by The strange case of the queen bee has long thought about scientists whether the head of the beehive houses the secret of a long and healthy life.
While queen bees and workers have almost identical DNA, the queens enjoy what could be seen as royal privileges. They are larger, fertile and survival for years compared to workers who last a few months in comparison.
Now the researchers are preparing to deal with the APIAN biology in the hope that the understanding of what royal bees will thrive will unlock radical therapies in order to extend the human lifespan and extend our fertile years.
The ambitious project is located in the Advanced Research + Invention Agency, a government agency supported by 800 million GBP for financing high risk research, which can certainly fail but could redesign society if it is successful.
“It is these crazy ideas that have the potential to really transform everyone’s life,” said Yannick Wurm, one of eight program directors that were announced by Aria on Monday. Wurm, former professor of evolutionary genomics and bioinformatics at Queen Mary University of London, will monitor projects for studying bees, wasps, ants and termites for the human advantage.
“If we are able to disguise and to undo the engineer, how nature has solved these challenges for them, this can be transformative for the break of aging, human fertility, transportation of organs and to combat diseases,” he said.
Aria is viewed as a binding Dominic Cummings as a former chief advisor of Boris Johnson and is inspired by the agency of the defense Advanced Research Projects, Darpa. The US agency is attributed to fundamental work throughout the technology, from the Internet and GPS to Stealth Fighter and Siri, the virtual assistant from Apple.
Aria announced his first tranche of directors in 2023 and led to research projects on AI security, dextral robots, synthetic plants and an advanced interface between brain activity in the NHS. The agency gives the directors the freedom to finance around 50 million GBP in speculative and lower -explained areas.
The young queen bees take care of the middle of the flight and store sperm from many men in an organ called Spermatheca. Queens then releases the sperm over its lifespan to fertilize their eggs. In the beehive, the workers feed the royal jelly Queen Royal, a nutrient and vitamin-rich secretion, from which it is assumed that they contribute to the longer life of the bee, together with specific antioxidants and intestinal microbes. Last year, scientists extended the life of workers’ bees by transplanting intestinal microbes from Queens.
Related: The secret of finding one of the most endangered bumblebees in the United States? Dog
Other Aria projects aim to replace plastics with programmable materials inspired by nature. Use energy from the atmosphere to enable a potentially unlimited flight and find ways to manipulate the innate immune system – the first line of defense of the body – to tackle infectious diseases, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
Ivan Jayapurna, who came to Aria from the University of California in Berkeley, would like to revise the production of materials and replace plastics with sustainable, naturally inspired alternatives. After the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, he believes that we are now in the plastic age and have to continue.
“Plastic is a useful poster child what a bad modern material looks like, but it is really time to rethink how we produce all materials, not just plastics.” He added “organic harmonic” materials, adaptive, self-healing and sustainable.
Each Aria program lasts three to five years, but many take longer to bear fruit. “We often describe our programs as sending a flare to say that something is possible here,” said Pippy James, Chief Product Officer at Aria. “It is not necessarily that we have reached the version of the future at the end of this specific program.
“We have to feel very comfortable with the failure. It could be one thing that we would have become the next internet and that the whole failure and learning on the way to this point would have brought.”
