proven about eight different ways in animals where you can get, you know, faster reaction times or, you know, cognitive or repair of damaged tissues.

Scott Pelley: Proven eight different ways. Why isn’t this available?

Dr. Church: It is available to mice.

Scott Pelley (voiceover): In lucky mice, Dr. Church’s lab added multiple genes that improved heart and kidney function and levels of blood sugar. Now he’s trying it in spaniels.

Scott Pelley: So is this gene editing to achieve age reversal?

Dr. Church: This is adding genes. So, it’s not really editing genes. It’s, the gene function is going down, and so we’re boosting it back up by putting in extra copies of the genes.

Scott Pelley: What’s the time horizon on age reversal in humans?

Dr. Church: That’s in clinical trials right now in dogs. And so that veterinary product might be a couple years away and then that takes another 10 years to get through the human clinical trials.

Will You Make it to Year 2030?

Dr George Church Reading something

The dilemma is that some of us will not be alive in the year 2030.

This is why current age-delay protocols are so critical, in addition to everything else we do to reduce degenerative disease risks.

Not only may George Church’s gene therapy reverse aging, but in the process, it will likely shield all our cells from viral infections.

The evidence also points to gene therapy as becoming a virtual universal treatment for all diseases, including cancer.

 

The Allure of Systemic Rejuvenation

Think of how healthy most of us were in youth. Everything seemed to work well until around age 35-50.

Imagine going back to the biological age of 25 and staying there. If you wonder why I have not taken a day off since learning about George Church, it’s to identify methods to stay alive until the time when aging becomes a relic of the past, just as smallpox is today.

On the next page is an exclusive interview conducted by Dr. Shelly Xuelai Fan for Life Extension® magazine. In this interview, Dr. Church discusses the promise of gene therapy in reversing the aging process. We’ve condensed the conversation for our readers.

Reversing aging was considered impossible until recently.

But renowned scientist Dr. George Church says it’s within our reach.

He believes gene therapy holds the key to eliminating many of our toughest age-related chronic illnesses: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, cognitive decline, and more.

And he envisions a time when a few shots of his gene therapy cocktail will slow, or even reverse the aging process.

An “anti-aging vaccine” may sound like science fiction. But if anyone can make it a reality, it’s Dr. Church.

A professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Church is a master at manipulating genes, the instructions that build life, that are tucked inside every cell.

He helped improve the quality and cost of whole genome sequencing by a million-fold, and he’s one of the scientists responsible for developing the breakthrough gene editing tool CRISPR.

His company, Rejuvenate Bio, doesn’t focus on editing genes themselves. It focuses on the expression of genes, turning them “on” or “off.”

As we age, genes that promote youthful functions shut off. If we can switch these genes on again, the negative consequences of aging can be counteracted as our biological clocks are turned back.

The idea has proven successful in mice with different age-related disorders. Dr. Church is now pursuing the rejuvenation treatment in aging dogs.

If all goes well, human trials will follow.

Dr George Church

LE: Most scientists focusing on “life extension” are either trying to increase lifespan, the length of life, or healthspan, the years someone is healthy. Which are you focusing on?

Dr. Church: I would add another one, “aging reversal.” This is a bit different than extending lifespan or healthspan. Anything with “span” in it refers to a long period of time, projecting if you will still be healthy 20 years from now. With aging reversal, you can see in a few weeks if the therapy is working. You can measure biomarkers at a doctor’s office. But more importantly, you can see it in the things you care about, such as strength, mobility, and the healing of damaged tissue and organs. Aging reversal is what we’re focusing on. The therapies are easier to get approved by the FDA, and it’s fundamentally what everyone wants.

LE: How can genes slow down aging or reverse age-related damage?

Dr. Church: We’re talking about epigenetics, changing how genes work throughout the body. It’s not about changing the code of your genes, just how they’re expressed [turned on or off]. As you get older, the level of key genes that help maintain life decline in how much they’re turned on. You want to boost them back up. So what we’re tinkering with using gene therapy isn’t “genetic.” We’re not changing the genes, but rather focusing on turning youth-boosting genes back on.

LE: How has your anti-aging gene therapy worked so far?

Dr. Church: We’re looking at both specific diseases and overall health. The traditional method is to fix one symptom of one disease. But you can also get at the core causes of aging, the hormones that are dropping. If you boost these up enough, they’ll reinforce each other in a positive, virtuous cycle. If we see enough positive changes with a particular gene therapy, we know we hit one of the core causes.

In our first study, we took three genes that impacted five different age-related diseases and changed their levels in mature mice and found that they functionally improved. This is key: Biomarker improvements are great, but you want to see improvements that impact everyday life, like strength, speed, and organ health.

