Laboratory Summary Report: 2012

Winter Quarter

1. Dr. Robin Mockett, at University of Alabama, confirmed the longevity benefits of MX-100 on his fruit flies under certain conditions.
2. We begin writing the MX-100 paper, reporting these longevity results, with the goal of submitting to Plos One.
3. The Genescient Lab begins planning transgenic fly experiments with the 9 genes that we think make the O Flies live so long, according to our AI analysis. We also plan on testing the transgenic AD flies.
4. Preliminary testing is done to sort out the crawl test procedure and induction of A-beta in transgenic AD flies using RU486 (Mifpristone).
5. Dr. John Tower of USC has told us that other transgenic flies, ie with our longevity genes, should also be inducible with RU4486.

Spring Quarter

1. We have acquired, increased numbers, and maintained our targeted transgenic fly lines: 9 “O” longevity genes, transgenic AD flies carrying Tau, and transgenic AD flies carrying Abeta.
2. A new stress test is planned (on B flies) testing substances known in literature to act on the “O” genes.
3. Our preliminary AD fly crawling assays show that selenium, genestein (low and high dose), lithium, HCTZ, tretinoin, silymarin, and MX-100 all mitigate AD symptoms in transgenic flies with ABeta and Tau genes.

Summer Quarter

1. Our Gen18 stress test assays 13 new substances and compares them to the effects of MX-100.
2. The goal of Gen18 is to decide what should be added to MX-100 to make a novel and effective AD treatment to test using the transgenic AD fly model.
3. These results are another proof of concept for Ben Goertzel’s AI selection techniques, as the substances selected seem to be successful.
4. Our Gen19 experiment is a replicate of Dr. Robin Mockett’s protocol with MX-100, and we plan to include the results in the Plos One paper. Dr. Mockett’s protocol has flies living in vials instead of cages, and separated by sex. We are able to replicate his results: fly longevity is extended greatly in sex separated vials treated with MX-100.

Fall Quarter

1. Our Gen20 experiment tests the effects of RU induction on our 9 “O” longevity genes. If the genes are properly induced, the flies should live longer.
2. We find 2 out of the 9 genes significantly increase longevity when induced with RU, a “good” discovery rate using our machine learning and AI methods.
3. Our Gen21 experiment is a stress test assaying MX-100, individual components of MX-100, synthetic versions of components of MX-100, and some different combinations of the natural and synthetic components. The MX-100 formulation is still the best performing.
4. Our Gen22 experiment is another stress test assaying more substances and combinations based on Gen21. MX-100 and the other best performing combinations are to be tested using the transgenic AD fly model.