Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

Mike McKenney

The last male northern white rhino has seen better days. At the advanced age of 43, arthritic in leg and blind in one eye, Sudan struggles to get around. Since he now finds other rhinos intolerable, he has his enclosure at the Ol Petja Conservancy in Kenya all to himself. On occasion he welcomes human presence he is partial to a hind leg scratch, in particular but like other crotchety males he would sometimes rather not be disturbed, shaking his head and snorting to make his displeasure known.

Conservation is a discipline driven by crisis and perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the northern white rhino. Before they were poached near out of existence, northern whites roamed central and eastern Africa. As recently as the 1960s there were 2,300 in the wild. Today just three individuals remain: Sudan, his daughter and granddaughter, all at Ol Petja. Neither female can carry a calf to term. With a limited gene pool and the prospect of natural reproduction extinguished, the subspecies is considered functionally extinct.

In this moment of climactic disruption, poaching and urban expansion, species are lost all the time, of course. Since 1900 about 70 mammals are believed to have gone extinct, along with some 400 other types of vertebrate. Perhaps due to the abject hopelessness of their situation, northern whites are at the centre of a daring effort to arrest what seems inevitable: to bring them back from the brink.

The plan is two-pronged. First, a team of scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, along with international specialists, are attempting to grow a northern white embryo in-vitro, using oocytes, or eggs, from the two living females and frozen sperm. Once the embryo reaches the relatively stable blastocyst stage, it will be implanted in a surrogate southern white rhino, a sister subspecies, who will carry the northern white calf to term. So far the team has reached the zygote stage of embryonic development; next is the blastocyst. Thomas Hildebrandt, head of reproduction management at the Leibniz institute, says he is quite confident that the goal will be achieved soon.

Yet for a new generation of northern white rhinos to thrive, its gene pool must be diversified. We have an active population of three and they are all related to each other, so you never can produce a viable self-sustaining population out of these three, says Hildebrandt. That would make no sense at all.

So, for step two of the scheme, Hildebrandt is collaborating with Katsuhiko Hayashi, a reproductive biologist at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. Their aim is to transform skin cells from the living animals and from tissue samples kept in cryonic storage into stem cells. These cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), have the capacity to develop into any type of tissue, including eggs and sperm, which could be used to produce gametes. Though difficult, this objective might not be far off in real terms. In 2011, a team at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, created iPS cells from the younger female rhinos skin. In October, Hayashis team in Japan transformed mouse skin cells into eggs in-vitro and then used those eggs to birth healthy pups, a scientific first.

Although, in theory, this technique could be applied to other critically endangered mammals, Hildebrandt doesnt think this cellular-based approach to conservation should be routine. It requires a lot of resources, he says. But mankind is responsible for the dramatic situation of the northern white rhinos and with the knowledge we have in our hand we might be capable, and Im fairly confident we are, of saving the species, of not losing them.

Some are sceptical about whether this radical intervention is worthwhile. Not only does it carry the implicit message that it is okay to drive a species to extinction, since it can always be reversed, it fails to redress the conditions that decimated the species in the first place. To truly wrest a species from extinction we need to provide and protect the habitat in which it lives. Hildebrandts scheme is also expensive; he estimates it will cost $5m to produce a northern white rhino calf, though his team currently operates on a yearly budget of 40,000, plus about 60,000 for equipment.

What are we moving towards, some sort of virtual conservation? says Michael Knight, chair of the International Union for Conservation of Natures African Rhino Specialist Group. If you want to make the best contribution to conserve rhinos in Africa, we should be securing the landscape and making sure those 25,000 [southern white] rhinos on the landscape are breeding as fast as they possibly can.

Knight advocates pursuing a fall-back policy crossbreeding the northern white rhino with its southern cousin. The southern white is a conservation success story. Once thought to be extinct, in 1895 a population of fewer than 100 individuals was discovered in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. Through traditional conservation mechanisms, that population has now bloomed to some 25,000 rhinos. Crossbreeding will preserve at least some of the genetic traits unique to the northern white. Knight calls it hedging our bets.

This move seems sensible. Yet the effort to rewind the extinction process is not about saving the northern white rhino alone. Its decline is a symptom of the broader loss of biodiversity worldwide. Biologists have found that the Earth is currently losing mammal species 20 to 100 times the rate of the past, and there is a growing consensus in the scientific community that we are on the brink of the sixth mass extinction the last such event took out the dinosaurs. If climate change is the largest collective-action problem humankind has faced, preserving biodiversity requires all hands on deck.

