Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

Moscows Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was demolished in December 1931. In its place now stands a new Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

The intermittent period saw a stupendous construction planned for the site: the Palace of the Soviets, a 400-metre futuristic clash of neoclassicism and the avant garde, topped with a 100-metre-tall statue of Vladimir Lenin was set to occupy the area. If realised, it would have been the worlds tallest building for its time, topping the Empire State Building with its base alone. Lenins authoritative gaze and outstretched arm would have disappeared into the clouds.

An international design competition took place to establish what the vast congressional temple, communicating communisms triumph, might look like. It saw some 160 Soviet and foreign architects and their teams among them Walter Gropius, Moisei Ginzburg and Le Corbusier engage their efforts to establish an image that could conquer the spot. Jewish-Soviet architect Boris Iofan won.

The palace was part of a 1930s master plan to reconstruct Moscow. An offensive against the old city, it would have included new monuments, large-scale housing plans and elite residences, as well as attempts to straighten roadways and establish public parks.

The Soviets utopian ideals, and their commitment to the vision of socialism and its accompanying aesthetics, were a double-edged sword: Stalins state was viciously territorial over them, often at the expense of inhabitants, and many plans never saw fruition. Utopia often stayed mired in the realm of utopia.

And the vision of the Palace of the Soviets remained just that: a vision. Despite this, it is still one of the most notorious buildings in Moscow, and along with Tatlins Tower (1919), one of the nations most famous imagined projects.

But the city envisaged several more that could have permanently changed the face of Moscow as we know it today. An exhibit opening at the Design Museum on 15 March is set to document the architectural plans of the 1920s and 30s, as well as the propaganda surrounding them.

Narkomtiazhprom (NKTP) or the Peoples Commissariat of Heavy Industry was one such projected symbol for the new city. The subject of a 1934 architectural competition (Stalin seemed to enjoy these), it was set to stand on the north east edge of Red Square, and its realisation would have led to the destruction of both the Gum Shopping Centre and Moscow State Historical Museum, completely changing the geography of the landmark area.

Ivan Fomin's plan for theNarkomtiazhprom.

Some 12 designers in total competed for the project, among them, Ivan Fomin and Konstantin Melnikov. To one architect, Ivan Leonidov, this change was fundamental to the project. His design put forward three towers sharing a plinth: one rectangular, one circular, and one simple and strong. It was to be flanked by a staircase from which the proletariat could observe events on the square. He proclaimed that Red Squares landmarks should be subordinate to the structure.

The architecture of Red Square and the Kremlin is a delicate and majestic piece of music. The introduction into this symphony of an instrument so strong in its sound and so huge in scale is permissible only on condition that the new instrument will lead the orchestra, he wrote in his explanatory notes. The project fizzled out after a third round, and Leonidov only ever managed to construct a hillside staircase as part of a sanatorium in the southern city of Kislovodsk, in the north Caucasus.

A city for the people also needed people to venerate: heroes of communism. In 1934, Soviet architect and city planner Dmitry Chechulin intended to build a symbol honouring Soviet pilots on Belorusskaya Ploshchad, where one of Moscows main metro stations now stands.

The unrealised Aeroflot building was a tribute to those who helped to rescue the crew of steam ship Chelyuskin. In 1933 the steamer set sail from Murmansk to traverse the Northern Sea Route with the intention of reaching the Pacific Ocean. En route, it became mired in ice fields in the Chukchi Sea and was crushed and sank the following February.

All but one crew member survived and escaped onto the ice, and a complex aerial mission was required to ensure the success of the rescue operation, given the absence of landing space. Its success led to the pilots glory.

The Aeroflot building was never constructed. However, the design in strikingly similar to that of the present-day Russian White House, for which Chechulin was also a co-architect as the project took off in the 1960s.

An Arch of Heroes to stand as a monument to the war dead was also put forward by Soviet starchitect Leonid Pavlov in the early 1940s. A much smaller wooden recreation of the design was displayed among other temporary arches, on one of the citys main thoroughfares on City Day in 2015.

The Communal House of the Textile Institute in 2013. Image: Panoramio/Wikimedia Commons.

