Google Wants to Fund Radical Life Extension Startups

ORIGINAL: Maria Konovalenko

I think you’ve all read the news that Google is to fund radical life extension, cryogenics and nanotechnology. My thoughts about it:

1. I love the sound of it, obviously “We look for entrepreneurs with a healthy disregard for the impossible.” Ah, it’s it beautiful? However, I don’t want to be too happy too prematurely. Even though Google Ventures invests in 23andme and Foundation Medicine, which is not a bad start in the right direction, but we’ll see how it goes and what companies they will choose to support in the future.
2. How do they make sure they won’t invest in the swindlers that crowded the anti-aging field? I wonder how the choosing and verification process is organized and who the experts in radical life extension field are.
3. Why cryogenics, but not cryonics or cryopreservation? Or do they seriously mean freezing metals and other materials? How is that going to save billions of lives?
4. And my major concern – what about basic science? I do realize I writing about a venture fund. However, I believe without investing in the fundamental science behind radical life extension, there will be no radical life extension, but only the frauds who offer snake oil and claim that it heals all diseases including aging. Investors love simple solutions. There can be no simple solution in radical life extension. We know quite a few examples when investors got severely disappointed when they fell under the spell of simplicity and gave money for a pill to stop aging. Obviously, there can be no single pill, so the investors fell like fools and shut the door of opportunity for good projects. I am very concerned that something similar might happen to Google Ventures. In order to prevent this situation Google Ventures should pay a lot of attention to basic research into the mechanisms of aging and have a well educated and experienced team of experts who can distinguish bad projects from the good ones.
5. Google Ventures has a great potential to improve the attitude to radical life extension and cryonics. By choosing these fields Google sets a terrific example for other companies and agencies, as well as for the public, to pay attention to these topics. This can very quite helpful in creating the positive image of life extension, because everyone knows that Google is no fool and won’t invest in useless things.

New online game to design RNA molecules: advancing nanotechnology?

ORIGINAL: www.foresight.org

(Credit: EteRNA)

As we pointed out a few months ago, the greater complexity of folding rules for RNA compared to its chemical cousin DNA gives RNA a greater variety of compact, three-dimensional shapes and a different set of potential functions than is the case with DNA, and this gives RNA nanotechnology a different set of advantages compared to DNA nanotechnology as a road towards atomically precise manufacturing. Proteins have even more complex folding rules and an even greater variety of structures and functions. We also noted here that online gamers playing Foldit topped scientists in redesigning a protein to achieve a novel enzymatic activity that might be especially useful in developing molecular building blocks for molecular manufacturing. Now KurzweilAI.net brings news of an online game that allows players to design RNA molecules “New videogame lets amateur researchers mess with RNA“.

EteRNA, an online game with more than 38,000 registered users, allows players to design molecules of ribonucleic acid — RNA — that have the power to build proteins or regulate genes.

EteRNA players manipulate nucleotides, the fundamental building blocks of RNA, to coax molecules into shapes specified by the game.

Those shapes represent how RNA appears in nature while it goes about its work as one of life’s most essential ingredients.

EteRNA was developed by scientists at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities, who use the designs created by players to decipher how real RNA works. The game is a direct descendant of Foldit — another science crowdsourcing tool disguised as entertainment — which gets players to help figure out the folding structures of proteins.

The game’s elite players compete for a unique and wondrous prize: the chance to have RNA designs of their own making brought to life. Every two weeks, four to 16 player-designed molecules are picked to be synthesized in an RNA lab at Stanford.

The chance to win this reward has proven highly motivating for EteRNA‘s players. They carefully study the data that the lab provides on how the synthesized molecules behave when ushered into existence, then use their observations to refine their next designs. In doing so, they — like their Foldit-playing peers — have helped scientists take advantage of the human brain’s unparalleled talent for recognizing patterns and solving puzzles.

But EteRNA players have also done something much more profound: By scrutinizing their creations, learning from their triumphs and mistakes, and using their accumulated wisdom to develop new hypotheses, they aren’t just building better RNA molecules; they’re discovering fundamental aspects of biochemistry that no one — not even the world’s top RNA researchers — knew before. And in doing so, they are blurring the line that separates gamer from scientist …

The article goes on to discuss a growing movement among EteRNA players to synthesize their RNA molecules themselves, linking online scientific game-playing and crowd-sourced molecular design to Open Science and DIY Biotechnology. The EteRNA web site provides tutorials to get new users started and instant feedback. Could games like Foldit and EteRNA represent new crowd-sourced paths to the more rapid development of atomically precise manufacturing?

—James Lewis, PhD