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Here at PopSci we love a good broad agency announcement from DARPA (that's where they ask the private sector to do something technologically outrageous), but even next to the flying Humvees, the weather manipulation, the cyborg beetles, and the "hundred-year starships," this one, we have to say, is WAY out there. DARPA wants a genetic security system that's built into the genome that can monitor for and report on changes to an organism's genetic makeup.

What are the genetic, physiological, biochemical and psychological limits to the human body? Former UK Athletics Performance Director, Professor Dave Collins, joins sports scientists Dr Yannis Pitsiladis and Professor Andy Jones, and nutritionist Professor Ron Maughan to discuss the physiologic, genetic, psychosocial and economic determinants of success, and the limits to performance. Citius, Altius, Fortius is the Olympic motto, but how far, how fast and how high can we actually go?

An analysis on just how far we've come in our ability to facilitate evolution at a genetic level. We may even be creating our own code.!!

We speculate that the main selective pressures that have acted on regeneration are how first wounds are healed, and second, whether glial cells can retain access to embryonic genetic programmes to undertake neurogenesis. The latter may have limited CNS complexity in regenerative organisms.

The goal of NCHA research is to identify biological factors that determine good health at old age. NCHA integrates scientific disciplines, technological innovations and biomedical research in the largest collection of world-renowned human cohort studies. Rooted in the EU, NCHA has become a global player by large collaborative efforts with excellent scientific output. Activities in NCHA involve genetic en genomic discoveries all the way down to human intervention studies.

Here's a good reason to pay attention in math class. Nature Communications has published a paper from Ottawa researchers today, outlining how advanced mathematical modelling can be used in the fight against cancer. The technique predicts how different treatments and genetic modifications might allow cancer-killing, oncolytic viruses to overcome the natural defences that cancer cells use to stave off viral infection.

Fascinating overview of modern days genetics and what it teaches us about evolution. 

According to the "RNA world" model of life's origin, RNA performed all of the operations that are essential to life. RNA alone passed on genetic information and catalyzed the reactions of basic metabolism; DNA and proteins were not in the picture. The RNA world hypothesis is an appealingly simple model for simple early life forms, since it allows the complex array of biochemical interactions among proteins, DNA, and RNA to evolve gradually.