Ideas for communal housing projects were fundamental to the Soviet regime; the pinnacle of socialism saw different families sharing buildings, and facilities, having only their rooms as private space. Some key structures remain in place today in various conditions although the Narkomfin experiment for workers from the Peoples Commisariat of Finance and the Communal House of the Textile Institute envisaged in the late 1920s have both seen better days.

And some never made it. One of the first projected communal housing projects was put forward by Nikolai Ladovsky, who rejected a focus on sheer technicality and function for a focus on space and form he was a rationalist rather than a constructivist. Most important in them will be the amount of intelligence, he reportedly said.

One such idea, conceived in 1920, was a conglomeration of residences spiralling upwards, not unlike Tatlins Tower. Ladovsky was drawn towards a trend in contemporary psychology called psychotechnics, creating a laboratory for students in 1926 to research visual perception and architecture and how it could contribute to organising the psychology of the masses. Such ideas fell out of favour in the late 1930s, but before then, he also managed to put forward a proposal for a new industrial town of 25,000 called Kostino.

The Design Museum exhibit will touch on the psychological elements of Soviet architecture too, documenting El Lissitzkys plans for Cloud Irons in 1925. A contemporary of Ladovsky, he developed designs for eight such structures horizontal skyscrapers but with vertical supports as he deemed moving vertically unnatural for humankind.

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The world is running out of water. But genetic engineering can help - CityMetric

In a quote written on a chalkboard in the Caltech archives, Richard Feynman said, What I cannot create, I do not understand.

This quote is the root of inspiration for geneticist J. Craig Venters research and scientific mission. Genomics is at an exciting stage today where what we understand about the genome can be applied directly to human health, Venter said in a lecture titled From Synthetic Life to Human Longevity on Wednesday.

Venter explained that there was no point in increasing lifespan alone, but the challenge was to increase an individuals healthspan. He stated that 40 percent of men and 24 percent of women between the ages of 50-74 in the United States do not reach the age of 74. A third of this population dies of cardiovascular disease and another third of cancer, leaving all other causes of death to just a third of the overall percentage, he said.

Venter, co-founder of Human Longevity, Inc., said that his goal was to change medicines approach to being proactive, predictive, personalized, and preventative by using whole genome sequencing and cutting-edge imaging and measurement technology. Early detection is literally lifesaving, he said, explaining that over 40 percent of people who entered his lab thinking they were healthy turned out not to be.

He said that his own genome showed an increased risk for prostate cancer, which he corroborated with a measure of his testosterone levels. While men with over 22 triplet repeats of a certain sequence on their X chromosome have very low incidences of prostate cancer, Venter said he only had six, which placed him on the extremely low end of the spectrum. He said that based on his genome sequence and testosterone readings, he underwent a prostatectomy a few months ago.

Early prediction of diseases like Alzheimers, which can be predicted 20 years in advance of the first symptoms by using whole-genome sequencing and neuro-quant data, can be prevented with the right drugs, Venter noted. He added that the same could be done with cancer tumors, and there was the potential to move to entirely preventative cancer vaccines, something that already exists for some forms of the disease.

Venter said that genotype could predict not only disease but also other phenotypes. His Face Project uses machine learning to reconstruct a three-dimensional human face from the genome alone, he noted. Venter also said that recordings of a voice could be used to predict the speakers age, sex, and height.

All of this information comes from about 40,000 genome sequences that has produced over 20 petabytes of data, Venter explained. He added that the sequencing of one million human genomes could produce one quintillion bytes of data, an amount that nobody in the world knows how to handle, yet the government could not be convinced that genomics was a big data problem. Sequencing the first human genome, a project whose private arm was spearheaded by Venter, took over nine years, cost more than a billion dollars, and, in 1999, had the third largest computer in the world built solely for that purpose, he explained.

Venters other major project was the synthesis of a living organism from scratch, which he and his team at the J. Craig Venter Institute accomplished in 2008 by converting digital binary bits into an organism that could live on its own.

