Long time readers know that Im generally OK with reificationas long as we dont take it too seriously. And we do that all the time. An object is really only an object in a human-sense. Reduced down to particle physics it is an altogether different entity. But on the human-scale asserting that a chair is indeed a chair, rather than cellulose, etc., (or now, polymers), and further down basic macromolecules, is a useful fudge. Similarly, Im generally skeptical of the idea that we have a clear & distinct model for what a species is. The framework is very different when youre talking about prokaryotes, as opposed to plants, as opposed to mammals. The question is not species, but what utility or instrumental value does the category or class species have?

For most of the stuff Im concerned with, the messy shapes of reality which are the purview of biological science, we are all fundamentally nominalists in our metaphysic. We may accept that were idealists in the sense of cognitive or evolutionary psychology, but human intuition does not make it so. The categories and classes we construct are simply the semantic sugar which makes the reality go down easier. They should never get confused for the reality that is, the reality which we perceive but darkly and with biased lenses. The hyper-relativists and subjectivists who are moderately fashionable in some humane studies today are correct to point out that science is a human construction and endeavor. Where they go wrong is that they are often ignorant of the fact that the orderliness of many facets of nature is such that even human ignorance and stupidity can be overcome with adherence to particular methods and institutional checks and balances. The predictive power of modern science, giving rise to modern engineering, is the proof of its validity. No talk or argumentation is needed. Boot up your computer. Drive your car.

All this is to preface my explanation of my post below, Finding Fake Roots. Some readers & commenters were a bit confused or unclear at what I was getting at. Here in a nutshell is the problem as I see it: in Finding Your Roots Henry Louis Gates Jr. shifts back and forth between uniparental phylogenies, more contemporary model clustering assessments of genetic relatedness and relationships, and natural history. The map above illustrates human migrations as they were commonly depicted in the mid-2000s during the peak of uniparental lineages. By uniparental, I mean the direct maternal line, as defined by mtDNA, and the direct paternal line, as defined by Y chromosomes. These two methods were easy to conceive as a phylogentic tree, because thats what these two genomic regions are. Theres no recombination; mixing & matching between parents. You get your Y from your paternal lineage (if you are male), and your mtDNA from your mother. These neat phylogenetic trees of mtDNA and Y chromosomal lineages were then easily transposed to a spatial and temporal scale. Ergo, nice cartographic infographics like the one above.

But all good things come to an end. With SNP chips, which allow researchers to type individuals across hundreds of thousands of markers, we now are at the stage where we can move beyond the direct maternal and paternal lines. Rather than just one line of descent, we get a full picture of ones ancestors. To the left are my daughters result from 23andMe. As I have noted before, Im 99% sure theres a problem with their results for people with particular mixed ancestries (my half East Asian/European friends get good results, so I assume its a reference population problem). She is about 40 percent South Asian on ADMIXTURE, and that makes sense since Im 80-90 percent South Asian (the balance is East Asian, which is not surprising due to my familys origin). But lets put that to the side. What are these results telling us?These algorithms are powerful. But we always need to be very careful about imposing our own frame upon them. They are excellent at gauging genetic relatedness, but they are not so excellent at telling us our history.

To the left is my best guess at my history. Im 80-90% South Asian. Thats pretty clear, and will show up on any clustering algorithm with explicit models. It will also be clear on a PCA, where South Asians can shake out as their own independent dimension. But 10,000 years ago South Asians as we understand them geneticallyprobably did not exist. By probably, Im about 95% sure. The genetic analyses which support this proposition are abstruse, but they make sense of a great deal of other data. The South Asian genetic cluster is a real one, but it is compound formed within the last 10,000 years of two very distinct populations. Just because it is a hybrid does not mean that one should automatically reduce it to its antecedents. Many real populations originate as hybrids. Similarly, I think that there is a high chance that Europeans, as we understand them today, did not exist 10,000 years ago. Rather, modern Europeans as well may be a compound of various populations which expanded demographically, and synthesized with each other, between the end of the Ice Age and history.

In my post below some commenters argued that obviously implausible inferences from a thin set of reference populations are acceptable considering Henry Louis Gates Jrs target audience. But that really wasnt my main point. Rather, it was that he was eliding the distinction between uniparental markers, and the clusters generated by modeled based ancestry assignment algorithms, and ascribing the phylogenies of the former to the latter. It is important to note that categories like Europeans are only approximations. But theyre damn good approximations today! Nevertheless, note the qualification of time: they may have basically no meaning at some point in the recent past. Theyre powerful when it comes to precisely partitioning modern variation, but they dont tell us the history of that variation.

When constructs lead us to a false perception of reality, were using them incorrectly. We shouldnt blame the abstractions. Rather, we should blame humans. Ourselves.

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Reification is alright by me! | Gene Expression

Viruses act as tiny piezoelectric generators

Viruses, tiny chunks of protein and nucleic acid, have long plagued mankind and its evolutionary ancestors before it. But thanks to the wonders of modern genetic engineering, researchers believe they have finally been able to instill a beneficial purpose in these deadly pests.

I. From Pest to Power

A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory -- one of 16 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories -- has created a special breed of virus that undergoes self-nanoassembly to form tiny piezoelectric generators -- machines which harvest mechanical energy (vibrations or pressure) to directly produce electricity.

The special "bug" is the M13 bacteriophage, a rod-shaped virus that only infects bacteria (such asE. coli bacteria)-- not humans.

Faculty researchersSeung-Wuk Lee, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, and Byung Yang Lee selected the virus due to its tendency to self-assemble into nanofilms, given its rod-like shape. The viruses tightly pack "like chopsticks in a box" and are easy to grow by the millions given a small supply of host bacteria.

II. Refining the Virus

But the effect was too weak to be of use. So the researchers spliced a quadruplet of negatively charged amino acids into one of the coat proteins. The results was a larger voltage gradient across the coat. The researchers also tested stacking films of the modifed viruses to see how thick they could layer the viruses in order to get the maximum effect.

When pressure was applied to the film a 400 millivolt, 6 nanoampere current was put off. That's about a quarter of the voltage of an AAA battery, albeit at a far smaller current. Still it was enough to power a '1' to show up on a low-power liquid crystal display.

