The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

Super Strength Substance (Myostatin) Closer to Human Trials

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by Aaron Saenz on December 8th, 2009
National Children's Hospital used Macaque monkeys to test the effects of myostatin blocking on primates. The result:

National Children's Hospital used Macaques to test the effects of myostatin blocking on primates. The result: Muscular Monkeys

Get muscles now, ask me how. As published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, researchers at the National Children’s Hospital (NCH) and Ohio State University have proven that blocking myostatin in monkeys will lead to skeletal muscle growth with few or no discernible negative side effects. Myostatin is the protein that helps mammals regulate muscle building, acting as a signal for muscles to stop consuming resources and stop growing. Blocking myostatin leads to enhanced muscle strength and continuous muscle growth. You may remember Liam Hoekstra, the baby apparently born without the myostatin gene, and similarly enabled animals that have absurd strength. Using gene therapy, NCH scientists were able to get follistatin (a myostatin blocker) to promote phenomenal muscle growth in the quadriceps of macaque monkeys. NCH is now working with the FDA to perform the preliminary steps necessary for a human clinical trial. We could see a superman gene therapy available in the next decade.

The National Children’s Hospital interest in myostatin is not to create super strong children, but to help those children whose muscles have already atrophied. Muscular Dystrophy (MD) affects thousands of children in the US who slowly lose muscle and rarely survive into adulthood. Follistatin gene therapy could serve as a method to extend their lives or perhaps even reverse the symptoms of their conditions. Likewise, the eldery are susceptible to several diseases that lead to a loss of muscle strength and coordination. By blocking myostatin, we may all be able to live with the strength of our youth even as we age into our 80s.

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Another Step in Genetic Engineering: Glowing Primates

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by Andrew Kessel on June 3rd, 2009

The primate family tree seems to have gotten a bit brighter lately.  Earlier, Singularity Hub reported on Ruby Puppy, the genetically engineered glowing dog, and now the puppy has been one-upped by a team of Japanese scientists who have created a gaggle of glowing marmosets.  Monkeys are just steps away from humans on the evolutionary ladder.  Does that mean that we’ll soon be glowing too?

Glowing Primates: Terrible at Flashlight Tag

Glowing Primates: Terrible at Flashlight Tag (credit Erika Sasaki - Hideyuki Okano / AP)

The marmosets were given the glowing gene in much the same way as Ruby Puppy but, instead of glowing red like the transgenic dog, the primates glow green.  The genetic mutation of these marmosets holds many of the same implications as a glowing dog, including the potential study of many human diseases as well as the ethical dilemmas that come with the territory.  The marmoset itself was targeted for study because it reaches sexual maturity faster and has more offspring, allowing experiments to take less time from breeding to data collection.

Aside from the usual perks of having a genetically engineered pet/lab experiment, the plethora of scientists credited with writing the report believe that this is the first time that the offspring of genetically engineered primates are able to inherit the new trait.  This was proven when three out of the four second-generation marmosets bred in the experiment were capable of glowing under ultraviolet light.  The presence of this gene in the sperm and egg cells of the marmoset could not only lower the cost of each animal, but also increase the yield.  Whereas only a few marmosets matured to adulthood from the 900 original embryos, tradition breeding could allow for a much better survival rate.

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Monkey’s Thoughts Control Robot Halfway Across the World

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by Keith Kleiner on January 15th, 2009

The New York Times today reports on an awesome experiment in which thoughts were extracted from a monkey in the US and used to control a walking robot in Japan.  An electrode array implanted into the monkey’s brain was able to monitor roughly 300 neurons in the monkey’s brain that are correlated with the motor signals that cause the monkey to walk.  While the monkey was walking, the signals from these neurons were translated by software and relayed to the robot in Japan, causing the robot to walk.

For an hour the monkey watched a video of the far away robot and the two were walking in sync.  Then in the most exciting part of the experiment, the researchers turned off the treadmill and the monkey stopped walking.  Even though the monkey had stopped walking, the monkey was still watching the robot on the video and by thought alone the monkey was able to keep the robot walking for several minutes.

This experiment was carried out by Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University whose work includes our previous post about a similar experiment in which a monkey controlled robotic arms through a brain implant.  Experiments like these are just the beginning of the burgeoning field of brain computer interfaces (BCI).  In the not to distant future we will be tapping directly into the thoughts and memories that are currently trapped within our brains.

Below is a video of the experiment, followed by a diagram from the NYT article:

Monkey Controls Robotic Arm Using Brain-machine Interface

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by Keith Kleiner on August 16th, 2008

In May the New York Times and many other outlets reported on the “most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology”. From the article:

“The findings suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach.

In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill.

The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one.”

Check out this awesome video of a monkey operating a robotic arm:

Robo-monkey uses brain power to feed itself

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