The day we announced this, both the President and the Pope released statements, with the President calling for this to be the number one priority of the bioethics committee, and the Pope reassuring people that we had not actually created life, but just changed one of lifes motors, he said.

Venters team also discovered that the genome could be modularized so that entire sets of genes could be classified as metabolism, for example, and inserted into the genome. He said that to distinguish this synthetic life from existing organisms, into the genome of the organism was coded the names of the forty scientists that worked on the project, and quotations from James Joyce, Robert Oppenheimer, and Feynman.

Venter explained that despite having created an entirely new organism, scientists still do not understand the functions of a third of the genes, only that they appear throughout the biological tree and are necessary for the organisms survival.

Like any good science, we found out how little we know rather than how much we know, Venter said.

The event, part of the Princeton Public Lectures Vanuxem Lecture Series, was attended by members of the community in addition to Princeton students and faculty. The lecture took place in McCosh 50 at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

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Venter discusses genetic engineering, human longevity - The Daily Princetonian

March 8, 2017 G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology and theme leader of the IGB's Mining Microbial Genomes theme Bill Metcalf, left, with IGB Fellow Dipti Nayak. Credit: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A new study by G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois Bill Metcalf with postdoctoral Fellow Dipti Nayak has documented the use of CRISPR-Cas9 mediated genome editing in the third domain of life, Archaea, for the first time. Their groundbreaking work, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has the potential to vastly accelerate future studies of these organisms, with implications for research including global climate change. Metcalf and Nayak are members of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

"Under most circumstances our model archaeon, Methanosarcina acetivorans, has a doubling time of eight to ten hours, as compared to E. coli, which can double in about 30 minutes. What that means is that doing genetics, getting a mutant, can take monthsthe same thing would take three days in E. coli," explains Nayak. "What CRISPR-Cas9 enables us to do, at a very basic level, is speed up the whole process. It removes a major bottleneck... in doing genetics research with this archaeon.

"Even more," continues Nayak, "with our previous techniques, mutations had to be introduced one step at a time. Using this new technology, we can introduce multiple mutations at the same time. We can scale up the process of mutant generation exponentially with CRISPR."

CRISPR, short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, began as an immune defense system in archaea and bacteria. By identifying and storing short fragments of foreign DNA, Cas (CRISPR-associated system) proteins are able to quickly identify that DNA in the future, so that it can then quickly be destroyed, protecting the organism from viral invasion.

Since its discovery, a version of this immune systemCRISPR-Cas9has been modified to edit genomes in the lab. By pairing Cas9 with a specifically engineered RNA guide rather than a fragment of invasive DNA, the CRISPR system can be directed to cut a cell's genome in an arbitrary location such that existing genes can be removed or new ones added. This system has been prolifically useful in editing eukaryotic systems from yeast, to plant, to fish and even human cells, earning it the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 2015 Breakthrough of the Year award. However, its implementation in prokaryotic species has been met with hurdles, due in part to their different cellular processes.

To use CRISPR in a cellular system, researchers have to develop a protocol that takes into account a cell's preferred mechanism of DNA repair: after CRISPR's "molecular scissors" cut the chromosome, the cell's repair system steps in to mend the damage through a mechanism that can be harnessed to remove or add additional genetic material. In eukaryotic cells, this takes the form of Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ). Though this pathway has been used for CRISPR-mediated editing, it has the tendency to introduce genetic errors during its repair process: nucleotides, the rungs of the DNA ladder, are often added or deleted at the cut site.

NHEJ is very uncommon in prokaryotes, including Archaea; instead, their DNA is more often repaired through a process known as homology-directed repair. By comparing the damage to a DNA template, homology-directed repair creates what Nayak calls a "deterministic template"the end result can be predicted in advance and tailored to the exact needs of the researcher.

In many ways, homology-directed repair is actually preferable for genome editing: "As much as we want CRISPR-Cas9 to make directed edits in eukaryotic systems, we often end up with things that we don't want, because of NHEJ," explains Nayak. "In this regard, it was a good thing that most archaeal strains don't have a non-homologous end joining repair system, so the only way DNA can be repaired is through this deterministic homologous repair route."