Continue reading here:
Berkeley Trains "Harmless" Viruses to Harvest Human Kinetic Energy

After an epic debate over whether to release research detailing how scientists created H5N1 in the lab, Nature finally published one of the two controversial papers on Wednesday.

You might not have noticed, but the influenza world has been in a bit of an uproar since late last year, when news leaked out that two teams of researchers had purposefully tweaked H5N1 bird flu in the lab to potentially make it more transmissible among human beings. (H5N1 spreads like wildfire among birds and usually kills them but the virus only rarely seems to jump to human beings, though when it does the infections are often fatal.)

The two scientists Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of WisconsinMadison and TIME 100 honoree Ron Fouchier of Erasmus University in the Netherlands had submitted their research toNature andScience, respectively, with the expectation of swift publication. In December, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) did something unprecedented: they ruled that the two papers should be censored if published, that they should be scrubbed of the complete methods and viral mutations that the researchers studied, in order to head off the risk that terror groups could use the information to craft a deadly bioweapon.

(PHOTOS: The Bird Flu Outbreaks in 2008)

That led to intense fighting within the scientific community. Some researchers wanted the papers published in full, both because they believed the work could help arm us against a future flu pandemic, and because they worried about the chill of government censorship on science. Other scientists were against publication and even the experiments themselves, believing that nothing gleaned from the work could be important enough to offset the risk of creating a potentially deadly flu virus.

In the end, Fouchier explained that his man-made flu virus wasnt the merciless killer that early media reports had made it out to be Kawaokas man-made virus was always believed to be less dangerous and in March the NSABB took a look at revised papers submitted by the two research teams and voted to recommend that they be published.

On Wednesday, Nature finally published Kawaokas research. (Were still waiting for the Fouchier paper, though the Dutch scientist was recently granted an export license for his work, so it should appear soon.) The sobering takeaway: avian H5N1 flu viruses in nature may be only one mutation away from spreading effectively between mammals, likely including human beings. If that happens and if H5N1 retains its apparently sky-high mortality rate we could be in for serious trouble.

For all the controversy, the research itself is actually quite fascinating. Kawaoka and his team mutated H5N1s hemagglutinin (HA) gene the H in H5N1 which produces the protein the virus needs to attach itself to host cells. They produced millions of genes, mimicking the effect of random mutation in nature, and found one version of H5N1 hemagglutinin that seems particularly effective at invading human cells.

(MORE: Dangers of Man-Made Bird Flu Are Exaggerated, Its Creators Say)

The genes for that protein contained four new mutations, three of which altered the shape of the gene, while the fourth one changed the pH level at which the protein attaches to the cell and injects the viruss genetic material inside. (Its a bit reminiscent of Alien, if the virus is the face-hugger and this poor guys face is the cell.)The team combined the mutated HA gene with seven other genes flu viruses have eight genes in all from the highly transmissible if not highly deadly H1N1 strain, which caused the 2009 flu pandemic. The result was an H1N1 virus with mutant H5N1 hemagglutinin proteins on the outside.

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H5N1 Paper Published: Deadly, Transmissible Bird Flu Closer than Thought?

ScienceDaily (May 6, 2012) Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it.

But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.

The new automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides long-sought information about living cells' activities. Using this technique, scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells differ from normal cells.

The project is a collaboration between the labs of Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and Craig Forest, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.

"Our team has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, and this has enabled us to bring the principles of precision machine design to bear upon the study of the living brain," Forest says. His graduate student, Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, spent the past two years as a visiting student at MIT, and is the lead author of the study, which appears in the May 6 issue of Nature Methods.

The method could be particularly useful in studying brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, autism and epilepsy, Boyden says. "In all these cases, a molecular description of a cell that is integrated with [its] electrical and circuit properties has remained elusive," says Boyden, who is a member of MIT's Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research. "If we could really describe how diseases change molecules in specific cells within the living brain, it might enable better drug targets to be found."

Kodandaramaiah, Boyden and Forest set out to automate a 30-year-old technique known as whole-cell patch clamping, which involves bringing a tiny hollow glass pipette in contact with the cell membrane of a neuron, then opening up a small pore in the membrane to record the electrical activity within the cell. This skill usually takes a graduate student or postdoc several months to learn.

Kodandaramaiah spent about four months learning the manual patch-clamp technique, giving him an appreciation for its difficulty. "When I got reasonably good at it, I could sense that even though it is an art form, it can be reduced to a set of stereotyped tasks and decisions that could be executed by a robot," he says.

To that end, Kodandaramaiah and his colleagues built a robotic arm that lowers a glass pipette into the brain of an anesthetized mouse with micrometer accuracy. As it moves, the pipette monitors a property called electrical impedance -- a measure of how difficult it is for electricity to flow out of the pipette. If there are no cells around, electricity flows and impedance is low. When the tip hits a cell, electricity can't flow as well and impedance goes up.

The pipette takes two-micrometer steps, measuring impedance 10 times per second. Once it detects a cell, it can stop instantly, preventing it from poking through the membrane. "This is something a robot can do that a human can't," Boyden says.

The rest is here:
Robot reveals the inner workings of brain cells: Automated way to record electrical activity inside neurons in the ...

Newswise Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it.

But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.

The new automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides long-sought information about living cells activities. Using this technique, scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells differ from normal cells.

The project is a collaboration between the labs of Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and Craig Forest, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Our team has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, and this has enabled us to bring the principles of precision machine design to bear upon the study of the living brain, Forest says. His graduate student, Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, spent the past two years as a visiting student at MIT, and is the lead author of the study, which appears in the May 6 issue of Nature Methods.

The method could be particularly useful in studying brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinsons disease, autism and epilepsy, Boyden says. In all these cases, a molecular description of a cell that is integrated with [its] electrical and circuit properties has remained elusive, says Boyden, who is a member of MITs Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research. If we could really describe how diseases change molecules in specific cells within the living brain, it might enable better drug targets to be found.

