Genetic engineering essay

By: Brittany Erpestad

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Genetic engineering essay - Video

Genomics researcher Alison Van Eenennaam, with Monsanto's Robert Fraley, argues that genetically modified foods have increased farmers' yields and profits around the world. Samuel LaHoz/Intelligence Squared U.S. hide caption

Genomics researcher Alison Van Eenennaam, with Monsanto's Robert Fraley, argues that genetically modified foods have increased farmers' yields and profits around the world.

Many plants we eat today are a result of genetic modifications that would never occur in nature. Scientists have long been altering the genes of food crops, to boost food production and to make crops more pest-, drought- and cold-resistant.

Proponents of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, say that farmers who grow these crops are able to use fewer environmentally damaging pesticides. The increased yields of GMO crops, they also argue, are essential to feeding the world's growing population. And proponents say that numerous studies have shown that genetically modified foods are safe to eat.

Critics, however, say the claims of those benefits are overblown. They say farmers growing GMO crops have actually increased their use of herbicides. And widespread use of the crops, they say, have also led to an increase in herbicide- and pesticide-resistant weeds and insects. And, they argue, there is still no scientific consensus on the long-term safety of these foods.

Four scientists recently took on those questions in an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate, facing off two against two on the motion, "Genetically Modify Food." In these Oxford-style debates, the team that sways the most people to its side by the end is the winner.

Before the debate, the audience at the Kaufman Music Center in New York voted 32 percent in favor of the motion, with 30 percent against and 38 percent undecided. Afterward, 60 percent agreed with the motion, and 31 percent disagreed making the side arguing in favor of the motion the winners of this debate.

Those debating:

FOR THE MOTION

Robert Fraley is executive vice president and chief technology officer at Monsanto, where he has worked for more than 30 years. He currently oversees the company's global technology division which includes plant breeding, biotechnology and crop protection research facilities in dozens of countries. Fraley has authored more than 100 publications and patent applications. In 2013, he was honored as a World Food Prize Laureate and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2008 National Academy of Sciences Award for the Industrial Application of Science for his work on crop improvement and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999.

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Debate: Should We Genetically Modify Food?

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Michael Hadjiargyrou, Ph.D., of New York Institute of Technologys College of Arts and Sciences, an expert in engineering new musculoskeletal tissue, is available to discuss advanced bio-science predictions for 2015.

Undoubtedly, next year we will continue to see research advances in the realm of Tissue Engineering/Regenerative Medicine (TERM), says Hadjiargyrou, who specializes in molecular and cell biology, genetic engineering, biomaterials and stem cell research. Specifically, we will witness the formation of more tissues and possibly even organs fabricated in the laboratory with the use of 3D printers (Bioprinters).

Hadjiargyrou specifically identifies the heart valve, blood vessel, trachea, kidney, and liver, as the tissue or organs that will be printed with the use of 3D printers; kidneys, livers and hearts are most in demand.

Additionally, the successful transplantation of some of these laboratory tissues and organs will be achieved, particularly in Europe, as they have been more active in transplantation of biomaterials. With the emergence of such breakthroughs, we will begin to see more and more clinical and even cosmetic applications of TERM.

Hadjiargyrou focuses on studying the molecular mechanisms involved in bone regeneration as a way to better understand the healing of fractures. Hadjiargyrou teaches general biology, genetic engineering, contemporary biotechnology and biomedical research in Old Westbury, NY.

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NYIT Expert Predicts Growth in Demand for 3D Kidneys, Livers and Hearts

Google has spent the past decade-and-a-half perfecting the science of recognizing patterns in the chaos of information on the web. Now its applying that expertise to searching for clues to the genetic causes of autism in the vast sea of data contained in the human genome.

On Tuesday, autism advocacy group Autism Speaks said it was partnering with Google to sequence the genomes of 10,000 people on the autism spectrum along with their family members. Google will host and index the data for qualified researchers to sift as they hunt for variations in DNA that could hint at autisms genetic origins.

We believe that the clues to understanding autism lie in that genome, Rob Ring, Autism Speaks chief science officer, told WIRED. Wed like to leverage the same kind of technology and approach to searching the internet every day to search into the genome for these missing answers.