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, one of Nayak and Metcalf's first uses of CRISPR-Cas9 was to introduce an NHEJ mechanism in Methanosarcina acetivorans. Though generally not preferable for genome editing, says Nayak, NHEJ has one use for which it's superior to homologous repair: "If you just want to delete a gene, if you don't care how ... non-homologous end joining is actually more efficient."

By using the introduced NHEJ repair system to perform what are known as "knock-out" studies, wherein a single gene is removed or silenced to see what changes are produced and what processes that gene might affect, Nayak says that future research will be able to assemble a genetic atlas of M. acetivorans and other archaeal species. Such an atlas would be incredibly useful for a variety of fields of research involving Archaea, including an area of particular interest to the Metcalf lab, climate change.

"Methanosarcina acetivorans is the one of the most genetically tractable archaeal strains," says Nayak. "[Methanogens are] a class of archaea that produce gigatons of this potent greenhouse gas every year, play a keystone role in the global carbon cycle, and therefore contribute significantly to global climate change." By studying the genetics of this and similar organisms, Nayak and Metcalf hope to gain not only a deeper understanding of archaeal genetics, but of their role in broader environmental processes.

In all, this research represents an exciting new direction in studying and manipulating archaea. "We began this research to determine if the use of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing in archaea was even possible," concludes Nayak. "What we've discovered is that it's not only possible, but it works remarkably well, even as compared to eukaryotic systems."

Explore further: Modifying fat content in soybean oil with the molecular scissors Cpf1

More information: Dipti D. Nayak et al, Cas9-mediated genome editing in the methanogenic archaeon, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1618596114

A team from the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Research (IBS), succeeded in editing two genes that contribute to the fat contents of soybean oil using the new CRISPR-Cpf1 technology: an alternative ...

Although the genome editing system known as CRISPR/Cas has revolutionized genetic research in cell lines, its overall efficiency has been relatively poor when used to generate genetically altered animals for disease modeling. ...

Researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) have harnessed the power of CRISPR/Cas9 to create more-potent chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells that enhance tumor rejection in mice. The unexpected findings, ...

Rest easy, folks. Armies of genetically modified super-species are unlikely to conquer Earth anytime soon.

A unique gene-editing method that efficiently inserts DNA into genes located in dividing and non-dividing cells of living rats has been developed by a team of international researchers, including scientists from KAUST.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a powerful new tool for editing the genome. For researchers around the world, the CRISPR-Cas9 technique is an exciting innovation because it is faster and cheaper than previous methods. Now, using a molecular ...

An international research team has discovered a biochemical pathway that is responsible for the development of moss cuticles. These waxy coverings of epidermal cells are the outer layer of plants and protect them from water ...

The International Potato Center (CIP) launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth. This Phase ...

A new study by G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois Bill Metcalf with postdoctoral Fellow Dipti Nayak has documented the use of CRISPR-Cas9 mediated genome editing in the third domain ...

A new study involving biologists from Monash University Australia has found that despite their very different ancestors, dolphins and crocodiles evolved similarly-shaped skulls to feed on similar prey.

Proteins, those basic components of cells and tissues, carry out many biological functions by working with partners in networks. The dynamic nature of these networks - where proteins interact with different partners at different ...

New research from the University of St Andrews has sparked debate about what it takes to live in stable, long-lasting social groups.

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A new tool for genetically engineering the oldest branch of life - Phys.Org

[Editors note: The following is a Q&A with Urs Niggli, director of the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture in Germany. It has been translated from German by Google.]

New techniques are currently revolutionizing genetic research. They allow extremely precise changes to the genome. This so-called genetic surgery changes the debate about the risks and chances of interventions in the genome.

Urs Niggli

Mr. Niggli is currently discussing a new form of Green Genetic Engineering . The so-called CRISPR/Cas method is the focus of the debate.

What could be achieved with this procedure?

