Mapping the ‘fountain of youth’ (not an April Fool's)

Telomerase catalytic subunit, TERT (credit: Emskorda/Wikimedia Commons)

NATURE GENETICS|Kurzweil.net

Tantalizing.  Singularityish.  Of course another word for cells that divide forever is "cancer."

A Whole-Cell Computational Model Predicts Phenotype from Genotype

http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674%2812%2900776-3

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/science/in-a-first-an-entire-organism-is-simulated-by-software.html?_r=2&smid=fb-share

This is an example of how digital media computing lessons can be applied to viral vaccines and therapy

http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/microsoft-research-spammers-act-just-hiv-virus-avoiding-filters-120211

https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/stories/hiv_research_za.aspx

Spammers avoid filters in a fashion similar to HIV avoiding T cells.  I think this is an expression of complexity.

We need enabling simulation technology.

We are quickly developing the ability to sequence a personal genome for $1000.00.  The issue is, how to analyze the data?  I think we need to boldly leapfrog current computing capabilities and brute force a distributed simulation of core immune system behavior, enabled by genomic data.  And then see what it predicts given a trigger. And then compare that to reality.  We'll hone in on something.  WATSON CAN HELP.

W. Richard McCombie, a professor of human genetics at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, examining DNA samples.

"The field of genomics is caught in a data deluge. DNA sequencing is becoming faster and cheaper at a pace far outstripping Moore’s law, which describes the rate at which computing gets faster and cheaper.

The result is that the ability to determine DNA sequences is starting to outrun the ability of researchers to store, transmit and especially to analyze the data."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/business/dna-sequencing-caught-in-deluge-of-data.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1323108899-oVQgik/APCraoabeqLKFSQ

Researchers do precise gene therapy without a needle

L. James Lee

L. James Lee and his colleagues at Ohio State University have successfully inserted specific doses of an anti-cancer gene into individual leukemia cells to kill them without a needle. The technique uses electricity to “shoot” bits of therapeutic biomolecules through a tiny channel and into a cell in a fraction of a second.

They have dubbed the method “nanochannel electroporation” (NEP).

“NEP allows us to investigate how drugs and other biomolecules affect cell biology and genetic pathways at a level not achievable by any existing techniques,” said Lee, the Helen C. Kurtz Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and director of the NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Affordable Nanoengineering of Polymeric Biomedical Devices at Ohio State.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/researchers-do-precise-gene-therapy-without-a-needle