LE: What are the next steps in this research, and who do you think would benefit most from the gene therapy?

Dr. Church: We’ve already begun clinical trials in aged dogs, which are good models for humans. This will help us determine which ages of humans would best benefit, but we think we’ll be able to help people who are already quite old and show signs of decline. We’re also looking at extending absolute lifespan, but it’s a much longer experiment and reliable results take years.

In the near term, we’re also looking to expand the group of age-related diseases that we can treat. With the three genes we’ve been testing, we’ve already helped reverse osteoarthritis, high-fat obesity and diabetes, heart damage, and kidney disease. We’re hoping to soon add cancer and neurodegenerative diseases to the list.

LE: Which diseases do you think we’ll see gene therapy impact first?

Dr. Church: If our idea is correct, we should be able to impact all of them at the same time when we target the core causes of aging. When you’re rejuvenating cells, you’re also boosting all their repair mechanisms. It’s possible that certain negative biological changes are rather permanent and hard to restore, but they would be incredibly drastic. The challenge for the near future is using artificial intelligence to design “delivery shuttles” that carry gene therapy where you want it to go. But if we can convince the cells that they’re young by giving them a dose of youth-promoting genes, their own repair factory should kick in and restore lots of damage from aging.

Trying to convince every cell in the body is very difficult. Some life-extending, non-gene therapies are trying. We believe that youth-promoting hormones and other biological factors shared from cell to cell hold the key.

Using gene therapy, even if we hit just a few cells, they’ll amp up hormone production, diffuse them throughout the body, and immediately amplify the gene therapy’s initial effect.

Dr George Church Typing on Laptop

LE: You helped develop CRISPR, which does alter gene sequences. That’s not part of your age-reversal research?

Dr. Church: We did not use CRISPR, even though we helped initiate it as a technology. We need to distinguish between CRISPR and gene therapy, which aren’t synonymous. CRISPR is mostly used to eliminate or turn down genes and functionality. Classic gene therapy is adding or boosting genes. At Rejuvenate Bio, our focus is on the latter.

LE: Many age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s and cancer are due to faulty genes. In those cases, is it possible to use CRISPR to correct those genes and extend life?

Dr. Church: Yes. We need to cast a wide net. There’s a gene therapy trial for Alzheimer’s that replaces APOE4, a gene that greatly increases your chance of Alzheimer’s, with the lower-risk version, APOE2. But to make the gene therapy work, you’ll need to go into many brain cells and swap the gene out with high efficiency, and that’s hard but improving rapidly.

In mice, manipulating tumor suppressor genes plus targeting telomeres, [the protective end caps of genes that shorten with age] which APOE does, can delay cancer and aging.

Unlike APOE, we are aiming for more than a single rare disease, and unlike the telomere strategy, we don’t need to target every cell because the genes we’re manipulating make “regulatory factors,” like hormones, which diffuse out and impact far more than just the cell that gets the gene therapy. This amplifies the effect of the treatment: One dose can hit just a few cells and you could be set for years.

We’re focused on boosting pro-youth hormones and enzymes that spread in the body. We think this is most promising, and hence the strategy we’re pursuing.

If you have any questions on the scientific content of this article, please call a Life Extension® Wellness Specialist at 1-866-864-3027.

Dr. Shelly Xuelai Fan is a science journalist based in San Francisco. She completed her PhD and post-doctoral training in neurodegeneration, brain aging, and rejuvenation.


https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2020/9/george-church-age-reversal



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Tuesday, September 12, 2021


And here's an 

Example of a beginning Avatar Bot Electronic Medical Records #AvatarBotElectronicMedicalRecords ~

https://t.co/x5f5vA2f8i ~ Into a #RealisticVirtualEarth ~ #RealisticVirtualEarthForSurgery > https://t.co/SpuwGvCarz @WorldUnivAndSch @WUaSPress Languages-WorldUni @sgkmacleod ~


https://www.topbots.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ai_healthcare_challenges_800x350.jpg

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1177364462858227713



See too - 

Can #TimeSlider be an '#AIDeliveryShuttle' in #StreetView in a #RealisticVirtualEarthForGenetics See #RealisticVirtualHarbin & SHUTTLE between 2007 & 2012 HERE @ #HarbinGateHouse in #GoogleStreetView: https://t.co/8F7i8x7dSD (ON LAPTOP) ~ @HarbinBook see - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html?m=0 ~

https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/1447745969374695426




* 


Dear George (Church), Jukka-Pekka (Onnela), Aubrey (Weigel), Tzumin (Lee), Ewan (Birney), Peter (Norvig), Elinor (Karlsson), Robert (Harrington MD), Dick Robb MD, Larry (Viehland), Ed (Smyth MD) All,  ...