[T]here are already new varieties of wheat, maize, millet, rice and tomato. For farmers even for eco-farmers the new method opens up many opportunities: plants that are better suited to difficult environmental conditions such as drought, soil dampness or salinization can be bred. The fine root architecture could be improved so that the roots absorb more nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen from the soil. Tolerance or resistance to diseases and parasites, storage and quality of food and feed could also be improved. Critics like to dismiss these possibilities as empty promises. I think these are obviously ecological improvements that can reduce the big problems of conventional agriculture.

I strongly advocate a case-by-case approach and am opposed to a general demonization of the new genetic engineering.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:Eco-researcher: I am against a general demonization of the new genetic engineering (IN GERMAN)

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Environmentalists should embrace 'green genetic engineering' of crops using CRISPR, German organic researchers says - Genetic Literacy Project

Stanford University is a private research university in Stanford, California, adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Stanford had expanded their research and has now ventured into scientific research about vaccines. They have genetically engineered mice to glow like fireflies. Yes, you heard it right glowing mice. Researchers at Stanford have developed a way to extract firefly proteins and introduce it to the mice specimen. This is envisioned to aid in the treatment and cure of patients with cancer.

According to the co-author of the study, Professor Christopher Contag, this study demonstrated for the first time that we can deliver messenger RNA (mRNA) to cells in a dish, or to cells in organs of living animals. The mRNA is the intermediate between the genome and functional proteins. Prior to this work there has not been an effective way to transfer synthetic mRNA into cells in a way that the cell can turn it into protein. This opens up an entirely new way to have cells express proteins that can treat a myriad of diseases. The research was featured and published in the recent paper journal entitled, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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In the study, protein expression using mRNA has the ability to transform multiple areas for research, including the prevention, detection and treatment of disease. Functional delivery of mRNA to tissues in the body is key to implementing fundamentally new and potentially transformative strategies for vaccination, protein replacement therapy, and genome editing, collectively affecting approaches for the prevention, detection, and treatment of disease. This is, in particular, quite a challenge for the team because the mRNA is negatively charged; the cell membrane is positive so the transmission of the two is incompatible. To override this imbalance, the scientists came up with a way to create a vehicle for the mRNA. To test that, the specimen mice came into the picture.

Professor Paul Wender from Stanfords department of Chemistry and is one of the authors of the research said that, What we did was to use mRNA that codes for an optical readout, meaning one that we could see. In this case that meant light coming out of a cell. Its the fastest way of discovering whether you have succeeded in getting something into a cell, by getting it to shoot photons back at you. The study was a success that no adverse effects on the test subject were observed. The experiment worked for a few hours, and eventually subsided in 24 to 48 hours after. This experiment also showed a possibility of extending that desired effect by manipulating the DNA involved.

The research is still young as it will need more nurturing and sleepless nights to fully develop it into maturity. Being able to manipulate mRNA transmission and its genetic engineering means more possibilities for learning and being able to create new things. Science is a very complex subject but also very rewarding. The little things you focus on will grow out to affect the biggest if done right. We just hope stability of findings would occur soon so that it can be used for the benefit of the general public.

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Genetic Engineering to Alter mRNA to Pave a New Way for Cancer ... - Mobile Magazine

Genetic Engineering to Alter mRNA to Pave a New Way for Cancer Treatment Mobile Magazine Being able to manipulate mRNA transmission and its genetic engineering means more possibilities for learning and being able to create new things. Science is a very complex subject but also very rewarding. The little things you focus on will grow out to ...

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Genetic Engineering to Alter mRNA to Pave a New Way for Cancer Treatment - Mobile Magazine

Sickle cell disease. Image: Flickr

Sickle cell disease is a slow, vicious killer. Most people diagnosed with the red blood cell disorder in the US live to be between 40 and 60. But those years are a lifetime of pain, as abnormal, crescent-shaped hemoglobin stops up blood flow and deprives tissues of oxygen, causing frequent bouts of agony, along with more severe consequences like organ damage. Now, after decades of searching for a cure, researchers are announcing that, in at least one patient, they seem to have found a very promising treatment.