Automation

Kodandaramaiah, Boyden and Forest set out to automate a 30-year-old technique known as whole-cell patch clamping, which involves bringing a tiny hollow glass pipette in contact with the cell membrane of a neuron, then opening up a small pore in the membrane to record the electrical activity within the cell. This skill usually takes a graduate student or postdoc several months to learn.

Kodandaramaiah spent about four months learning the manual patch-clamp technique, giving him an appreciation for its difficulty. When I got reasonably good at it, I could sense that even though it is an art form, it can be reduced to a set of stereotyped tasks and decisions that could be executed by a robot, he says.

To that end, Kodandaramaiah and his colleagues built a robotic arm that lowers a glass pipette into the brain of an anesthetized mouse with micrometer accuracy. As it moves, the pipette monitors a property called electrical impedance a measure of how difficult it is for electricity to flow out of the pipette. If there are no cells around, electricity flows and impedance is low. When the tip hits a cell, electricity cant flow as well and impedance goes up.

Read more:
Robot Reveals the Inner Workings of Brain Cells

Public release date: 1-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania

PHILADELPHIA Having a virtual copy of a patient's blood in a computer would be a boon to researchers and doctors. They could examine a simulated heart attack caused by blood clotting in a diseased coronary artery and see if a drug like aspirin would be effective in reducing the size of such a clot.

Now, a team of biomedical engineers and hematologists at the University of Pennsylvania has made large-scale, patient-specific simulations of blood function under the flow conditions found in blood vessels, using robots to run hundreds of tests on human platelets responding to combinations of activating agents that cause clotting.

Their work was published in the journal Blood.

Patient-specific information on how platelets form blood clots can be a vital part of care. Normally, clots prevent bleeding, but they can also cause heart attacks when they form in plaque-laden coronary arteries. Several drugs, including aspirin, are used to reduce the size of such clots and prevent heart attacks, but, as platelets differ from person to person, the efficacy of such drugs differs as well.

"Blood platelets are like computers in that they integrate many signals and make a complex decision of what to do," said senior author Scott Diamond, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. "We were interested to learn if we could make enough measurements in the lab to detect the small differences that make each of us unique. It would be impossible to do this with the cells of the liver, heart or brain. But we can easily obtain a tube of blood from each donor and run tests of platelet calcium release."

When blood platelets are exposed to the conditions of a cut or, in a more dangerous situation, a ruptured atherosclerotic plaque, they respond by elevating their internal calcium, which causes release of two chemicals, thromboxane and ADP. These two activating agents further enhance calcium levels and are the targets of common anti-platelet drugs such as aspirin or clopidogrel, also known as Plavix. By preventing platelets from increasing their calcium levels, these drugs make them less able to stick together and block blood vessels, decreasing the likelihood of a heart attack.

Since blood is a liquid, the liquid-handling robots originally developed for drug screening tests were ideal to test platelet function.

"We used a technique developed in our lab called 'pairwise agonist scanning' on platelets from three different donors to generate a massive data set of how their cells responded to all different pairs of these activating agents," Diamond said. "Then we trained neural network models for each donor based on this data to simulate how each and every cell in a blood clot is responding."

Read more:
Penn scientists develop large-scale simulation of human blood

ScienceDaily (May 2, 2012) Having a virtual copy of a patient's blood in a computer would be a boon to researchers and doctors. They could examine a simulated heart attack caused by blood clotting in a diseased coronary artery and see if a drug like aspirin would be effective in reducing the size of such a clot.

Now, a team of biomedical engineers and hematologists at the University of Pennsylvania has made large-scale, patient-specific simulations of blood function under the flow conditions found in blood vessels, using robots to run hundreds of tests on human platelets responding to combinations of activating agents that cause clotting.

Their work was published in the journal Blood.

Patient-specific information on how platelets form blood clots can be a vital part of care. Normally, clots prevent bleeding, but they can also cause heart attacks when they form in plaque-laden coronary arteries. Several drugs, including aspirin, are used to reduce the size of such clots and prevent heart attacks, but, as platelets differ from person to person, the efficacy of such drugs differs as well.

"Blood platelets are like computers in that they integrate many signals and make a complex decision of what to do," said senior author Scott Diamond, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. "We were interested to learn if we could make enough measurements in the lab to detect the small differences that make each of us unique. It would be impossible to do this with the cells of the liver, heart or brain. But we can easily obtain a tube of blood from each donor and run tests of platelet calcium release."

When blood platelets are exposed to the conditions of a cut or, in a more dangerous situation, a ruptured atherosclerotic plaque, they respond by elevating their internal calcium, which causes release of two chemicals, thromboxane and ADP. These two activating agents further enhance calcium levels and are the targets of common anti-platelet drugs such as aspirin or clopidogrel, also known as Plavix. By preventing platelets from increasing their calcium levels, these drugs make them less able to stick together and block blood vessels, decreasing the likelihood of a heart attack.

Since blood is a liquid, the liquid-handling robots originally developed for drug screening tests were ideal to test platelet function.

"We used a technique developed in our lab called 'pairwise agonist scanning' on platelets from three different donors to generate a massive data set of how their cells responded to all different pairs of these activating agents," Diamond said. "Then we trained neural network models for each donor based on this data to simulate how each and every cell in a blood clot is responding."

Neural networks are a way of looking at the relationship between inputs and outputs for very complex processes, rather than at the details of the process.

"They summarize the overall function of all the chemical reaction networks that are occurring within a single platelet," Diamond said.

See the original post here:
Large-scale simulation of human blood is boon to personalized medicine

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a very important part of a very special flu virus. It may look like an ordinary protein, but in fact its been at the center of a blazing debate about whether our increasing power to experiment on life could lead to a disaster. Not that long ago, in fact, a national security advisory board didnt even want you to see this. So feast your eyes.

For those who are new to this story let me start back at the beginning, in 1997.

In that year, a child in Hong Kong died of the flu. Doctors shipped a sample of his blood to virus experts in Europe, but they didnt bother taking a look at it for months. When they did, they were startled to discover that it was unlike any flu theyd seen in a human being before.