I dont think one should look at it as saving a species, says Richard Vigne, chief executive office, Ol Petja Conservancy. Theres lots of arguments about whether [northern whites] are a separate species or a subspecies, or whatever, but frankly it doesnt matter that much.

What is important, he says, is protecting a rhino with the specific genetic traits, evolved over millions of years, that enables it to inhabit central Africa. "We don't know what the situation will be like in central Africa in 4,000 years," says Vigne. "National parks may want to bring rhinos back. We need to retain the opportunity to do that."

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Genetic engineering could bring the northern white rhino back from extinction - Wired.co.uk

A professor of plant pathology from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture told a small audience Wednesday while there are some risks that come with the practice of genetically modifying crops, there's no evidence that genetically engineered foods are unsafe to eat.

After studying the issue of genetic engineering of food, "I just don't have any concern about my family eating genetically engineered crops," said Paul Vincelli, a UK extension profession and provost with the Sustainable Agriculture and Education Program.

Vincelli spoke about "food myths and misconceptions" at noon Wednesday at Owensboro Community & Technical College. Vincelli said genetic modification occurs in nature and has been done in agriculture for as long as people have been cross-breeding plants.

Genetic engineering, however, is more precise than cross breeding, because only a single gene is inserted into an engineered plant, while cross-bred plants receive the all the genes from both plants, Vincelli said.

"Genetic engineering is more precise than conventional breeding," Vincelli said. "It also causes less disruption on the plant."

Genetic engineering has been used to cure crop disease across the world, including those that pose dangers to humans, Vincelli said. Genetic engineering has also been used to grow corn that is not affected by glyphosate, the primary chemical in the weed herbicide Roundup, which benefits crop production for farmers, Vincelli said.

While there is some dispute whether glyphosate is a carcinogen -- with the EPA and other agencies saying "no" while a faction of the World Health Organization says "yes" -- there is no danger caused by the genetic modification of "Roundup Ready" corn, Vincelli said.

If glyphosate is shown to be carcinogenic, "the problem is not the genetic engineering," Vincelli said. "The problem is the glyphosate."

There is controversy about the safety of genetically engineered food, but the fear of "Frankenfood" is not supported by the scientific research, Vincelli said.

"The idea of 'Frankenfood' is really effective, but it does not represent scientific findings," Vincelli said. "... The food safety issue is not a significant risk."

Scientific academies in both the United States and Europe have agreed there is no evidence that genetically engineered food is not safe. The European public remains skeptical of genetically engineered food because of food scares they've experienced, such as outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or "mad cow disease," Vincelli said.

There are risks to creating genetically engineered food, namely that genetically modified seed can be spread far beyond its intended area, such as the case in Oregon, where a genetically modified form of grass has spread, raising concerns that it will spread into commercial grass seed, damaging seed producers' markets. There is also a risk to "cultural identity," such as the fear that genetically modified corn could affect "heritage corn" in South America, he said.

The idea of "global ruin," of genetically modified plants essentially infecting all other plants "does not have merit," Vincelli said.

There are already natural barriers in place to prevent "jumping genes," Vincelli said. If there were not, there would only be one type of plant, as opposed to the numerous varieties found in nature, he said. Vincelli said, in his mind, the biggest threat caused by genetic engineering is bioterrorism.

In supermarkets, labels proclaiming a product is free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are misleading, because most products are already free of GMO items, said Mary Higginbotham, Daviess County's extension agent for family and consumer sciences. Vincelli said genetically modified products can be found in items containing high-fructose corn syrup, because that is made with corn.

Non-GMO labels in stores are "marketing," Higginbotham said. "This is companies wanting to put a non-GMO label on it ... It's very misleading to the consumer."

Read more:
Researcher: GMO worries overblown - messenger-inquirer

A new document made public this week via Edward Snowdens leak of NSA documents reveals a fascinating aim of signals intelligence program: The agency, it turns out, monitored international scientific developments in hopes of detecting nefarious genetic engineering projects more than a decade ago.

SIGINT is intelligence collected by monitoring electronic and communications signals. In 2013, documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the agencys reliance on this kind of intelligence to provide insight into the capabilities and intentions of foreign entities, as well as domestic targets. In the years since, documents have continued to trickle out of the Snowden leak that shed additional light on those efforts.