The project will make use of Google Genomics, a tool launched by the company several months ago with little fanfare on Googles Cloud Platform. As sequencing the human genome becomes ever-faster and cheaperRing says it can be done for about $2,500, compared to nearly $3 billion for the Human Genome Projectthe volume of genetic data generated by researchers has grown astronomically. By allowing researchers to dump that data onto its servers, Google gets to show off and improve the capabilities of its cloud while providing a potentially important service.

David Glazer, director of engineering for Google Genomics and formerly director of engineering for Google Plus, says that instead of searching for keywords, researchers can search for particular regions and sequences along genomes and find sections with common variations. And because a single human genome can run to 100 gigabytes, having the data in a central location makes remote collaboration among researchers easier. Youre a lot more efficient than shipping around station wagons full of hard drives, Glazer says.

Liz Feld, president of Autism Speaks, says she hopes that intense genetic analysis will help researchers tailor more individualized treatments, much as genomic analysis has led to a more refined understanding of different subtypes of cancer. What matters most to us is that this research is going to allow us to uncover and understand the various forms of autism, Feld says.

The autism genomics project is hardly the first Google foray into health and medicine. The company has targeted everything from Parkinsons disease to cancer, though genomics research is especially well suited to Googles technological strengths. In recent years, researchers have come to see biology as ripe for understanding by way of computing as much as chemistry. After all, nature has spent billions of years perfecting DNA as its most efficient way for storing and transferring information.

Autism Speaks has itself been collected genomic data for more than a decade, Ring says. Now he says he believes they have the tools to do something valuable with it: We realized that some of our biggest biology problems were really big data problems.

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Google Opens Its Cloud to Crack the Genetic Code of Autism

International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB)
CGEB is an international organization that operates within the UN Common System and performs cutting edge research and training in molecular biology and gene...

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International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) - Video

D27M - Genetic engineering (rock version 2014)
omd cover, rock version 2014. http://www.d27m.fr.mu Created with MAGIX Music Maker 2015.

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D27M - Genetic engineering (rock version 2014) - Video

No scientific proof that genetically modified crops are harmful - Central Governmnt
The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee has approved field trials of 12 genetically modified crops. Responding to queries in Rajya Sabha regarding the controversial decision, Environment...

By: Puthiya Thalaimurai TV

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No scientific proof that genetically modified crops are harmful - Central Governmnt - Video

Convergent Evolution - Genetic Engineering [Evolutio]
http://www.beatport.com/release/evolutio/1406055 https://www.facebook.com/pages/Convergent-Evolution/327176334122235.

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Convergent Evolution - Genetic Engineering [Evolutio] - Video

Seoul, South Korea (PRWEB) December 05, 2014

Imagine yourself as a mad scientist on a quest to breed the perfect beast. Thats exactly the premise behind Remimorys latest release D.N.Age.

Set inside a fantasy world, players take on the role of a lost adventurer who finds himself transported to an alternate dimension. In order to get back home, he must search for magical items in forests, deserts, and dungeons with the help of a team of monsters.

D.N.Age strikes a perfect balance between a dungeon-crawler RPG and monster raising simulator with a very unique twist. The upgrade system is unlike anything seen before, based around genetics and DNA manipulation. Players can collect monsters on dungeon raids, then analyze their DNA for specific traits and breed them with other monsters to improve their traits and make them stronger.

The game brings a whole range of customization options including the ability to dress and style your virtual assistant a rather attractive elf who guides you on your quest; a medicine crafting clinic; and a lab to grow special herbs.

Remimory has gone with a premium model, pricing the game at $4.99 USD, to avoid pushy free-to-play monetization strategies. The game can is now available on Google Play and the App Store.

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.remimory.projectd

App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/d.n.age/id941496594?mt=8

For more information contact Curtis File at curtis.file@latisglobal.com.

About Remimory: Remimory is a small, indie game studio based out of Seoul South Korea. They are known for the game Color Symphony, a simple side scrolling RPG for PC. D.N.Age marks the companys foray into the premium mobile sphere.

