Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

BIF 8: Andrew Hessel - Genetic Engineering From A Laptop
Andrew Hessel: Genetic Engineering From a Laptop From living cells to cell phones, Genomic Futurist Andrew Hessel draws our attention to life in all forms. I...

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BIF 8: Andrew Hessel - Genetic Engineering From A Laptop - Video

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

13-Mar-2014

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

New Rochelle, NY, March 13, 2014A soft-bodied, self-contained robotic fish with a flexible spine that allows it to mimic the swimming motion of a real fish also has the built-in agility to perform escape maneuvers. The innovative design and capabilities of this complex, autonomous robot is described in Soft Robotics (SoRo), a new peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Soft Robotics website at http://www.liebertpub.com/soro.

Andrew Marchese, Cagdas Onal, and Daniela Rus, from MIT (Cambridge, MA) and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA), describe the design, modeling, fabrication, and control mechanisms of the robotic fish in the article "Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators". A novel fluidic actuation system, embedded muscle-like actuators, and an onboard control system give the fish autonomy and the ability to perform continuous forward swimming motion and rapid accelerations.

"This innovative work highlights two important aspects of our emerging field; first it is inspired and informed by animal studies (biomimetics), and second it exploits novel soft actuators to achieve life-like robot movements and controls," says Editor-in-Chief Barry A. Trimmer, PhD, who directs the Neuromechanics and Biomimetic Devices Laboratory at Tufts University (Medford, MA).

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About the Journal

Soft Robotics (SoRo), a peer-reviewed journal published quarterly online with Open Access options and in print, combines advances in biomedical engineering, biomechanics, mathematical modeling, biopolymer chemistry, computer science, and tissue engineering to present new approaches to the creation of robotic technology and devices that can undergo dramatic changes in shape and size in order to adapt to various environments. Led by Editor-in-Chief Barry A. Trimmer, PhD and a distinguished team of Associate Editors, the Journal provides the latest research and developments on topics such as soft material creation, characterization, and modeling; flexible and degradable electronics; soft actuators and sensors; control and simulation of highly deformable structures; biomechanics and control of soft animals and tissues; biohybrid devices and living machines; and design and fabrication of conformable machines. Complete information is available on the SoRo website at http://www.liebertpub.com/soro.

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Robotic fish designed to perform escape maneuvers described in Soft Robotics journal

AN INTERVIEW WITH RAHUL AGARWAL
http://www.youtube.com/user/hiudaipur?sub_confirmation=1 AN INTERVIEW WITH RAHUL AGARWAL website : http://www.hiudaipur.com Email :- itsudaipur@gmail.com http://www...

By: Hi Udaipur

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AN INTERVIEW WITH RAHUL AGARWAL - Video

Genetic engineering got wrong
Frankenstein version.

By: jacmalayter

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Genetic engineering got wrong - Video

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

11-Mar-2014

Contact: Jennifer Quigley jquigley@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2149 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, March 11, 2014Several young children suffering from a severe degenerative genetic disease received injections of therapeutic genes packaged within a noninfectious viral delivery vector. Safety, tolerability, and efficacy results from this early stage clinical trial are reported in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Human Gene Therapy website.

Marc Tardieu, Universit Paris-Sud and INSERM, and a team of international researchers administered the adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector carrying a normal copy of the N-sulfoglycosamine sulfohydrolase (SGSH) gene into the brains of four children affected by mucopolysaccharidosis type IIIA (MPSIIIA), an inherited lysosomal storage disease in which the SGSH gene is defective. The AAV vector also delivered a sulfatase-modifying factor (SUMF1), needed to activate the SGSH protein.

In addition to measures of toxicity, adverse events, and tolerability, the researchers evaluated the children for brain shrinkage (a characteristic of MPSIIIA) and for changes in behavior, attention, sleep, and cognitive benefit. They describe their findings in the article "Intracerebral administration of AAV rh.10 carrying human SGSH and SUMF1 cDNAs in children with MPSIIIA disease: results of a phase I/II trial."

"This is an important new approach for treating CNS manifestations of lysosomal storage diseases that could be applied across a wide array of disorders," says James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Human Gene Therapy, and Director of the Gene Therapy Program, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia.

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About the Journal

Human Gene Therapy, the official journal of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, French Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, German Society of Gene Therapy, and five other gene therapy societies, is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly in print and online. Human Gene Therapy presents reports on the transfer and expression of genes in mammals, including humans. Related topics include improvements in vector development, delivery systems, and animal models, particularly in the areas of cancer, heart disease, viral disease, genetic disease, and neurological disease, as well as ethical, legal, and regulatory issues related to the gene transfer in humans. Its sister journals, Human Gene Therapy Methods, published bimonthly and focuses on the application of gene therapy to product testing and development, and Human Gene Therapy Clinical Development, published quarterly, features data relevant to the regulatory review and commercial development of cell and gene therapy products. Tables of content for all three publications and a free sample issue may be viewed on the Human Gene Therapy website.

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Gene therapy for lysosomal storage disease shown to be safe and well tolerated

March 12, 2014, 12:13 a.m.

A new technique looks set to soon allow consenting parents to have a child who will not suffer from a serious disability.

Parents in the UK look set to become the first in the world to use a radical IVF technique that some critics have condemned as eugenic engineering. If approved by parliament, so called "three person IVF" could be available on the National Health Service as early as next year.

Supporters hail the technique as a cure for the debilitating and incurable diseases caused by defective genetic material in a part of the mother's egg cell called the mitochondria. It involves implanting the nucleus of a woman's egg into another woman's egg cell which has healthy mitochondria and has had its nucleus removed. The process can take place before or after the egg is fertilised using a man's sperm.