One such document made public by The Intercept this week describes a use of NSA signals intelligence not previously known to the public. In 2004, an NSA cryptanalyst intern described looking for information about genetic sequencing in the signals intelligence collected by the agency.

The ultimate goals of this project are to gain general knowledge about genetic engineering research activity by foreign entities, she wrote, and to identify laboratories and/or individuals who may be involved in nefarious use of genetic research.

Working for the Office of Tradecraft for Analysis, her job was developing algorithms to answer specific questions from metadata, looking for genetic sequences in signals and then presumably trying to figure out what kind of research activity those sequences indicated. This shouldnt be altogether surprisingafter all, senior intelligence officials have gone on record calling genetic engineering a weapon of mass destruction.

Given the broad distribution, low cost, and accelerated pace of development of this dual-use [genetic engineering] technology, its deliberate or unintentional misuse might lead to far-reaching economic and national security implications, an annual worldwide threat assessment report from the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and half a dozen other U.S. spy and fact-gathering operations said last year. Also last year, genome editing was added to the list of national security threats for the first time.

Last years report noted that new discoveries move easily in the globalized economy, as do personnel with the scientific expertise to design and use them, and pointed out the possibility of using the cutting-edge gene-editing technique CRISPR to edit the DNA of human embryos.

The leaked NSA documents, though, are dated long before CRISPR came on the scene. More than a decade ago, the government was concerned that foreign entities might be using genetic engineering for evil, be it creating brutal bioweapons or engineered super soldiers.

The single document gives no indication as to whether the program has continued. But elsewhere, there are signs that the intelligence community has only ramped up its efforts to keep tabs on potentially threatening scientific developments. The FBI, the Pentagon, and the United Nations bioweapons office all have efforts aimed at monitoring and studying potentially destructive uses of CRISPR. As technology advances, its safe to assume those efforts arent going to go away.

[The Intercept]

Original post:
Leaked Documents Reveal the NSA Spying on Scientists to Find ... - Gizmodo

Paul Levine, a resident of West Tisbury who was a professor at Harvard and visiting professor at Stanford University, will contribute this occasional column devoted to scientific research taking place today, along with profiles of the Islands scientists and their work and facts of scientific note on the Island. This week, he discusses the genetics research that has led to CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. If youre wondering what that is, read on.

Science and Scientists on the Vineyard returns this month with a two-part column on the subject that also goes by such names as genetic engineering, gene therapy, genetic modification, and recently gene editing. Regardless of its name, the technology has from its outset been lauded but also seen as controversial. CRISPR is in the news almost weekly because of questions of the ethics of its application and its potential to do both good and bad.

Over the past two years CRISPR has garnered a great deal of public notice through articles in scientific journals such as Science and Nature, major newspapers such as the New York Times, and in magazines like Time and the New Yorker. It has also been the subject on the radio of WCAIs Living Lab and NPRs Science Friday.

Last summer, The MV Times reported on the CRISPR technique being used to produce Borrelia-resistant white-footed mice to control Lyme disease both here and on Nantucket (July 20, Scientist proposes genetic attack on Marthas Vineyard ticks).

The impact that CRISPR will have on the future of genetic engineering and gene therapy is at once scientifically, ethically, politically, and economically immense. Lets go back to the early days of plant and animal breeding, and from there to the era of the production of genetically modified foods, and finally to the early efforts of human gene therapy, to put the subject into a historical context that I hope will provide for a rational discussion of the effects that CRISPR might have on human society.

First, put aside whatever opinions you may have for or against genetically modified organisms (including humans), and look at the history behind the genetic manipulation of plants and animals that has brought us to where we are today. Domestication and breeding of plants and animals may go back at least 11,000 years, with practices of selective breeding that led to improved survival, yield, and quality of domesticated plants, and overcame the deleterious effects of inbreeding.

After the 1905 rediscovery of Mendels Laws of Inheritance, a scientific approach to the development of methods of plant and animal breeding followed rapidly. In 1908, the plant geneticist George Shull at the Cold Spring Laboratory on Long Island showed that when he crossed inbred lines of corn that had deteriorated (showing lower yields, vigor, and disease resistance), the hybrids, sharing the genes of the inbred parents, completely recovered. Their yields were much greater than the inbred lines from which they were derived. A year later, Shull published the procedures for hybridization that became standard for corn and other organisms.