Each year, several different flu strains circulate from person to person around the world. Theyre known by the initials of the proteins that cover their surfaceH3N2, for example, is one common strain. The H stands for haemagglutinin, a protein that latches to a host cell so that the virus can invade. The N stands for neuraminidase, which newly produced viruses then use to hack their way out of the cell.

Birds are the source of all our flu strains. Our feathered friends are hosts to a huge variety of H and N type viruses, which typically infect their guts and cause a mild infection. From time to time, bird flu viruses have crossed the species barrier and adapted to human hosts, infecting our airways and then spreading in air droplets. Since flu spreads so fast around the world, a fair amount of the planets population has had some exposureand thus some immunityto the flu strains in circulation today. But if a new bird flu should manage to make the leap, we could face a very grim situationa situation that some scientists worry could rival the 1918 pandemic, which killed some 50 million people.

Thats why the scientists in 1997 were so flustered. The Hong Kong boy had died of a strain of bird flu that hadnt been found in people before. It came to be known as H5N1.

It turned out that around Hong Kong, chickens were rife with H5N1, including the chickens for sale in live open-air markets. Public health workers slaughtered huge numbers of chickens to stop the outbreak, and, for a time, it seemed like they had beaten the virus. In fact, H5N1 had simply gone into hiding. A few years later it was backand spreading. Birds carried it across Asia, into Africa and Europe. The New World and Australia have been spared so far, but theres no reason to think that the virus cant colonize those continents as well. It will just take the right bird.

Doctors found that the majority of patients hospitalized with H5N1 died. The only comforting thing about H5N1 was that it remained a bird flu. Once inside a human being, the virus couldnt churn out lots of new viruses capable of spreading to another human. But many bird flu experts consider that a cold comfort. Like all flu viruses, H5N1 has been continually evolving. When the viruses replicate they pick up new mutationssome of which help them replicate faster. Sometimes, two H5N1 viruses co-infect a single cell at once and swap some of their genes, producing hybrids. If this high-speed evolution leads to human-adapted H5N1, we could be dealing with a global cataclysm.

Yet some flu experts doubted this grim prospect. Its been some 15 years since H5N1 was first discovered, and despite all those years of evolution, the virus has yet to nose its way into our species. Perhaps, some scientists suggested, there was something about the biology of the strain that prevents natural selection from transforming it into a human virus. Skeptics have more recently raised another question about the risk of H5N1: is its mortality rate really all that high? In many studies, scientists have estimated the mortality rate of H5N1 based only on sick people who come to hospitals. Its possible that a lot of people recover from bird flu infections on their own, and go missing from the statistics. (Its worth bearing in mind, though, that the 1918 flu only had a mortality rate of 2%. If a virus can infect billions of people, even a low rate like that can lead to terrifying numbers of deaths.)

A few years ago, some bird flu experts decided to test the proposition that H5N1 was a potential human scourge. They would tinker with it to see if it could be transmitted from mammal to mammal, instead of bird to mammal. They might be able to see some warning signs for how this transition could happen in nature. The scientists applied for money from the National Institutes of Health, which considered their idea important enough to sink millions of dollars into it.

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Behold The Forbidden Flu: A Loom Explainer | The Loom

Blade Runner: What It Means to Be Human in the Cybernetic State

By John W. Whitehead

Were not computers, Sebastian. Were physical.Roy Batty

Thirty years ago right around this time, Ridley Scott was wrapping up production on his filmBlade Runner.By the summer of 1982, it had opened in over 1,200 theaters across the country. Routinely panned and even attacked by test audiences, the film fared little better in theaters. In fact, it was a certified box office flop. Virtually no one, it seems, likedBlade Runner. Fortunately, in the three decades since it first debuted on the big screen, viewers discovering the film on cable TV and DVD have come to appreciate it as not only a cult film par excellence but an emotionally challenging, thematically complex work whose ideas and subtexts are just as startling as its now famous production designs.

Set in Los Angeles in the year 2019,Blade Runnerdepicts a world where the sun no longer shines. Instead, a constant rainy drizzle adds to the dark character of this futuristic landscape. Although the opening shots aerial perspective suggests a modern Los Angeles, the audience soon discovers a very different city in which the endless archipelago of suburbs have been replaced by a dark and ominous landscape lit only by occasional flare-ups of burning gas at oil refineries. An energy shortage has crippled life in the future. The earth is decayed, and millions of people have been forced to colonize other planets. Those who remain behind live in huge cities consisting of a conglomeration of new buildings four hundred stories high and the dilapidated remains of earlier times.

The streets teem with Asians, Hare Krishnas and men in fezzes, all lit by a lurid blaze of flashing neon. The crunch and crush of modern population seems overwhelming and totally dehumanizing. Genetic engineering has become one of the earths major industries, with humans now assuming the role of maker and creator. Since most of the worlds animals have become extinct, genetic engineers now produce artificial animals. And artificial humans called replicants have been created to do the difficult, hazardous and often tedious work necessary in the colonies on other planets.

If Michelangelo were alive in Ridley Scotts future world, rather than portraying God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he would likely paint the human creators of the Tyrell Corporation, the worlds leading manufacturer of replicants which has just introduced the Nexus-6, a replicant with far greater strength and intelligence than human beings. These latest-model replicants represent an obvious potential danger to human society, and their introduction on Earthan offense calling for the death penaltyhas been strictly outlawed. When the replicants somehow make their way back to Earth, they are systematically retired (but not killed since they are inhuman) by special detectives or Blade Runners trained to track down and liquidate the infiltrators.

Police receive an emergency report that four combat model Nexus-6 replicantstwo male and two femalehave killed the crew of a space shuttle and returned to Earth. The Blade Runner assigned to track them down and terminate them is Deckard (Harrison Ford, in his best performance).

The film shifts dramatically when the replicants, who are on a mission to extend their short life span, display a stronger sense of community than the human beings on Earth. With his three partners now destroyed by explosive bullets, the silver-blonde replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) succeeds in finding his way to Tyrell himself, the master of the Tyrell Corporation and the genetic engineering genius who actually designed him. Batty wants to have his genetic code altered to extend his assigned four-year life span. He simply wants to live. But when he discovers he cannot, Batty kills Tyrell in a despairing rage, calling him (as Zeus to Cronos) Father. At one point, Batty remarks: Its a hard thing to meet your maker.