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D.N.Age Brings Genetic Engineering and Monsters to Premium Mobile Games

Discussion Starters Human Genetic Engineering
Discussion Starters Human Genetic Engineering.

By: Alen Zilic

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Discussion Starters Human Genetic Engineering - Video

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Dec-2014

Contact: Kat J. McAlpine katherine.mcalpine@wyss.harvard.edu 617-432-8266 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard @wyssinstitute

(BOSTON) -- Stem cells offer great potential in biomedical engineering due to their pluripotency, which is the ability to multiply indefinitely and also to differentiate and develop into any kind of the hundreds of different cells and bodily tissues. But the precise complexity of how stem cell development is regulated throughout states of cellular change has been difficult to pinpoint until now.

By using powerful new single-cell genetic profiling techniques, scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Boston Children's Hospital have uncovered far more variation in pluripotent stem cells than was previously appreciated. The findings, reported today in Nature, bring researchers closer to a day when many different kinds of stem cells could be leveraged for disease therapy and regenerative treatments.

"Stem cell colonies contain much variability between individual cells. This has been considered somewhat problematic for developing predictive approaches in stem cell engineering," said the study's co-senior author James Collins, Ph.D., who is a Wyss Institute Core Faculty member, the Henri Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science at MIT, and a Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT. "Now, we have discovered that what was previously considered problematic variability could actually be beneficial to our ability to precisely control stem cells."

The research team has learned that there are many small fluctuations in the state of a stem cell's pluripotency that can influence which developmental path it will follow.

It's a very fundamental study but it highlights the wide range of states of pluripotency," said George Daley, study co-senior author, Director of Stem Cell Transplantation at Boston Children's Hospital and a Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School. "We've captured a detailed molecular profile of the different states of stem cells."

Taking this into account, researchers are now better equipped to manipulate and precisely control which cell and tissue types will develop from an individual pluripotent stem cell or stem cell colony.

"The study was made possible through the use of novel technologies for studying individual cells, which were developed in part by collaborating groups at the Broad Institute, giving our team an unprecedented view of stem cell heterogeneity at the individual cell level," said Patrick Cahan, co-lead author on the study and Postdoctoral Fellow at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

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New single-cell analysis reveals complex variations in stem cells

Duke University has signed an exclusive licensing agreement with Editas Medicine, a leading genome editing company, for genetic engineering technologies developed in the lab of Charles Gersbach, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. The agreement focuses on Gersbachs work with genome engineering technologies known as CRISPR/Cas9 and TALENs.

Charles Gersbach

The agreement allows broad use of the technology developed in Gersbachs lab for the prevention or treatment of human disease. To this point, Gersbachs most notable work in that field is on Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic disease affecting one in 3,500 newborn males that currently has no approved treatment and causes muscular deterioration, paralysis and eventual death, usually by age 25. Gersbachs work is focused on using gene editing to correct the mutated gene that causes the disease, in contrast to treating the resulting symptoms of the disease. Gersbach has also pioneered the use of both CRISPR/Cas9 and TALEs for turning on genes in a way that could be used to treat degenerative disorders or compensate for genetic defects.

Charlies deep expertise in both genome editing and in this area of biology is a tremendous asset as we begin to understand how to apply genome editing technologies to specific diseases, said Katrine Bosley, chief executive officer of Editas Medicine. Gersbach is also serving as a scientific advisor to Editas.

Editas is a leading genome editing company and part of a transformational new area of healthcaregenomic medicine. The company was founded by the pioneers and world leaders in genome editing bringing specific expertise in CRISPR/Cas9 and TALENs technologies. The companys mission is to translate its proprietary technology into novel solutions to treat a broad range of genetically-driven diseases.

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Duke Signs Exclusive Licensing Agreement with Leading Genome Editing Company

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-Dec-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, NY, December 4, 2014--Recommendations by physician groups to avoid bedsharing among mothers and their babies are intended to reduce sleep-related infant deaths. But evidence suggests that the risks of bedsharing have been over-emphasized, advice never to bedshare is unrealistic, and avoiding bedsharing may interfere with breastfeeding, according to an article in Breastfeeding Medicine, the official journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Breastfeeding Medicine website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/bfm.2014.0113 until January 4, 2015.