Hybridization of inbred lines of plants and animals means mingling the genes of the parents. But what if the desire is to focus on one specific gene? For example, what if one were to insert one of the flavor genes of an heirloom tomato into the DNA of a commercial variety, or to engineer human stem cells with normal genes to cure genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease?

In 1972, Stanford biochemist Paul Berg showed how a foreign gene could be isolated and inserted into the genome of E. coli, the common human gut bacterium, to produce a RecDNA (recombinant DNA) organism. In 1974, Stanley Cohn at Stanford University and Herbert Boyer of the University of California, San Francisco, and their colleagues introduced genes from the toad Xenopus laevis into E. coli bacteria.

Even before Mr. Berg published his seminal paper on recDNA, he became aware that there was the question of a possible health threat of combining genes from different organisms in the common E. coli. Was it possible that some virulent strain would emerge because of its recombinant genome?

Mr. Bergs recognition of this possibility, and the concerns of some of his colleagues, led them in 1974 to write a letter to others engaged in recDNA research to urge them to impose a moratorium on certain types of experiments that might be hazardous. There followed a conference of scientists in 1975 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, Calif., to address the risks of the research. This meeting led to others, not only of concerned scientists but of ethicists, politicians, and members of the public.

In 1975 the National Institutes of Health produced a set of guidelines for recombinant DNA research. In a number of instances, concern over the possible hazards of recombinant DNA research and the need to carefully monitor that research became a local and state issue. In June 1976, the Cambridge City Council met to take up the question of Harvard Universitys plan to build and operate a special laboratory for the research. The city council discussed the possibility of the research becoming a health hazard to inhabitants of their city. After a contentious debate between members of the council and Harvard scientists, the council appointed a Cambridge Experimental Review Board, and ultimately a Cambridge Biohazards Committee, out of which came recommendations for oversight of the research. Similar concerns were expressed by the New York State Environmental Protection Division, and by the city of San Diego in California. The history of the controversy is excellently set forth in the book The Recombinant DNA Debate by David A. Jackson and Stephen P. Stich.

Thus began the era of recombinant DNA genetic engineering that saw the insertion of genes into bacteria and yeast for the production of insulin, some growth hormones, blood clotting factors, and vaccines.

Recombinant DNA technology also began to be applied to the production of genetically modified plants and animals, and thus the availability of genetically modified foods.

Since those days, products produced by genetic manipulation by the pharmaceutical, agricultural, and food industries have grown immensely. So have the number of questions regarding their safety, questions for which there is no universal answer, and so discussions both pro and con continue to this day. A study of both positions can be found on the Web in articles here: bit.ly/GenFoods.

Today, with the advent of CRISPR, we find scientists and the public in positions not unlike those of the early days of recombinant DNA research, but with far greater intensity: The power of CRISPR for genetic engineering far exceeds that of the recombinant DNA technique. The next time I write on the subject, I will undertake to describe CRISPR gene editing, the larger-than-life characters at the center of the research, some of the current applications of CRISPR, and some research projects that focus on human gene editing, along with the ethical questions that have arisen as a consequence.

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Science and Scientists on the Vineyard: - Martha's Vineyard Times

The composition of GM breeding stacks was more similar to the composition of iso-hybrids than was the composition of nonGM hybrids. NonGM breeding more strongly influenced crop composition than did transgenesis or stacking of GM events.

These findings call into question the value of uniquely requiring composition studies for GM crops, especially for breeding stacks composed of GM events previously found to be compositionally normal.

After more than two decades of research, many published reports and hundreds of regulatory submissions, transgenesis has generally been found to have markedly less effect on crop composition compared with traditional breeding. Advances in molecular biology have shown that the types of mutations that are possible during transgene insertion are similar to those associated with the intentional or unintentional random mutagenesis that occurs during traditional breeding, but that GM techniques typically have a smaller impact due to fewer genetic changes.

While the potential for unintended compositional effects is now known to be markedly lower for GM crops compared with those developed using nonGM breeding techniques, government regulation and data requirements for GM crop composition have increased dramatically over the last 20years, with a typical study now costing over one million US dollars

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Stacking transgenic event DAS-157-1 alters maize composition less than traditional breeding

For more background on the Genetic Literacy Project, read GLP on Wikipedia

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Non-GMO breeding changes the makeup of crops more than genetic engineering - Genetic Literacy Project

Fourth-graders might be on to something.