Blade Runnercannot be understood without comprehending the deeply felt moral, philosophical, ecological and sociological concerns that are interwoven throughout the story. Three key, yet profound, questions contribute to the core ofBlade Runner: Who am I? Why am I here? What does it mean to be human? Thus, the eternal problems in the film are essentially moral onesthat is, should replicants kill to gain more life? Should Deckard kill replicants simply because they want to exist?

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Blade Runner: What It Means to Be Human in the Cybernetic State

ANN ARBOR The University of Michigans second human embryonic stem cell line has just been placed on the U.S. National Institutes of Healths registry, making the cells available for federally funded research. It is the second of the stem cell lines derived at UM to be placed on the registry.

The line, known as UM11-1PGD, was derived from a cluster of about 30 cells removed from a donated five-day-old embryo roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. That embryo was created for reproductive purposes, tested and found to be affected with a genetic disorder, deemed not suitable for implantation, and would therefore have otherwise been discarded when it was donated in 2011.

It carries the gene defect responsible for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a hereditary neurological disorder characterized by a slowly progressive degeneration of the muscles in the foot, lower leg and hand. CMT, as it is known, is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, affecting one in 2,500 people in the United States. People with CMT usually begin to experience symptoms in adolescence or early adulthood.

The embryo used to create the cell line was never frozen, but rather was transported from another IVF laboratory in the state of Michigan to the UM in a special container. This may mean that these stem cells will have unique characteristics and utilities in understanding CMT disease progression or screening therapies in comparison to other human embryonic stem cells.

We are proud to provide this cell line to the scientific community, in hopes that it may aid the search for new treatments and even a cure for CMT, says Gary Smith, Ph.D., who derived the line and also is co-director of the UM Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies, part of the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute. Once again, the acceptance of these cells to the registry demonstrates our attention to details of proper oversight, consenting, and following of NIH guidelines.

UM is one of only four institutions including two other universities and one private company to have disease-specific stem cell lines listed in the national registry. UM has several other disease-specific hESClines submitted to NIH and awaiting approval, says Smith, who is a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School. The first line, a genetically normal one, was accepted to the registry in February.

Stem cell lines that carry genetic traits linked to specific diseases are a model system to investigate what causes these diseases and come up with treatments, says Sue OShea, professor of cell and developmental biology at the UM Medical School, and co-director of the Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies.

Each line is the culmination of years of preparation and cooperation between UM and Genesis Genetics, a Michigan-based genetic diagnostic company. This work was made possible by Michigan voters November 2008 approval of a state constitutional amendment permitting scientists to derive embryonic stem cell lines using surplus embryos from fertility clinics or embryos with genetic abnormalities and not suitable for implantation.

The amendment also made possible an unusual collaboration that has blossomed between the University of Michigan and molecular research scientists at Genesis Genetics, a company that has grown in only eight years to become the leading global provider of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) testing. PGDis a testing method used to identify days-old embryos carrying the genetic mutations responsible for serious inherited diseases. During a PGD test, a single cell is removed from an eight-celled embryo. The other seven cells continue to multiply and on the fifth day form a cluster of roughly 100 cells known as a blastocyst.

Genesis Genetics performs nearly 7,500 PGD tests annually. Under the arrangement between the company and UM, patients with embryos that test positive for a genetic disease now have the option of donating those embryos to UM if they have decided not to use them for reproductive purposes and the embryos would otherwise be discarded.

Read the original here:
Second UM Stem Cell Line Now Available To Help Cure Nerve Condition

Public release date: 25-Apr-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Kara Gavin kegavin@umich.edu 734-764-2220 University of Michigan Health System

The University of Michigan's second human embryonic stem cell line has just been placed on the U.S. National Institutes of Health's registry, making the cells available for federally-funded research. It is the second of the stem cell lines derived at U-M to be placed on the registry.

The line, known as UM11-1PGD, was derived from a cluster of about 30 cells removed from a donated five-day-old embryo roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. That embryo was created for reproductive purposes, tested and found to be affected with a genetic disorder, deemed not suitable for implantation, and would therefore have otherwise been discarded when it was donated in 2011.

It carries the gene defect responsible for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a hereditary neurological disorder characterized by a slowly progressive degeneration of the muscles in the foot, lower leg and hand. CMT, as it is known, is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, affecting one in 2,500 people in the United States. People with CMT usually begin to experience symptoms in adolescence or early adulthood.

The embryo used to create the cell line was never frozen, but rather was transported from another IVF laboratory in the state of Michigan to the U-M in a special container. This may mean that these stem cells will have unique characteristics and utilities in understanding CMT disease progression or screening therapies in comparison to other human embryonic stem cells.

"We are proud to provide this cell line to the scientific community, in hopes that it may aid the search for new treatments and even a cure for CMT," says Gary Smith, Ph.D., who derived the line and also is co-director of the U-M Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies, part of the A. Alfred Taubman Medical Research Institute. "Once again, the acceptance of these cells to the registry demonstrates our attention to details of proper oversight, consenting, and following of NIH guidelines."

U-M is one of only four institutions including two other universities and one private company to have disease-specific stem cell lines listed in the national registry. U-M has several other disease-specific hESC lines submitted to NIH and awaiting approval, says Smith, who is a professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School. The first line, a genetically normal one, was accepted to the registry in February.

"Stem cell lines that carry genetic traits linked to specific diseases are a model system to investigate what causes these diseases and come up with treatments," says Sue O'Shea, Ph.D., professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the U-M Medical School, and co-director of the Consortium for Stem Cell Therapies.

Each line is the culmination of years of preparation and cooperation between U-M and Genesis Genetics, a Michigan-based genetic diagnostic company. This work was made possible by Michigan voters' November 2008 approval of a state constitutional amendment permitting scientists to derive embryonic stem cell lines using surplus embryos from fertility clinics or embryos with genetic abnormalities and not suitable for implantation.

