SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Mitochondria are the organelles ("small organs") within almost all biological cells that provide energy to the cell (in the form of ATP) but they also have a number of other crucial functions and biological importance in relation to diseases and death.
The SENS Research Foundation (SRF) (Wikipedia link) co-founded by Aubrey de Grey (who also co-founded the Methuselah Foundation (Wikipedia link)) are ultimately looking for ways to defeat death, or less controversially stated "ending aging" or even less so "transform the way the world researches and treats age-related disease" and identified mitochondrial mutations as one of seven key types of cellular damage they wished to find strategies and cures against.
As part of this the SRF launched a crowdfunding campaign called the MitoSENS Mitochondrial Repair Project which has now surpassed its funding target. The aim of the project is to engineer replacements for mitochondrial genes from copies of the genome so that mitochondrial functions can restored when lost as happens during aging and mitochondrial diseases.
An excerpt from the MitoSENS funding page:
At the SENS Research Foundation, we are in the early stages of creating an innovative system to repair these mitochondrial mutations. If this project is successful we will have demonstrated, for the first time, a mechanism that can provide your cells with a modified backup copy of the entire mitochondrial genome. This genome would then reside within the protective confines of the cell's nucleus, thereby mitigating damage to the mitochondrial genome. In fact, during the long course of evolution, this gradual transfer of genetic information into the nucleus has already occurred with the majority of mitochondrial genome, leaving behind a mere 13 protein coding genes within the mitochondria. Demonstrating the effectiveness of this technology would be a major milestone in the prevention and reversal of aging in the human body.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday October 05 2015, @07:06PM
Sports as we know them could just die due to advances like this. Aging will be slowed and reversed, skewing age brackets, artificial and synthetic organs will allow athletes to compete longer and better, gender differences will narrow, genomes will be altered, and brain implants could make movement more precise and shorten reaction times. Blade legs, chemicals, and blood doping are just the beginning.
Society could attempt to keep all of these medical advances out of the hands of competition athletes, but at some point the advances will be so tremendous that it would become unethical to create an "athlete class". If only a few advances are permitted, bureaucrats will have to pick and choose, creating more controversy (no cannabis, cough syrup, or hair gel [science20.com] for you!) and a complicated system [usada.org].
In the coming decades we will learn just how damaging sports can be. [wikipedia.org] The ability to repair traumatic injuries could actually breathe some life into sports and fix a health cost-benefit analysis problem [nytimes.com]. But a rejuvenated/healed player will be closer to an ubermensch than ever before.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]