Once, during a school presentation, Paul Vincelli asked a group of students what they would do with genetic engineering.

One said he'd make broccoli taste like chocolate. Another said she'd make some foods more nutritious for poor people.

"They've got the right idea," he said with a laugh. "I tell audiences (genetic engineering) is like copying and pasting a sentence in a document on your computer."

But Vincelli, Extension professor of plant pathology at the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, doesn't try to convince anyone to be in for or against genetic engineering he just presents the facts.

He'll do so at the Food Myths and Misconceptions seminar and Q&A at 6 p.m. Tuesday and at noon Wednesday in the Advanced Technology Center's Chandler Conference Room at Owensboro Community and Technical College, 4800 New Hartford Road. It is presented by the Daviess County Cooperative Extension Service.

Vincelli's presentation will cover the scientific aspects of genetic engineering in foods genetically modified organisms, or GMOs that is, the process of introducing new DNA to a plant or animal to alter its genome. Newer technology allows genome editing, a more precise method that can add, remove or substitute specific traits and target specific locations within the genome.

"GMO science is a very broad topic of study," Vincelli said during a phone interview from Fresno, California. He was there to present to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and California State University. He is also published in research journals.

"There are multiple and complex factors, but I like to focus on what we do and don't know about GMOs, and the risks and benefits."

A recent good example of GMO science, he said, lies in East Africa, where the woody root cassava is a foundational part of the diet. When a virus called brown streak disease threatened the food supply, modifying cassava to be disease-resistant was the answer.

Last May, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report stating while genetic alteration can have unintended consequences, their review of about 900 studies and years of disease data shows no increase in health risks due to the consumption of GMOs.

Many non-GMO advocates, though, suggest GMOs pose environmental, human health and economic problems. Theres an ongoing debate among science experts on whether or not glyphosate is linked to cancer, the report states. The herbicide is often used with GMOs and was made popular when patented in the 1970s and sold as Roundup by the agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto.

Its widespread use might have weakened its ability to control weeds, which led Monsanto to create Roundup Ready soybean seeds in 1996, followed by corn. Roundup Ready crops are resistant to herbicides, thus farmers can spray for weeds without damaging their crops.

I always say it's not a sustainable weed control approach, but theres a lot of interest in the food system among urban and suburban audiences, and theres much more to it than Roundup Ready, Vincelli said.

"People would like to know what science says about all of these things, so well take a critical look the research and I think we'll have a rich discussion," he said. "I aim to be fair to all sides and just tell it like I see it.

Angela Oliver, 270-691-7360, aoliver@messenger-inquirer.com

Link:
Extension to host seminar on GMOs - messenger-inquirer

Last month, The Hollywood Reporter announced a movie deal for a novel called Change Agent, a sci-fi thriller about genetic engineering that was released today. If everything goes right, Change Agent could be a must-see sci-fi blockbuster along the lines of Minority Report, blending clever philosophizing with non-stop action. It's about an Interpol agent who's given the face and body of a wanted criminal, through rogue gene editing that could make the very concept of individual identity obsolete. There's a weird-yet-plausible near-future setting, a twisty plot, and a genuinely creepy villain. But as a novel, I would only touch it again under threat of bodily harm.

Written by Daemon author Daniel Suarez, Change Agent is supposed to be a workmanlike beach read that presents big ideas through a fast-paced plot. It's set in 2045, in a world where gene therapy and designer babies are commonplace. Protagonist Kenneth Durand is one of the people in charge of shutting down black market clinics that offer unauthorized improvements like super-strength or intelligence, instead of fixes for genetic diseases. After Durand agrees to look for a gene therapy criminal kingpin named Marcus Wyckes, he's attacked by an unknown, syringe-wielding assailant. When he wakes from a coma five weeks later, he learns that Wyckes can change living humans as well as embryos, and he's turned Durand into his doppelgnger hoping to fake his own death by getting Durand killed.

If you love display technology, this will be a really exciting book

But Suarez isn't just taking on one big idea, he's meticulously building a world, complete with new cryptocurrencies, crowdsourced surveillance methods, and other moderately interesting extrapolations of present-day technology. This often means dragging the action to a standstill to prove he's done his homework. Change Agent fixates on the minutiae of payment processing, security authentication, and display technology with more verve than action sequences or character development. If Daniel Suarez had written Marathon Man, it would be a novel about choosing the best long-distance running attire. Meanwhile, the books anemic, redundant prose ruins tense moments. When a character names a villain while quaking in terror, the narrative assures us that the man was greatly feared a paragraph later.