Excerpt from:
New embryonic stem cell line will aid research on nerve condition

First Run Features

The documentary Surviving Progress illustrates its arguments on the sustainability of human behavior in the context of environmental degradation with striking images of life in cities like Sao Paulo.

Surviving Progress

Not rated

Not every human advance is a snare, according to Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress. But some new techniques can lead to something the Canadian author calls a "progress trap" a development that's ultimately more harmful than helpful.

Wright's book, based on a 2004 lecture series, is the foundation for Surviving Progress, a provocative if scattershot documentary from directors Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks, who wander off topic more than once as they introduce myriad other voices. These include chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, astrophysicist and author Stephen Hawking and DNA mapper J. Craig Venter. Sometimes, these people don't seem to be part of the conversation Wright began.

Also on hand is Margaret Atwood, who participated in the same lecture program four years later. Her talks led to Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, another book that inspired a documentary. (It's due later this month.) Among the other Canadian commentators are environment professor Vaclav Smil and ecologist and science journalist David Suzuki.

The movie begins with chimpanzees and their problem-solving abilities. A chimp struggles to balance an L-shaped block that looks just like another one, but is weighted differently. Chimps, we're informed, don't ask, "Why?"

Humans do, Wright says, or at least can, yet human technology has outstripped mankind's "hunter-gatherer mentality." The quandary is illustrated, if not always illuminated, by fast-mo footage of cities, traffic and construction.

Environmental degradation is the film's primary concern. The directors undertake field trips to the Congo, where colonialism and war led to plunder; Brazil, where sawmill workers clash with deforestation activists; and China, where a new bourgeoisie, ominously, wants the same toys Europeans and North Americans already enjoy.

Go here to read the rest:
'Surviving Progress': Taking Overdevelopment To Task

ALAMEDA, Calif. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

BioTime, Inc. (NYSE Amex:BTX) and its wholly owned subsidiary LifeMap Sciences today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire XenneX, Inc. through a merger of XenneX into LifeMap Sciences. The acquisition is expected to close within thirty days.

XenneX holds the exclusive, worldwide licenses to market GeneCards and PanDaTox. GeneCards is a searchable, integrated, database of human genes that provides concise genomic, transcriptomic, genetic, proteomic, functional and disease related information, on all known and predicted human genes. GeneCards was developed by a world-leading bioinformatics team at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. PanDaTox is a recently developed, searchable, database that can be used to identify genes and intergenic regions that are unclonable in E. coli, to aid in the discovery of new antibiotics and biotechnologically beneficial functional genes, and to improve the efficiency of metabolic engineering.

Since 2003, XenneX has been generating revenue from customers worldwide including biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other life sciences companies, as well as organizations dealing with biotechnology intellectual property. GeneCards and PanDaTox are marketed by XenneX under a license from Yeda Research and Development Company Ltd, the Technology Transfer Company of the Weizmann Institute.

Through the merger, XenneX stockholders will receive approximately 1,362,589 shares of LifeMap common stock, which will represent approximately 13% of the LifeMap common stock outstanding upon the closing of the transaction. XenneX shareholders will also receive approximately 448,430 BioTime common shares as part of the transaction.

Separately, LifeMap Sciences announced that it anticipates acquiring a license from Yeda to market the new MalaCards database of human diseases. Like GeneCards and PanDaTox, MalaCards has been developed by the Weizmann Institute and is expected to be launched at the end of 2012.

Background

The field of biomedical research has expanded greatly in recent years due to the enormous growth of DNA sequencing technology, bioinformatics, and stem cell biology. The growth in research has produced a very decentralized body of information. The mission of BioTimes subsidiary LifeMap Sciences is to centralize access to this information through database technology that will make it much more feasible for researchers around the world to find and utilize information about tens of thousands of genes and thousands of cell types.

LifeMaps team of scientists is building an integrated map of the thousands of cell types in human development, beginning with the fertilized egg and ending in the developed human. Combined with genomics information, the database is expected to become a road atlas of human biology benefiting medicine and research. In addition, LifeMap is developing its own proprietary technology to effectively analyze data gathered from the databases for use in the development of cell-based therapies.

In addition to expanding LifeMaps database offerings through the acquisition of XenneX, BioTime plans to make LifeMap the principal marketing subsidiary for BioTime research products, including ACTCellerate human progenitor cell lines, GMP human embryonic stem (hES) cell lines, hES cell lines carrying inherited genetic diseases, and ESpan growth media for progenitor cell lines for non-therapeutic uses. LifeMap will utilize its databases as part of its online marketing strategy to reach life sciences researchers at biotech and pharmaceutical companies and at academic institutions and research hospitals worldwide.

Read more:
BioTime and Subsidiary LifeMap Sciences Announce Agreement to Acquire XenneX, Inc.

"A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY."

Its the opening passage to Aldous Huxleys classic sci-fi novel Brave New World, but are human hatcheries and genetic tampering about to become a reality?

Not quite.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, philosophers in Oxford and New York are suggesting that the problems of climate change could be tackled with human engineering.

Matthew Liao of New York University and Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache of Oxford University have written a paper in which they recommend that human beings could be made smaller, modified to enjoy eating meat less and given cat-like eyes to reduce the need for lighting.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben tweeted in response that the paper had the worst climate-change solutions of all time.

According to the SMH, the papers authors are unfazed. They argue that if people are willing to consider really dangerous solutions such as space-mirrors, then human engineering should also be considered as an option.

Read the original post:
Human engineering in Brave New eco-World

By Christian Jennings

PUBLISHED: 16:00 EST, 31 March 2012 UPDATED: 16:00 EST, 31 March 2012

A female Anopheles mosquito in flight with a newly obtained blood meal visible through her abdomen

Its the middle of the day and the genetically modified mosquitoes are feeding.

The females of the species are ingesting what is known in mosquito parlance as their blood meal.

The tiny-winged insects cluster in their thousands on the small plastic dispensers of sugar solution, or hang upside down from a thin layer of transparent plastic attached to the top of their cage.

The plastic is designed to simulate human or animal skin, and trapped behind it is a film of horse blood.

There are hundreds of thousands of the insects in the small white plastic cages on the laboratory shelves in a south Oxfordshire industrial park.