Two years ago, a French teen with sickle cell disease underwent a gene therapy treatment intended to help his red blood cells from sickling. In a paper published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers revealed that today, half of his red blood cells have normal-shaped hemoglobin. He has not needed a blood transfusion, which many sickle cell patients receive to reduce complications from the disease, since three months after his treatment. He is also off all medicines.

To reiterate, the paper is a case study of just one patient. Bluebird Bio, the Massachusetts biotech company that sponsored the clinical trial, has treated at least six other trials underway in the US and France, but those results have not yet been fully reported. The gene therapy has not worked quite as well in some of those other patients; researchers say they are adjusting the therapy accordingly. It is also possible that the boy may eventually experience some blood flow blockages again in the future.

The results, though early, are encouraging. They represent the promise of new genetics technologies to address a disease that has long been neglected and tinged with racism. Sickle cell disease affects about 100,000 people in the US, most of whom are black. It is an inherited genetic disease caused by a mutation of a single letter in a persons genetic code.

This single-letter mutation makes it a promising candidate for cutting edge technologies, like the gene-editing technique CRISPR-Cas9, and other gene therapies. Recently, a rush of new research has sought to address it. Two other gene therapy studies for sickle cell are underway in the US one at UCLA and another at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital. Yet another is about to start in a collaboration between Harvard and Boston Childrens Hospital. Last fall, researchers all demonstrated the ability to correct the mutation in human cells using CRISPR, though that strategy will yet have to surpass significant scientific and political hurdles before reaching clinical trials.

In the new study, researchers took bone marrow stem cells from the boy and fed them corrected versions of a gene that codes for beta-globin, a protein that helps produce normal hemoglobin. The hope was that those altered stem cells would interfere with the boys faulty proteins and allow his red blood cells to function normally. They continued the transfusions until the transplanted cells began to produce normal-shaped hemoglobin. In the following months, the numbers of those cells continued to increase until in December 2016, they accounted for more than half the red blood cells in his body. In other words, so far so good.

Currently, the only long-term treatment for sickle cell disease is a bone marrow transplant, a high-risk, difficult procedure which many patients are not even eligible for. Pain and other side-effects are treated with blood transfusions for temporary relief. New technologies offer the hope of a solution that could provide long-term relief and allow patients to live some semblance of a normal life.

For decades, gene therapies have been touted as a cure for everything. But so far, successes have been infrequent, and often for very rare diseases. But early success in treating sickle cell disease means that soon, if were lucky, the benefits of this technology may reach hundreds of thousands of people.

[New England Journal of Medicine]

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Will Sickle Cell Be the Next Disease Genetic Engineering Cures? - Gizmodo

Since the discovery of the genome-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9, scientists have been looking to utilize the technology to make a significant impact on correcting genetic diseases. Technical challenges have made it difficult to use this method to correct disorders that are caused by single-nucleotide mutations, such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Huntington's disease, and phenylketonuria. However now, researchers from the Center for Genome Engineering, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea, have just used a variation of CRISPR/Cas9 to produce mice with single-nucleotide differences. The findings from this new study were published recently in Nature Biotechnology in an article entitled Highly Efficient RNA-Guided Base Editing in Mouse Embryos.

Although genome editing with programmable nucleases such as CRISPRCas9 or Cpf1 systems holds promise for gene correction to repair genetic defects that cause genetic diseases, it is technically challenging to induce single-nucleotide substitutions in a targeted manner, the authors wrote. This is because most DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) produced by programmable nucleases are repaired by error-prone non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) rather than homologous recombination (HR) using a template donor DNA. As a result, insertion/deletions (indels) are obtained much more frequently at a nuclease target site than are single-nucleotide substitutions.

The most frequently used CRISPR/Cas9 technique works by cutting around the faulty nucleotide in both strands of the DNA and cuts out a small part of DNA. In the current study, the investigators used a variation of the Cas9 protein (nickase Cas9, or nCas9) fused with an enzyme called cytidine deaminase, which can substitute one nucleotide into anothergenerating single-nucleotide substitutions without DNA deletions.