Sci-fi novels and techno-thrillers often go heavy on exposition. But it works best when used to describe something that's difficult to imagine, like a far-flung space station, or thematically important, like Tom Clancys fetishized military tech. Beyond the extreme genetic modification, Change Agent is future-by-numbers, although it offers a few evocative ideas like drug dealers who 3D-print custom narcotics from formulae tattooed on junkies arms, or a biomechanical shark used for international smuggling. I know this sounds cool, but youll only reach it after reading about characters taking endless minor actions on their LFP glasses, which is as irritating as an author appending with a smartphone to every digital interaction in a contemporary novel.

The best moments take genetic engineering to a creepy logical endpoint

Change Agent starts to hit its stride in the last third of the book, when advanced genetic engineering comes to the forefront. Its vision of the future is never mind-blowing, but it's chilling and tragic when Durand sees a sociopathic endpoint for designer babies: children with uncanny adult intelligence on one hand, malformed experiments and pitiless child soldiers on the other. The book's strangest technical leap also gives us its most effective antagonist, a lonely killer with apocalyptic ambitions and genes that are literally hostile to human life. Hes the kind of over-the-top character that a good actor could ham to perfection, even if Suarezs prose doesnt do him justice.

Likewise, a good screenwriter could make more of the novels philosophical dilemmas. Is there really an ideal, natural baseline that people can genetically enhance themselves to meet, without sliding into post-humanism? What would individual identity mean if people could change their DNA (and, alongside it, nearly every aspect of their bodies) at will? Its a twist on Gattacas vision of genetic perfection, with less pathos but more mecha-sharks.

Change Agent isnt frustrating in spite of its good ideas, but because of them. Its an interesting novel that gets in its own way far too often, and at a time when so many books deliver good ideas alongside good writing, theres no excuse for its shortcomings. Reading it feels like hearing a pedantic high schooler describe a movie: you can get a sense of why its cool, but you should probably just wait to see the film yourself.

Read the rest here:
Change Agent is a terrible book that will make a great movie - The Verge

As the race to conquer space intensifies and more ambitious missions get planned, scientists are exploring how to keep future astronauts safe on long space flights.

Image courtesy: Fox Studios

This question is of increasing importance, especially as multiple groups make plans to send humans to Mars. Aside from the time and fuel needed to make these kinds of long trips, theres currently no safe way to make sure colonists can survive the trip, let alone prolonged stay on the Red Planet. As such, scientists are now turning to genetics for answers; specifically, genetic modifications.

Lets arrest your thought process right away: no, scientists are not considering growing astronauts from stem cells or cloning them in any way. Instead, theyre looking at ways we could modify the genetic makeup of astronauts in a lab, so they can be better suited to the hazards in deep space. For instance, can astronauts genes be shuffled to make them resistant to the constant bombardment from cosmic radiation? What about making them able to naturally produce the vitamins their body needs?

NASA

Christopher Mason, a member of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine, is one researcher attempting to answer these questions. In 2011, he suggested a 500-year plan to get humans off Earth, a large portion of which involves genetic modification. I think we have to consider it for people that we send to other planets, he says. We dont know if its a slight nudge to existing gene expression, or a whole new chromosome, or finally a complete rewriting of the genetic code.

According to Mason, scientists have at least another 10 years of work ahead of them before they can really understand the effect of extended space travel on your genes. His lab was also selected to be a part of a special NASA study involving twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly. Ever since Scott came back from a year on board the International Space Station, Mason has been studying the physiological differences between the two. Its the closest NASA has gotten to any research involving tailoring astronauts to suit space travel.

In fact, Mason says his lab is already on the precipice of a major breakthrough in their research. The team has been studying how to make human cells radiation-proof, to protect astronauts from cosmic background radiation, using copies of the p53 gene. Called the protector of the genome, this gene is present in excess in elephants, which may be related to the number of cancer cases in the animal being much fewer than other species. The team has been adding extra copies of this gene to human cells in labs, in order to test the theory, and may soon even be sending their modified cells to the space station to test.

Thanks to the evolution of CRISPR technology, which allows geneticists to make subtle changes to a genome, this sort of genetic editing has become even easier to test in labs. Its the first step to a future where humans could (if not against the law at the time) genetically modify their babies even before theyre born. While the research into the technology has been geared towards fighting hereditary diseases by essentially deleting them from the hosts DNA, it could also hold answers for the future of space travel.