The air in the laboratory is warm and theres a smell of chemicals.

In plastic and glass containers thousands more mosquitoes are hatching in water that has a yellowish tint to it: they swarm together and move with the light every time a hand is passed over the surface of the container.

Continue reading here:
Mosquito factory: Can malaria be stopped by British-bred genetically modified mosquitoes?

A forum critical of UC Berkeleys plans to ramp up genetic engineering research at a planned massive new second campus of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Richmond drew a capacity crowd to the David Brower Center Thursday night.

One speaker after another ripped into the potential consequences of the universitys grandiose plans, including the human and environmental devastation certain to be wrought on Africa and Latin America.

We will be posting several articles on the gathering, but we will begin with a focus on some of the ways the labs end products could impact other lands targeted by the labs emphasis on using genetic engineering to transform living plants into fuel.

A resonant voice from Nigeria

Environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey, executive director of Environmental Rights Action in Nigeria and chair of Friends of the Earth International, ripped into comments made a day earlier by Jay Keasling, UC Berkeley professor, founder of three genetic engineering companies, and head of the Department of Energy-funded Joint BioEnergy Institute [JBEI], which is slated to relocate to the new Richmond campus.

In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Keasling had dismissed criticisms by Bassey and others that any successful program to use genetically altered microbes to create fuel from plant matter would wreak ecological and human devastation in Africa, Latin America, and Asia:

Thast so-called wasteland is somebodys land, Bassey said. The worlds pastoralists thrive on lands marginal or unsuitable for farming. People do live in the Sahara desert. People do live in the Kalahari Desert. People do live in the desert here in the United States.

The one sure result of a global land grab is conflict, he said. A second is the introduction of genetically modified organisms [GMOs] into more nations where theyve been previously banned.

Bassey, whose words flow in resonant, almost musical bass tones, is a winner of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, often called the Alternate Nobel Prize because it is awarded by the Swedish legislature the day before the Nobels are handed out in the same city, Stockholm. The prize is given for working on practical and exemplary solutions to the most urgent challenges facing the world today.

Much of Basseys work has centered on the devastation wrought on his country by oil companies like Chevron, which has sunk its claws and talons into Richmond, and, like Shell, BP, and other oil companies is moving into agrofuels.

See the original post here:
Stakeholders weigh in on UC Berkeley GMO complex

Public release date: 28-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY -- A novel method for printing human cells onto surfaces in defined patterns can help advance research on tissue engineering and regeneration, as described in an article in Tissue Engineering, Part C, Methods, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free online at the Tissue Engineering website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten).

"Cell printing is one of the breakthrough technologies that will make the application of stem cells for tissue engineering feasible," says John Jansen, DDS, PhD, Methods Co-Editor-in-Chief and Professor and Chairman, Department of Biomaterials, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center, The Netherlands.

Yu Fang and colleagues, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, combined two microscale techniques to dispense and position cells in a variety of patterns. They then demonstrated the ability to use these 3-dimensional cell systems to monitor cell signaling events known to have a role in the growth, proliferation, and metastasis of cancer cells. The authors describe the use of sound waves to deliver microdroplets of cells and polymer-based phase separation to control cell placement in the article "Rapid Generation of Multiplexed Cell Co-Cultures Using Acoustic Droplet Ejection Followed by Aqueous Two-phase Exclusion Patterning." (http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.TEC.2011.0709)

###

About the Journal

Tissue Engineering (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten) is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly in print and online in three parts: Part A--the flagship journal; Part BReviews; and Part CMethods. Led by Co-Editors-In-Chief Antonios Mikos, PhD, Louis Calder Professor at Rice University, Houston, TX, and Peter C. Johnson, MD, Vice President, Research and Development, Avery Dennison Medical Solutions of Chicago, IL and President and CEO, Scintellix, LLC, Raleigh, NC, the Journal brings together scientific and medical experts in the fields of biomedical engineering, material science, molecular and cellular biology, and genetic engineering. Tissue Engineering is the official journal of the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS). Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed online at the Tissue Engineering website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten).

About the Company

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.(http://www.liebertpub.com), is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Stem Cells and Development, Human Gene Therapy and HGT Methods, and Biopreservation and Biobanking. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 70 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at Mary Ann Liebert Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com).

See the rest here:
Innovative cell printing technologies hold promise for tissue engineering R&D

In a plenary talk titled, "From Reading to Writing the Genetic Code," Venter described a fundamental shift in his field of genomics, and its promise for producing synthetic life that could help provide 21st century society with new fuels, medicines, food and nutritional products, supplies of clean water and other resources. Venter, a pioneer in the field, led the team at Celera Genomics that went head-to-head with the government-and-foundation-funded Human Genome Project in the race to decode the human genome. This quest, in which the 23,000 human genes were deciphered, ended with the teams declaring a tie and publishing simultaneous publications in 2001.

"Genomics is a rapidly evolving field and my teams have been leading the way from reading the genetic code deciphering the sequences of genes in microbes, humans, plants and other organisms to writing code and constructing synthetic cells for a variety of uses. We can now construct fully synthetic bacterial cells that have the potential to more efficiently and economically produce vaccines, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, food and other products."

The work Venter described at the ACS session falls within an ambitious new field known as synthetic biology, which draws heavily on chemistry, metabolic engineering, genomics and other traditional scientific disciplines. Synthetic biology emerged from genetic engineering, the now-routine practice of inserting one or two new genes into a crop plant or bacterium. The genes can make tomatoes, for instance, ripen without softening or goad bacteria to produce human insulin for treating diabetes. Synthetic biology, however, involves rearranging genes on a much broader scale that of a genome, which is an organism's entire genetic code to reprogram entire organisms and even design new organisms.

Venter and his team at the not-for-profit J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), which has facilities in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, announced in 2010 that they had constructed the world's first completely synthetic bacterial cell. Using computer-designed genes made on synthesizer machines from four bottles of chemicals, the scientists arranged those genes into a package, a synthetic chromosome. When inserted into a bacterial cell, the chromosome booted up the cell and was capable of dividing and reproducing.