In "Speaking Out on Safe Sleep: Evidence-Based Infant Sleep Recommendations, Melissa Bartick, MD, MSC, Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School (Cambridge, MA), and Linda Smith, MPH, IBCLC, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University (Dayton, OH), discuss the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) recommendations against all bedsharing for sleep, the leading modifiable risk factors for preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), and the potential for the AAP's bedsharing recommendations to interfere with the frequency, duration, and exclusivity of breastfeeding.

"The alternatives to feeding an infant in bed, such as on a couch, lounge chair, or rocker are far greater risks for SIDS," says Ruth Lawrence, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Breastfeeding Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine. "Bed-sharing increases the risk of SIDS when the infant is bottle fed or the mother is obese or impaired by smoking, alcohol, or illicit drugs. These are correctable risks of SIDS. Breastfeeding is protective, and the editors of Breastfeeding Medicine are pleased that the AAP Task Force on SIDS is strongly supporting breastfeeding."

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About the Journal

Breastfeeding Medicine, the official journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine, is an authoritative, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal published 10 times per year in print and online. The Journal publishes original scientific papers, reviews, and case studies on a broad spectrum of topics in lactation medicine. It presents evidence-based research advances and explores the immediate and long-term outcomes of breastfeeding, including the epidemiologic, physiologic, and psychological benefits of breastfeeding. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Breastfeeding Medicine website at http://www.liebertpub.com/bfm.

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Recommendations against mother-infant bedsharing interfere with breastfeeding

CSHL Keynote Series, Dr. Christopher Voight, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"Pushing the scale of genetic engineering" from the Synthetic Biology meeting in Suzhou China, CSHL-Asia 12/2/2014.

By: CSHL Leading Strand

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CSHL Keynote Series, Dr. Christopher Voight, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Video

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

3-Dec-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, NY, December 3, 2014--Hereditary angioedema (HAE), a rare genetic disease that causes recurrent swelling under the skin and of the mucosal lining of the gastrointestinal tract and upper airway, usually first appears before 20 years of age. A comprehensive review of the therapies currently available to treat HAE in adults shows that some of these treatments are also safe and effective for use in older children and adolescents. Current and potential future therapies are discussed in a Review article in a special issue of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ped.2014.0412 until January 3, 2015.

Based on the current medical literature, Eveline Wu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Michael Frank, Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC), report that additional therapies are now approved for use in the pediatric age group. In their article "Management of Hereditary Angioedema in Childhood: A Review" they also discuss clinical trials and published experience among younger age groups for which data are most limited.

"HAE is a potentially life-threatening disease that until recently had very limited therapeutic options for children," says Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology Editor-in-Chief Mary Cataletto, MD, Professor of Clinical Pediatrics, State University of New York at Stony Brook (Stony Brook, NY). "This special issue of Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, developed in collaboration with Guest Editor Dr. Timothy Craig, has been created for physicians who care for children. It focuses on recent advances in HAE-related immunophysiology, as well as current and future therapies for acute and chronic care and prophylaxis."

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About the Journal

Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal published in print and online. The Journal synthesizes the pulmonary, allergy, and immunology communities in the advancement of the respiratory health of children. The Journal provides comprehensive coverage to further the understanding and optimize the treatment of some of the most common and costly chronic illnesses in children. It includes original translational, clinical, and epidemiologic research; public health, quality improvement, and case control studies; patient education research; and the latest research and standards of care for functional and genetic immune deficiencies and interstitial lung diseases. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology website at http://www.liebertpub.com/ped.

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Are there safe and effective treatments for hereditary angioedema in children?

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

3-Dec-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, NY, December 3, 2014--Are adolescents who view pornography or music videos more likely to engage in sexting, in which they share sexually explicit content via text, photo, or video using cell phones, email, or social networking sites? A study of the media consumption and sexting behavior of more than 300 teens is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.