Greetings again! 

As a further followup to this thread and - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html?m=0, - I found myself writing to a good, old friend (from Reed College) this morning - 

 ... So how excellent an experience could aging reversal or living beyond 122 years old be with iterating vaccines? AND, regarding an abstract that was accepted yesterday (http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/turritopsis-dohrnii-immortal-jellyfish.html?m=0) for a Harvard Medical School Symposium on 11/5/21 that Jukka-Pekka is a faculty director of, on "Smartphones, Wearables, and Health," and my actual-virtual STEAM ethnographic Harbin Hot Springs' field site (planned at the molecular and cellular levels too). In a related vein, after the Valley Fire of September 2015 that razed Harbin, I found myself asking, as actual-virtual ethnographer -  


 What will checking into Harbin be like again? ... If one of my book's central theses is 'Hippies to the Hot Springs ... ' helping to explain Harbin's unique culture (in 'Naked Harbin Ethnography' - 2016, Academic Press at WUaS) ... and if I were to check in again to both ACTUAL & separately VIRTUAL Harbin in 2022 ... with writing a 2nd Harbin Ethnography in GOOGLE Street View itself in mind, text-in-The-sidebar, WITH 


.... brain wave data about meditation in the warm pool wifi streaming from SMARTPHONES and WEARABLES into our OWN Avatar Bot Electronic Medical Records 


... (and please remember that World Univ & Sch is planning for co-coding, George? for the genomes of all 7.8 billion people on the planet RE A SINGLE FAMILY TREE - in something like WikiTree, eg - https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/MacLeod-2524 - even for DIY self-genetic engineering, if possible, - and even also in planning for all organisms's genomes ever, in a realistic virtual earth for species and evolutionary biology; see #HashTags esp. ...  https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1446545850541359109?s=20 - https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1420389857940156420?s=20) in a Google Street View with TIME SLIDER grown up 'Pegman' too, what would we STEAM researchers learn anew? ... 


And how, especially, would AI DELIVERY SHUTTLES in Google STREET VIEW help shape excellence in Aging Reversal vaccine iterations (Peter and George)? 


See - 

Can #TimeSlider be an '#AIDeliveryShuttle' in #StreetView in a #RealisticVirtualEarthForGenetics See #RealisticVirtualHarbin & SHUTTLE between 2007 & 2012 HERE @ #HarbinGateHouse in #GoogleStreetView: https://t.co/8F7i8x7dSD (ON LAPTOP) ~ @HarbinBook see


http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html?m=0 ~

https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/1447745969374695426


See the related Tweet too - https://twitter.com/sgkmacleod/status/1447742635255369731


And here's an 

Example of a beginning Avatar Bot Electronic Medical Records #AvatarBotElectronicMedicalRecords ~

https://t.co/x5f5vA2f8i ~ Into a #RealisticVirtualEarth ~ #RealisticVirtualEarthForSurgery > https://t.co/SpuwGvCarz @WorldUnivAndSch @WUaSPress Languages-WorldUni @sgkmacleod ~

https://www.topbots.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ai_healthcare_challenges_800x350.jpg

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch/status/1177364462858227713


Thoughts, questions, ideas, suggestions? See you online Jukka-Pekka on 11/5/21 from the SF Bay Area, and thank you for accepting my abstract for the Harvard "SMARTPHONES, WEARABLES, and HEALTH" Data Science symposium.

Best regards, Scott


PS

New 'wild carrot' blog post with some of this and more - 

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-how-excellent-experience-could-aging.html?m=0

(As you'll see here - and regarding Peter Norvig having resigned from Google today apparently - and just become a Stanford Distinguished Education Fellow, I'm wondering whether Peter and I could or might even co-teach a course on Harbin Hot Springs as virtual STEAM field site, with ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy as a new social science and STEM method (http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy?m=0), and for healthful soaking meditation research - so for further brain research into meditation, moving from Herbert Benson MD"s 1972 book "The Relaxation Response" re wristlet's and the FitBit 5). Peter? :)




* 

Dear George (Church), Jukka-Pekka (Onnela), Aubrey (Weigel), Tzumin (Lee), Ewan (Birney), Peter (Norvig), Elinor (Karlsson), Robert (Harrington MD), Dick (Robb MD), Larry (Viehland), Ed (Smyth MD), Jo (Leonardo), Jim (Spohrer), All, 