In the ACS talk, Venter described progress on major projects, including developing new synthetic cells and engineering genomes to produce biofuels, vaccines, clean water, food and other products. That work is ongoing at both JCVI and at his company, Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI). A project at SGI for instance, aims to engineer algae cells to capture carbon dioxide and use it as a raw material for producing new fuels. Another group uses synthetic genomic advances with the goal of making influenza vaccines in hours rather than months to better respond to sudden mutations in those viruses.

Venter also described his work in sequencing the first draft human genome in 2001 while he and his team were at Celera Genomics, as well as the work on his complete diploid genome published in 2007 by scientists at JCVI, along with collaborators at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the University of California, San Diego. In addition to continued analysis of Venter's genome, he and his team are also studying the human microbiome, the billions of bacteria that live in and on people, and how these microbes impact health and disease.

While technology is rapidly changing, making human genome sequencing more and more accessible, the accuracy of these next generation machines remain a challenge. Thus, Venter believes it may be years before such full-genome sequences become accurate enough to find a place in routine medical care.

Provided by American Chemical Society (news : web)

Read the original:
J. Craig Venter describes biofuels, vaccines and foods from made-to-order microbes

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that she has invited 15 individuals to serve as public members on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC).

The IACC is a federal advisory committee established by the Combating Autism Act of 2006 and reauthorized by the Combating Autism Reauthorization Act of 2011. The committee is composed of both federal officials and public members, and is charged with (1) coordinating all efforts within HHS concerning autism spectrum disorder (ASD), (2) developing and annually updating a strategic plan for ASD, and (3) providing advice to the Secretary on matters related to ASD.

Membership of the committee includes a wide array of federal agencies involved in ASD research and services, as well as public stakeholders who represent a variety of perspectives from within the autism community. This makeup of the IACC membership is designed to ensure that the committee is equipped to address the wide range of issues and challenges faced by families and individuals affected by autism.

The individuals invited to serve on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee represent people on the autism spectrum, autism advocates, parents, clinicians, and researchers from across the country, Secretary Sebelius said. I look forward to working with the committee members to make a real difference in the lives of people with autism and their families.

The individuals invited to serve on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, subject to prescribed appointment procedures, include:

Idil Abdull

Ms. Idil Abdull is the parent of a son with autism and Co-Founder of the Somali American Autism Foundation. As a Somali-American mother, she has worked to raise awareness about the high prevalence of autism among Somali immigrants living in Minnesota and has helped to change autism policies in the state. She also has a special interest in serving as a voice for underrepresented groups more broadly, including those that are struggling with language, cultural, and economic barriers as they seek ways to help their family members with disabilities. Ms. Abdull holds a bachelors degree in Health Care Administration.

James Ball

Dr. Jim Ball is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA-D) who is the President and CEO of JB Autism Consulting. He has worked in the private sector field of autism for more than 25years, providing educational, employment, and residential services to children and adults affected with autism. He is a Board member of the Autism Society's (AS) Board of Directors and is currently the Chair of the National Board. He received his doctorate of education from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Here is the original post:
HHS announces new members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee

Public release date: 25-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6042

Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society

SAN DIEGO, March 25, 2012 Just as aspiring authors often read hundreds of books before starting their own, scientists are using decades of knowledge garnered from sequencing or "reading" the genetic codes of thousands of living things to now start writing new volumes in the library of life. J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., one of the most renowned of those scientists, described the construction of the first synthetic cell and many new applications of this work today at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, which is underway this week.

In a plenary talk titled, "From Reading to Writing the Genetic Code," Venter described a fundamental shift in his field of genomics, and its promise for producing synthetic life that could help provide 21st century society with new fuels, medicines, food and nutritional products, supplies of clean water and other resources. Venter, a pioneer in the field, led the team at Celera Genomics that went head-to-head with the government-and-foundation-funded Human Genome Project in the race to decode the human genome. This quest, in which the 23,000 human genes were deciphered, ended with the teams declaring a tie and publishing simultaneous publications in 2001.

"Genomics is a rapidly evolving field and my teams have been leading the way from reading the genetic code deciphering the sequences of genes in microbes, humans, plants and other organisms to writing code and constructing synthetic cells for a variety of uses. We can now construct fully synthetic bacterial cells that have the potential to more efficiently and economically produce vaccines, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, food and other products."

The work Venter described at the ACS session falls within an ambitious new field known as synthetic biology, which draws heavily on chemistry, metabolic engineering, genomics and other traditional scientific disciplines. Synthetic biology emerged from genetic engineering, the now-routine practice of inserting one or two new genes into a crop plant or bacterium. The genes can make tomatoes, for instance, ripen without softening or goad bacteria to produce human insulin for treating diabetes. Synthetic biology, however, involves rearranging genes on a much broader scale that of a genome, which is an organism's entire genetic code to reprogram entire organisms and even design new organisms.

Venter and his team at the not-for-profit J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), which has facilities in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, announced in 2010 that they had constructed the world's first completely synthetic bacterial cell. Using computer-designed genes made on synthesizer machines from four bottles of chemicals, the scientists arranged those genes into a package, a synthetic chromosome. When inserted into a bacterial cell, the chromosome booted up the cell and was capable of dividing and reproducing.

In the ACS talk, Venter described progress on major projects, including developing new synthetic cells and engineering genomes to produce biofuels, vaccines, clean water, food and other products. That work is ongoing at both JCVI and at his company, Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI). A project at SGI for instance, aims to engineer algae cells to capture carbon dioxide and use it as a raw material for producing new fuels. Another group uses synthetic genomic advances with the goal of making influenza vaccines in hours rather than months to better respond to sudden mutations in those viruses.

Venter also described his work in sequencing the first draft human genome in 2001 while he and his team were at Celera Genomics, as well as the work on his complete diploid genome published in 2007 by scientists at JCVI, along with collaborators at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the University of California, San Diego. In addition to continued analysis of Venter's genome, he and his team are also studying the human microbiome, the billions of bacteria that live in and on people, and how these microbes impact health and disease.

Read this article:
J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., describes biofuels, vaccines and foods from made-to-order microbes