However, this is a razor-sharp knife edge for geneticists to walk. How much gene editing can you support before it becomes unethical to make changes? What body should supervise this kind of work, and who should be on the panel? Should it only be restricted to fighting diseases and deformities or is it also okay to correct smaller flaws like sub-par eyesight or make a child smarter?

Masons research comes into play especially when considering colonies on alien planets. Right now, the push is to design habitation spaces, suits, and spacecraft that could make the astronauts environment as close to home as possible. What if, instead, we could change our astronauts so they could survive wherever theyre going instead, without needing additional support resources?

A few scientists are already considering what genes would be best to help in that situation. If we could gather genes found in people in different environments ones from people living at altitudes that would let you survive with at lower oxygen levels, or leaner muscles to stave of atrophy from prolonged spaceflight or low gravity habitation, or perhaps even an increased fertility gene to speed up population growth when sending a small team to colonise a planet. Gather them all into one astronaut and you have the perfect person to travel to space, tailor-made, instead of testing hundreds and thousands of regular individuals to see if they at least have one or two of those genes.

Thats where the future is headed; we just have to hope that the renewed space race doesnt push the researchers involved past their ethical boundaries.

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Re-Engineering Humans: Astronauts Could Be Genetically Modified To Better Survive In Space - Indiatimes.com

Satire

Happy National Companion Animal Day!!

Have you ever looked at your animal companion (probably a cat) and thought I would love to be you? Well, now you can! With the Mewgaroo Hoodie from Unihabitat in Japan, you can now literally morph into a half breed of a cat and kangaroo.

Why half kangaroo?

First of all, why not? And second because then you have a little pouch to that hold furry fuzzball of a cat. Unless your cat is a diabolical independent pet that comes to you only for food and when it wants attention.

I cant wait to hold my kitty Joey around literally like a Joey these guys are like my heroes, said obsessed cat owner Nat Bobtail.

The producers have genetically modified the material of the sweater to not only conform your DNA into a Mewgaroo kangacat like some science experiment gone wrong to just hold your cat in a pouch which you could do anyway with your HANDS, but it is also really soft and cozy.

Lets make the world half mutant animals, here I come X-Men! Not so special now are you Wolverine?!?! screamed Mat Sphynx, a guy with no cats whatsoever.

Have fun on your National Companion Animal Day!

The satire is based on the following information: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/21/mewgaroo-pet-sweatshirt-very-handsome_n_7354080.html

http://www.museumofanimals.org/#/animal-holidays/4425087

Read more from the original source:
New genetic engineering turns people into Kangacats - Warrior Record Online

Jeremy Brown of Magnolia is part of a group of Southern Arkansas University students formed to pursue neuroscience and genetic research projects in the College of Science and Engineering during the spring 2017 semester.

Brown is a junior pre-health biological science major.

His project has an SAU-supported grant of $1,250 to research possible genetic engineering techniques.

I believe research plays a big part in applying to professional schools, said Brown. It is also very rewarding to apply concepts and ideas I've learned in class.

Under the guidance of Dr. Mikolaj Sulkowski, assistant professor of biology, and Dr. Gisela Sulkowski, pre-health advisor, the research group meets weekly to conduct presentations on student progress and to facilitate communication among the group.

Throughout the rest of the week, however, students maintain a self-driven schedule.

Dr. Mikolaj Sulkowski says this style of work helps prepare students for research opportunities in their future career.

He was responsible for opening the SAU Laboratory of Neurogenetics in 2016 and was granted an SAU faculty research grant to study gene regulation in the brain.

He has experience writing grants to NASA and the Arkansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (Arkansas INBRE) program aimed at student research opportunities.

Additionally, he has collaborated with National Institute of Health (NIH) researchers in publishing a manuscript to "PLOS Genetics," a peer-reviewed open-access journal.

Southern Arkansas University students and faculty formed to pursue neuroscience and genetic research projects, left to right, Lane Smith, Aniebietabasi Akpan, Dr. Gisela Sulkowski, Dr. Mikolaj Sulkowski, Joseph McDowell, Jeremy Brown, Brishna Hedstrom and Robert Sann. Not pictured, Rebecca Jane Vance (Parnell).

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SAU team performing neuroscience and genetic research - Magnoliareporter