Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

4.3c - Genetic Engineering
via YouTube Capture.

By: Joanna Schimizzi

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4.3c - Genetic Engineering - Video

Genetic Engineering for Dummies
3 MS boys come together to make a project beyond all others. As a community outreach for our Issues Analysis project, we strive to inform the populous of our...

By: ProjectPartners

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Genetic Engineering for Dummies - Video

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as genetic programs. One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this weeks advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of biopixel sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The teams breakthrough involves a form of frequency multiplexing inspired by FM radio.

This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series, said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel.

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. Its not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal, said Prindle. When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods.

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing metaphorization of engineering biology.

We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models, explained Prindle. Its important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you arent being too reliant on your engineering metaphors.

See the original post here:
Scientists develop bacterial FM Radio

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

Contact: Kim McDonald kmcdonald@ucsd.edu 858-534-7572 University of California - San Diego

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded, and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

See the original post:
UC San Diego researchers develop bacterial 'FM radio'

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing "metaphorization" of engineering biology.

"We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models," explained Prindle. "It's important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you aren't being too reliant on your engineering metaphors."

Enabling this breakthrough is the development of an intracellular wiring mechanism that enables rapid transmission of protein signals between the individual modules. The new wiring mechanism was inspired by a previous study in the lab on the bacterial stress response. It reduces the time lags that develop as a consequence of using proteins to activate or repress genes.

Read more here:
Genetic circuits: Bacterial 'FM radio' created

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

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

New Rochelle, NY, April 9, 2014The increased risk of death associated with alcohol intake is not the same for men and women. A study that compared the amount of alcohol consumed and death from all causes among nearly 2.5 million women and men showed that the differences between the sexes became greater as alcohol intake increased, as described in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh.

In the article "Effect of Drinking on All-Cause Mortality in Women Compared with Men: A Meta-Analysis," Chao Wang and coauthors, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical Sciences (Beijing, China), modeled the relationship between the dose of alcohol consumed and the risk of death, comparing the results for drinkers versus non-drinkers and among male and female drinkers. Females had an increased rate of all-cause mortality conferred by drinking compared with males, especially in heavy drinkers.

"While alcoholism is more common in men than women, female drinkers face greater risks to their health compared with male drinkers," says Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women's Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, and President of the Academy of Women's Health.

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About the Journal

Journal of Women's Health, published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women. The Journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women's healthcare issues. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. Journal of Women's Health is the official journal of the Academy of Women's Health and the Society for Women's Health Research.

About the Academy

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Is the increased risk of death due to alcohol intake greater for women or men?

Req ID: 6641

Position Summary:

This position will supervise approximately (10-11) employees. This will include Facility Engineers and support Technicians. The successful candidate will interface with Marathon employees, contractor employees and vendors to optimize facility design, maximize production rates, and focus on optimization to meet reliability goals. Effective teamwork is required by the Engineering Staff as information is gathered and communicated between field personnel and other team members. Work being performed by the engineering staff includes performing engineering studies, evaluations, budget preparation, project engineering/management, troubleshooting, and support to production operations. The Bakken program is ongoing and fast paced. Facility Engineering work will need to be completed and commissioned to meet the drilling development program along with maintaining existing production. A demonstrated commitment to HES standards and policies is a must for the candidate filling this position.

Essential Functions:

Prerequisites:

EDUCATION: Bachelors Degree required, Engineering focus

EXPERIENCE: 10+ years in construction, facility design, and maintenance; project planning experience (preferred)

COMPUTER: MS Office Suite; Microsoft Project or Primavera; TOW; COGZ;

PROFICIENCY: ACAD; KMS (management of change); HYSYS (would be a plus)

COMMUNICATION: Excellent oral and written communication, teamwork, and planning & organization skills

Read more from the original source:
Facilities Engineering Supervisor Job

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-Apr-2014

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, April 8, 2014A new nonsurgical approach to treating chronic pain and stiffness associated with knee osteoarthritis has demonstrated significant, lasting improvement in knee pain, function, and stiffness. This safe, two-solution treatment delivered in a series of injections into and around the knee joint is called prolotherapy, and is described in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website.

David Rabago, MD, and a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Meriter Health Services, Madison, WI, report substantial improvement among participants in the one-year study who received at least three of the two-solution injections. Symptom improvement ranged from 19.5-42.9% compared to baseline status.

As described in the article "Dextrose and Morrhuate Sodium Injections (Prolotherapy) for Knee Osteoarthritis: A Prospective Open-Label Trial", reported improvement in knee pain, function, and stiffness scores exceeded the minimum for a "clinically important difference" in 50-75% of patients.

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About the Journal

Celebrating 20 years in 2014, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed journal publishing observational, clinical, and scientific reports and commentary intended to help healthcare professionals and scientists evaluate and integrate therapies into patient care protocols and research strategies. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website.

About the Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers 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 Alternative and Complementary Therapies, Medical Acupuncture, and Journal of Medicinal Food. 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 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.

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New research may provide effective nonsurgical treatment for knee osteoarthritis

The fossil of an extinct marine predator that lay entombed in an ancient seafloor for 520 million years reveals the creature had a sophisticated heart and blood-vessel system similar to those of its distant modern relatives, arthropods such as lobsters and ants, researchers report today (April 7).

The cardiovascular system was discovered in the 3-inch-long (8 centimeters) fossilized marine animal species called Fuxianhuia protensa, which is an arthropod from the Chengjiang fossil site in China's Yunnan province. It is the oldest example of an arthropod heart and blood vessel system ever found.

"It's really quite extraordinary," said study co-author Nicholas Strausfeld, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The cardiovascular network is the latest evidence that arthropods had developed a complex organ system 520 million years ago, in the Cambrian Period, the researchers said. Arthropodscome in a wide range of shapes and sizes today, but the animals have kept some aspects of their basic body plan since the Cambrian. For instance, the brain in living crustaceans is very similar to that of F. protensa, which is a distant relative but not a direct ancestor of modern species, Strausfeld said. "The brain has not changed much over 520 million years," he said.

In contrast, blood vessel networks have become both simpler and more complex in the ensuing millennia, in response to changing bodies. The modern relatives of F. protensa are arthropods with mandible jaws, and include everything from insects such as beetles and flies to crustaceans such as shrimp and crabs.

"What we're seeing in the arterial system is the ground pattern, the basic body pattern from which all these modern variations could have arisen," Strausfeld told Live Science.

Read the original here:
520-Million-Year-Old Fossils Had Heart and Brain

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-Apr-2014

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

New Rochelle, NY, April 8, 2014Use of social media such as Facebook can influence attitudes and behaviors among people of all countries and cultures. Among women in Iran, the duration and amount of daily Facebook activity is associated with their desire to wear a traditional head-covering and their willingness to display pictures of themselves without a veil, according to an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.

In "The Influence of Social Networking Technologies on Female Religious Veil-Wearing Behavior in Iran," Sean Young, PhD, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Abbas Shakiba, University of Shahid Chamran (Ahvaz, Iran), Justin Kwok, UCLA, and Mohammad Sadegh Montazeri, University of Semnan, Iran, report the results of a survey of Iranian women. They found significant relationships between several factors and how likely the Iranian women surveyed were to cover themselves with a veil and whether they would post unveiled photos on Facebook.

"This study is an important foray into the impact technology and social media is having on cultural and religious norms," says Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB,BCN, Editor-in-Chief of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, from the Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, CA.

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About the Journal

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

About the Publisher

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Are women in Iran who use Facebook less likely to wear a veil?