In "The Associations Between Adolescents' Consumption of Pornography and Music Videos and Their Sexting Behavior," authors Joris Van Ouytsel, MSc, Koen Ponnet, PhD, and Michel Walrave, PhD, University of Antwerp, Belgium, determined whether viewing pornography or watching music videos was predictive of sexting among adolescents, involving sending or receiving sexually explicit text messages, pictures, or videos. They found a statistically significant link between pornography and sexting for both boys and girls.

"The results found in this study may be useful to consider during both prevention and treatment," says Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium.

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About the Journal

Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly online with Open Access options and in print that explores the psychological and social issues surrounding the Internet and interactive technologies, plus cybertherapy and rehabilitation. Complete tables of contents and a sample issue may be viewed on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.

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Sexting and pornography or music video viewing among adolescents: Is there a link?

Cyrus Co. Genetic Engineering Episode 1(E.G.C.)
This facility was funded by Coronia Corp. No hate mail.

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By Isaac Fletcher, contributing writer, Food Online

J.R. Simplots Innate potato may provide potential health benefits through genetic engineering, but uncertainty over long-term risks and degree of benefits raise some concerns

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has recently approved for commercial planting a potato that has been genetically engineered to reduce the amounts of a potentially harmful ingredient that appear in French fries and potato chips. When potatoes are fried, a chemical called acrylamide, which is suspected of causing cancer, is produced. The genetic engineering involves altering the potatos DNA so that when the potato is fried, the amount of acrylamide that appears is reduced. Additionally, the genetically-engineered potato is resistant to bruising. This will help potato growers and processors lower the instances of damage during shipping and storage, leading to fewer occurrences of lost value and unusable product. The potatoes have been developed by the J.R. Simplot Company of Boise, Idaho, a major supplier of McDonalds frozen French fries.

Rather than solely providing benefit to farmers and producers, the potato is among a new wave of genetically-engineered crops designed to provide benefits to consumers. However, with many consumers calling into question the safety of genetically-modified foods, the new potato may face some challenges in winning over consumer approval. Such consumer concerns raise questions about whether the potatoes will be used by various food companies and restaurant chains.

In the 1990s, genetically-modified potatoes were introduced by Monsanto in an effort to provide resistance against the Colorado potato beetle. However, the market crumbled when major buyers of potatoes instructed suppliers to not grow them due to fears over consumer resistance. However, the new potato from Simplot has some advantages that may help it weather the tide of consumer uncertainty.

First of all, the potato aims to provide potential health benefits to consumers rather than just providing cost-savings to suppliers and producers. Furthermore, Simplot is a well-established power in the potato industry and has likely been laying the foundation for product acceptance among its customers. The other strength of Simplots potato is that, unlike many other genetically-engineered crops, the potatoes do not contain genes from any other species, instead, the potato contains fragments of potato DNA that serve to mute four of the potatoes own genes involved in the production of particular enzymes. For this reason, Simplot has chosen to call its product the Innate potato, an innocuous name that may help win over consumer acceptance. Haven Baker, head of potato development at Simplot, explains, We are trying to use genes from the potato plant back into the potato plant. We believe theres some more comfort in that.

However, that is not to say that the Innate potato will not face roadblocks along the way. There are some questions over the long-term effects of this kind of engineering and, according to Doug Gurian-Sherman, a plant pathologist and senior scientist at the Center for Food Safety, much about RNA interference the technique used to mute the genes is not fully understood. Gurian-Sherman argues, We think this is a really premature approval of a technology that is not being adequately regulated. Additionally, the benefits of reducing acrylamide levels by 50 to 75 percent are still unclear.

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USDA Gives Genetically-Engineered Potatoes The Thumbs Up

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

2-Dec-2014

Contact: Kathryn Ryan kryan@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News @LiebertOnline

New Rochelle, NY, December 2, 2014--A study of active duty U.S. Marines who suffered a recent or previous concussion(s) examined whether persistent post-concussive symptoms (PPCS) and lingering effects on cognitive function are due to concussion-related brain trauma or emotional distress. The results are different for a recent concussion compared to a history of multiple concussions, according to the study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available Open Access on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/neu.2014.3363.