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An Efficient Single-Nucleotide-Editing CRISPR - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

The potential and power of genetic engineering looms over the first trailer released for the upcoming Netflix film Okja. Directed by Snowpiercers Bong Joon-ho, the films star is a genetically modified animal who is friends with a young girl and is being hunted by a multinational company. This companys business is genetic modification, and its headed by an icy-blond Tilda Swinton. While Okja is being pegged as science fiction, the fictional part of this film is actually pretty slim: The science that it would take to make such a creature is already in the works.

I took nature and science, Swintons character says in the trailer, clasping her hands. And I synthesized. Shes talking about the massive animal at the heart of the story.

We dont know too much about it: Den of Geek reports that the animal was an experiment that is now growing rapidly, while the films description in Korean describes Okja as somewhere between human and animal. The new trailer only gives us a small look at the creature, whose shape appears to be a pig-hippo crossover with tender brown eyes.

That genetic modification would create a massive creature is not preposterous: Scientists have already used CRISPR technology to increase the size and mass of common animals. In 2015, biotech company AquaBounty Technologies revealed that it genetically modified Atlantic salmon by adding a growth hormone gene and a promoter of an antifreeze gene to the fish. This created much larger salmon that grow at a speed two times faster than average. Double-muscled beagles broke into the CRISPR scene in early 2016, when Chinese researchers from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health announced they used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology to delete the myostatin gene from the normally small-muscled dogs. These beagles not only look like theyre on steroids theyre stronger and can run faster than their unmodified peers.

Real-life animals that seem more suited for a fantasy novel arent out of the question either: In a 2016 essay in The American Journal of Bioethics, professors Hank Greely and R. Alta Charo argue that creating a dragon yes, a dragon wasnt impossible with CRISPR technology. Sure, physics would prevent it from actually spitting out fire, but a very large reptile that looks at least somewhat like the European or Asian dragon (perhaps with flappable if not flyable wings) could be someones target of opportunity, they write.

And if Okja is indeed somewhere between human and animal and this is a literal explanation, rather than an anthropomorphic sentiment the science is almost there as well. At the end of January, scientists declared they had created pig-human chimeras. These embryos were less than 0.001 percent human and were created with the hope that they could one day allow us to grow human organs inside animals not actual pig-humans. Still, its proof that what seemed like science fiction only decade prior can actually become a reality. Okja the film may seem like science fiction when its released this June, but it could very well be pegged as a documentary in the years to come.

Photos via Giphy/YouTube

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Rampant Growth of Giant Animal in 'Okja' Trailer Isn't Science Fiction - Inverse

Venkatraman Venki' Ramakrishnan, the Indian born structural biologist who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009 with two other scientists, cautioned against the risks associated with recent developments in biotechnology. Ramakrishnan spoke about the issue at the annual meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.

Many of the genetic cells could be treated by removing cells from the body and modifying it, he said while addressing one of the major ethical concerns related to genetic engineering. Treating a well-known genetic disease is something that many people would agree with. It gets trickier when someone says, I consider being a brown guy in today's atmosphere a problem and don't want my children to go through that'.

Currently the President of the Royal Society of London, he said, I grew up in India where lot of people still don't have access to enough food, and cancer survival rates remain one of the lowest in the world. But in UK and US people have far greater access to healthcare. He added, When we decide what to do with the technology that we have, we need to consider not only what we can do, but also what we should do. He also said that the benefits of new technology should not be limited to a few rich countries.

Genetic engineering remains a debated topic among the scientists as well as the general people. We now have a much wider range of tools at our disposal. They are making genetic manipulation faster, easier and simpler, Ramakrishnan said referring to the easier production of insulin, vaccines and the availability of genetically modified crops that give a better yield.

The Nobel laureate was of the opinion that scientists need to address the concerns that the people have and that there must be public debate along with robust science.

If you were to say wipe out mosquitoes, many people won't complain. This may not necessarily be the right thing to do, he explained. There is a natural worry if you would be able to reverse it if there was some kind of problem, he said. Referring to the food shortage in many of the developing countries including India, he pointed out that technology like genetic engineering of crops could help us increase the yield.

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Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan weighs in on future of genetic engineering - Daily News & Analysis