Another “quick takes” on items where there is too little to say to make a complete article, but is still important enough to comment on.
The focus this time: Better catgirls through science!
First, a little mood music:
Carrying on…
Could A.I. be used to help create genetically engineered catgirls? Perhaps…
“In a fascinating new artificial development, especially in the wake of artificial intelligence hysteria being pushed by ‘experts’ and the mainstream media last week, Anthropic has confirmed that it operates a wet biology lab in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“A wet lab is a facility designed for hands-on experimental work with biological materials, rather than purely computational modeling or simulation. Essentially, the lab is designed to conduct the biology experiments AI suggests could expand research in the life sciences”
Genetic engineering at the embryo level is already here. Could this lead to catgirls? Perhaps…
“Most scientists think it’s still premature to try to use genetically modified human embryos to produce babies — and it may never be safe. But newer, more precise gene-editing techniques, such as prime editing and base editing, have improved the accuracy of the technology.
“Some scientists and bioethicists argue that the advances raise hope that they might one day be ethical to use gene editing to prevent some devastating genetic diseases.
“But already Silicon Valley venture capitalists, East Coast entrepreneurs and others have emerged to try to push the field forward.”
Xenocortication using human-derived organoids in non-human species. Could this lead to catgirls? Perhaps…
From the abstract:
“The inaccessibility of human brain tissue limits the study of human development and function, a challenge that human stem-cell-derived neural models are beginning to address1,2. Transplantation of neural organoids into rodent hosts enables the in vivo study of aspects of human neurodevelopment and circuit function, alongside behavioural phenotyping of the host animals. However, spatial limitations and competition with host circuits constrain the integration of neural organoids, which is critical for studying disease. Here we establish a transplantation platform using a genetic strategy to effectively deplete glutamatergic neurons from mouse neocortex and hippocampus (apallial) and neonatally engraft the cortical cavity with human stem-cell-derived cortical organoids (hCO) to generate xenocortical mice. This leads to robust graft growth with hCOs occupying most of the cortical volume and generating a diversity of human cortical cell types, including layer 5 extratelencephalic projection neurons. Human cortical neurons integrate with the mouse nervous system, and in vivo cortical graft-wide calcium imaging and electrophysiological analyses revealed patterns of organized activity resembling developing circuits. Behavioural analyses of apallial and xenocortical mice revealed broadly preserved locomotion alongside selective differences in limb coordination and altered organization of spontaneous behaviour. Lastly, this platform enabled behavioural readouts in a model of injury to developing human cortical cells. We envision that xenocortication will be useful for obtaining circuit- and behaviour-level readouts using human neurons to study neurodevelopment, model disease and develop therapeutics.”
TTFN.
