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I posted two videos over on PeterAllenWrites, both are about Antibody Drug Conjugates. In the papers I talk about, the idea is to attach a very toxic drug to an antibody. The antibody can carry the drug into specific, targeted cells. In these papers, the targets were senescent cells, the half-dead cells that cause some of the symptoms of aging. If we could remove these cells specifically, we could reverse aging to some degree.

The first paper (Poblocka et al) showed that antibodies with these drugs could kill senescent cells in a dish (Video 1). The second one (Takaya et al) showed that they could kill senescent cells in a mouse (Video 2). That represents a lot of progress between 2021 and 2023. But mice are not people. We still have a long way to go.

This post is available in video format, too!

Antibody-drug-conjugates are a really important experiment to do, but they are relatively hard to mass produce. Monoclonal antibody treatments were made available during COVID, but they are expensive and the supply is limited. These would likely be similar. But if an antibody drug cures an age-associated illness, then we will see an explosion of research into doing the same thing with cheaper chemistry.

I liked making those videos. In addition to the silly mouse comic, I got to make a little animation showing the antibody (a scientist jedi) the drug (the crazy lightsaber thing) and the DNA it is designed to kill (the weird extradimensional DNA monster thing on the right). I made the parts with Midjourney and played with the output in photoshop to segment the layers, then put it all together in Aftereffects to get the perspective shift. I’m still learning, but it was fun to try out.

Today I want to link you to a few articles, but first I want to do a quick aside.

A few videos back, I made a video about “essential oils.” At the time, I did not feel the need to justify the claim that essential oils are not essential for life. But I was thinking about it, and I realized I should have specified, because it’s funny. Essential oils are not essential. They are steam distilled from plants, and that’s a recent invention. Our caveman ancestors did not isolate the oils of nice-smelling plants to survive.

Articles and news (Linkblog):

Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found from chemistryworld.com

Chemistrywold reports that “an estimated 20 to 40 million tonnes of lithium metal lie within a volcanic crater formed around 16 million years ago. This is notably larger than the lithium deposits found beneath a Bolivian salt flat, previously considered the largest deposit in the world.”

Why This Award-Winning Piece of AI Art Can’t Be Copyrighted from WIRED

From Wired: “An award-winning piece of AI art cannot be copyrighted, the US Copyright Office has ruled. The artwork, Théâtre D’opéra Spatial, was created by Matthew Allen and came first in last year’s Colorado State Fair. Since then, the piece has been embroiled in a precedent-affirming copyright dispute.”

I’m very interested in the question of whether AI art can be copyrighted. Like, the caveman piece above was made primarily by MidJourney’s AI. But I composited it from multiple images in Photoshop and added the word bubble and the text. Where does it stand? The thing is, my problem is not people copying my work, my problem is obscurity. Copy my AI Art! Please! (But maybe send them here when you’re done?)

In the words of Woodie Guthrie: “This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin’ it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of our’n, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”

The Dark History Oppenheimer Didn’t Show also from WIRED

The author’s dad told him a story about the uranium that powered the first nuclear bombs. It as a story about a mine in Belgian Congo. I have not yet seen Oppenheimer, but I’m excited. I think this article highlights an often forgotten aspect of the arms race.

Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World a book by Tom Zoellner

In the book Uranium, I read the story different African Uranium mine with a strange natural history. It’s the remains of a natural nuclear reactor. This is so wild. To make a reactor, you need enough uranium‑235 in one place and a moderator. So, if you make a pile of enriched uranium and flood it, you can make it go critical. But a billion-plus years ago, there was more U-235 (it decays over time). Back then, a pile of unenriched uranium ore had enough U-235 to go critical. And it did! We can find all the leftover weird isotopes in the rocks. It’s called the Oklo mine. Here’s a Short article on the Oklo mine natural reactor at ScienceHistory.org

Science is real, and you can watch it happening right now, with LK-99 from The Washington Post

A substance created in a Korean lab could change everything. Or nothing. So it shook out that LK-99 is probably not a room temperature superconductor. That’s too bad. We could do some wild stuff with a room temperature superconductor. Fusion reactors would get far more possible and MRI machines would get far smaller and cheaper. It would be amazing. But people have been replicating LK-99 and its superconducting properties seem to be an experimental artifact. That’s how science works: by learning from the stuff that doesn’t work. 

Two books:

I’ve been reading about Science Denialism – like Flat Earthers, Anti-vaxxers, and Climate Deniers. I hate it but I can’t look away. I’ve been reading “The War on Science” and “How to talk to a science denier” and this kind of thing is really fascinating to me. How can it be addressed? Have you run across some like this on the internet? Not just science-illiterate, but confidently reality-contradictory?

Contact me:

If you have some juicy anti-science, drop me a link in the comments, or send me an email or voicemail! I’m putting a temporary address and phone number in the description and pinned comment. Get in touch! Maybe I can use your question/comment in a future video. I will leave you anonymous unless you tell me how you want to be credited. 

Temporary email: comments@peterallenlab.com

Voicemail number: +1 512 487 7544