James Spira, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and University of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI), Corinna Lathan, AnthroTronix, Inc. (Silver Spring, MD), Joseph Bleiberg, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (Bethesda, MD), and Jack Tsao, U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (Falls Church, VA), assessed the effects of concussion on persistent symptoms, independent of deployment history, combat exposure, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. They describe the results for persons with a recent concussion or who had ever had a concussion to those who had more than one lifetime concussion in the article "The Impact of Multiple Concussions on Emotional Distress, Post-Concussive Symptoms, and Neurocognitive Functioning in Active Duty United States Marines Independent of Combat Exposure or Emotional Distress".

John T. Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma and Professor, Medical College of Virginia Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, notes that "This study by Spira and colleagues represents an important contribution to our understanding of the negative impact of multiple concussions in a relatively large military population sustaining both deployment and non-deployment related trauma. The consistent observation that multiple concussive injuries are associated with worse emotional and post-concussive symptoms is an extremely important finding that must guide our evaluation of individuals, in both the military and civilian settings, who have sustained multiple concussive injuries. While the authors acknowledge some limitations of the current work and the need for future research to follow a similar cohort in terms of the time course and causality of the symptoms associated with concussion, overall this well done study adds significantly to our increased understanding of the adverse consequences of repetitive concussive/mild traumatic brain injury."

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About the Journal

Journal of Neurotrauma is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published 24 times per year in print and online that focuses on the latest advances in the clinical and laboratory investigation of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury. Emphasis is on the basic pathobiology of injury to the nervous system, and the papers and reviews evaluate preclinical and clinical trials targeted at improving the early management and long-term care and recovery of patients with traumatic brain injury. Journal of Neurotrauma is the official journal of the National Neurotrauma Society and the International Neurotrauma Society. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www.liebertpub.com/neu.

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Do concussions have lingering cognitive, physical, and emotional effects?

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Genetic engineering takes cells and alters their genes so they perform functions different from what nature originally intended. A new trend uses circuitry to re-engineer the cell. These biological circuits "wire" naturally occurring cells into a circuit that performs a new function, such as filling in for the dopamine-generating cells destroyed by Parkinson's disease.

"Our ultimate goal, many years from now, is complex medical applications, such as injection of a circuit into the bloodstream that looks for cancer cells and, when it finds one, injects a drug," Domitilla Del Vecchio, a professor at MIT, told EE Times. "Such a circuit would need a sensor, a computer, and an actuation component to inject the drug, and those are the kinds of components we are working on today."

Yeast cells (middle) are wired together like electronic components, but they communicate, not with electrical wires, but with chemicals that only plug into cells with the proper receptor. (Image: MIT)

Other possible applications include synthetic biological circuits that measure glucose levels constantly for diabetic patients and then automatically release insulin when it is needed.

The design process for such biocircuitry is slow and arduous compared with designing electronic circuits. For one thing, the researchers are not using nerves for communication. Instead, they use the normal communication method inside a natural cell, with the "output" secreting a chemical that only affects the "input" cells that have receptors tailored to be activated by that particular chemical.

The second big slowdown is the mathematics used to model the desired circuits. The researchers cannot use simple R-L-C equations like Ohm's Law. They must use the tedious mathematics of differential equations. "Biological circuits are very nonlinear, so we have to use differential equations to model them," Del Vecchio said.

Nevertheless, the payoff will make the effort worth it, since many maladies seem immune to solution by a simple symptom-treating drug. They require a complex cure that actively senses, computes, and responds. The best way to do that, according to MIT researchers, is to create cells that perform those functions internally, rather than trying to wire together an artificial neural network, as so many others have attempted.

Left to right: Ron Weiss, professor of biological engineering; Domitilla Del Vecchio, associate professor of mechanical engineering; and Deepak Mishra, MIT graduate student in biological engineering. (Image: MIT/Brian Teague)

"Besides nerve cells, there are many types of circuitry in biological systems, such as genetic circuitry that controls the expression of genes and the cells that controls the time keeping of the organism, such as when to get up in the morning," Del Vecchio said.

So far, most of the research group's circuits have been designed to sense something, using either yeast cells (in the illustration above) or bacteria cells. "Bacteria cells are much easier to work with, because they don't have a nucleus to deal with."

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Biologists Grow Living Circuits