Nota Bene: Even though the Valley Fire  that razed Harbin was in 2015, before I had published my first actual-virtual Harbin ethnographic book ("Naked Harbin Ethnography: Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optionality & Virtual Harbin"), I think it may have been raised, or is raising, Heart Consciousness Church~Harbin in other ways, post-fire, and hopefully regarding CA law re hippies, and re non-harming, ahimsa, re Quakers, India + and re compassion too ... How to get to a 'Finland', ethics-wise, or a 'Norway,' or a 'Costa Rica,' as Nation States' comparisons, at Harbin,, or the most ethical least harming oldest temples in India (now part of India as a democratic nation state, with laws) ... may offer creative opportunities ahead (but founder Ishvara, and Harvard Alumnus, is a bit unwell or dysfunctional, - so hope may arise in the short term in a realistic virtual Harbin), or even in somehow collaborating with  Friends' Hospital in Philadelphia, the oldest continuously operating mental hospital in the USA (SINCE 1813) with its asylum oriented history, but in a virtual Harbin asylum from home (post Coronavirus pandemic of 2020/21) ... And see the psychotherapy questions re illegal and criminal behavior in my blog post today - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/so-how-excellent-experience-could-aging.html ... 

And

https://twitter.com/HarbinBook/status/1306657454478880769 - and these 2 Tweets - 

https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/1306653558264098816?s=20

https://twitter.com/sgkmacleod/status/1306656987816501248?s=20

 - both have this picture - 

 http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2020/09/kanneliya-dediyagala-nakiyadeniya.html and WUaS MD Psychiatry planning

  ... further research needed ... and where will neuroscience research of the Harvard "Smartphones Wearables and Health" Symposium, and genetics' engineering with iterating vaccines, play into mental health and Harbin and WUaS psychiatry-planning - https://wiki.worlduniversityandschool.org/wiki/Psychiatry -  in 200 countries and their languages?


What have we done on VR modeling any precursors to the human AMYGDALA in fly brain science, mice or dogs - and at the cellular and molecular levels?


Scott

These are my Hippy Anjali Yoga Notations ~

http://www.scottmacleod.com/yoganotations.html ~ and possibly opening new approaches for scientific research regarding meditation too ... Although I'm a drop out (in a 1960's sense) from Angela and Victor's Yoga circles, their unique Yogic envisioning re meditation and Harbin's warm pool too would be fascinating to somehow wiki-add to a single realistic virtual earth for history interactively, and as classrooms as well. 




* * * * 

F Oct 15, 2021

Scott MacLeod

2:34 PM (1 minute ago)
to weigela, gchurch, Peter, leet, Jukka-Pekka, birney, Larry, Jim, Jo, Elinor.Karlsson, Dick, Edward, Robert
Dear George (Church), Jukka-Pekka (Onnela), Aubrey (Weigel), Tzumin (Lee), Ewan (Birney), Peter (Norvig), Elinor (Karlsson), Robert (Harrington MD), Dick (Robb MD), Larry (Viehland), Ed (Smyth MD), Jo (Leonardo), Jim (Spohrer), All, 

Greetings! As a further follow up: Tzumin, and Aubrey, this just popped up in Twitter - 

" DYK you don't need a postdoc to apply for our group leader positions? If you are a late-stage graduate student in cell biology, physiology, biophysics, or anatomy, consider applying to lead a lab in 4D Cellular Physiology. Learn more at http://4dcpjanelia.org"

- and which looks to be focused on cells (rather than molecules). World Univ & Sch will gladly let our WUaS graduate students know of such opportunities when they get to this point.

WUaS's Monthly Business Meeting meets tomorrow at noon ET and is open. One agenda item here explores in what ways you, George Church and Peter Norvig could begin to talk with each other - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/ceropegia.html - if you're not already. I'm writing to invite you to the Meeting if you might be interested - meet.google.com/ohx-dzpr-bdf (and the meeting is only an hour long:).

Much of this email thread and more is here in the 'Greenland shark ... ' blog post - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2021/10/greenland-shark.html (one of the longest-lived species).

Best regards,
Scott 





World Univ and Sch Twitter - http://twitter.com/WorldUnivandSch
WUaS Press - https://twitter.com/WUaSPress

Scott MacLeod - https://twitter.com/scottmacleod
Languages - World Univ - http://twitter.com/sgkmacleod

“Naked Harbin Ethnography” book (in Academic Press at WUaS) - http://twitter.com/HarbinBook
OpenBand (Berkeley) - https://twitter.com/TheOpenBand

https://ocw.mit.edu/








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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Somniosus_microcephalus


(longevity, and even re aging reversal ... 

Icelandic mussel named Ming (507 years)

Greenland shark (392 years)

Greenland whale (211 years)

Jeanne Calment (122 years) )

Saturday Essay |How does it feel to live for centuries? Human immortality is closer than ever, but if it materialized, it would produce a couple of problems
Culture
25.9. 2:00


...



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