Although the genetic contribution of the egg donor is very small (1 per cent) and won't be detectable in the child's appearance and psychological characteristics, the transfer of genetic material affects the genetic constitution of the egg and the embryo. This means that changes will not only affect the child but also the child's descendants, and there has been criticism of the risk of introducing bad traits through the generations though there have been government assurances that the process will be closely monitored in the UK.

One of the distinctions that ought to play a crucial role in this debate is between genetic engineering that aims to remove a serious disability and engineering designed to make people more intelligent, better looking, stronger or more assertive. And it is the latter that has raised the spectre of eugenics.

Eugenics, of course, is reviled because of the policies adopted by a number of states in the first part of the 20th century, most famously the Nazis, to build a more productive and healthy population by eliminating from the gene pool those regarded it regarded as unfit. And the debate over the ethical implications of mitochondrial transfer is very much alive.

In the Council of Europe, 34 member politicians declared that the creation of babies from the DNA of three parents was a form of eugenics "incompatible with human dignity and international law". They claimed it contravened a European Union human rights convention that forbids genetic interventions that affect the human germ-line by altering the genome of descendants.

The thinking behind this prohibition is that tampering of this kind is not only dangerous, but makes humans into a product of engineering. Even if intentions are good, the use of such techniques undermines the reasons we have for respecting human individuals. Humans are supposed to be valuable in themselves. Products are merely means to ends.

The bad history of eugenics is a good reason why a state should not be allowed to use genetic technology for its purposes. But the practice of mitochondrial transfer and the motivation behind it have nothing to do with eugenics as it was once practiced. It would allow consenting parents to have a child who will not suffer from a serious disability.

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Three-person IVF has nothing to do with eugenics

How to say genetic engineering in Italian

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How to say genetic engineering in Italian - Video

Kerala cannot afford to overlook the potential of Genetically Modified (GM) crops to emerge as a substitute for toxic chemicals used against plant parasites in polyhouse cultivation, Swapan K. Dutta, Deputy Director General (Crop Sciences), Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has said.

Talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of the National Biennial Group Meeting of the All India Coordinated Research Project on Nematode pests here earlier this week, he said states like Kerala that were increasingly turning to protected cultivation could no longer ignore the benefits of genetic engineering for pest and disease control.

Dr. Dutta said biotechnology and genetic engineering would assume a greater role in the battle against pathogens and plant diseases that caused crop loss. The controlled conditions that help to optimise crop production inside a polyhouse are conducive for pests as well, forcing farmers to use toxic chemicals for control. Through genetic engineering, the plant itself develops protection against pathogens. That way you avoid toxic chemicals. States like Kerala will soon have to pay attention to GM technology.

Highlighting the potential of plant genetic resources, he said, In nature, plants continuously try to defend themselves against hundreds of thousands of pathogenic bacteria and nematodes. If scientists can understand the genes that plants activate against pathogens or diseases, it will be a million dollar discovery with potential impact on plant as well as human health. Understanding the resistance mechanism of the gene could provide a breakthrough in disease control.

Terming Keralas move to switch over to organic farming as a political gimmick, Dr. Dutta said it had no meaning. It is not possible for a whole State to make the switch to organic farming. Our experiments show that organic farming will not give sustainable production and high productivity.

Observing that farmers in Kerala, like their counterparts elsewhere in the country, used subsidized fertilizers and other chemicals, Dr. Dutta noted that there were some niche areas like speciality and high-value fruits and vegetables that could be kept organic. Organic farming helps in increasing soil fertility. But to keep production and productivity high, you need to have other fertilizers.

Dr. Dutta said plant-parasitic soil nematodes, a microscopic variety of worms, constituted a major threat for protected cultivation of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Surveillance, monitoring and pest management assume more importance in protected cultivation.

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ICAR stresses GM technology for Kerala

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

10-Mar-2014

Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University

In a significant advance for the growing field of synthetic biology, Rice University bioengineers have created a toolkit of genes and hardware that uses colored lights and engineered bacteria to bring both mathematical predictability and cut-and-paste simplicity to the world of genetic circuit design.

"Life is controlled by DNA-based circuits, and these are similar to the circuits found in electronic devices like smartphones and computers," said Rice bioengineer Jeffrey Tabor, the lead researcher on the project. "A major difference is that electrical engineers measure the signals flowing into and out of electronic circuits as voltage, whereas bioengineers measure genetic circuit signals as genes turning on and off."

In a new paper appearing online today in the journal Nature Methods, Tabor and colleagues, including graduate student and lead author Evan Olson, describe a new, ultra high-precision method for creating and measuring gene expression signals in bacteria by combining light-sensing proteins from photosynthetic algae with a simple array of red and green LED lights and standard fluorescent reporter genes. By varying the timing and intensity of the lights, the researchers were able to control exactly when and how much different genes were expressed.

"Light provides us a powerful new method for reliably measuring genetic circuit activity," said Tabor, an assistant professor of bioengineering who also teaches in Rice's Ph.D. program in systems, synthetic and physical biology. "Our work was inspired by the methods that are used to study electronic circuits. Electrical engineers have tools like oscilloscopes and function generators that allow them to measure how voltage signals flow through electrical circuits. Those measurements are essential for making multiple circuits work together properly, so that more complex devices can be built. We have used our light-based tools as a biological function generator and oscilloscope in order to similarly analyze genetic circuits."

Electronic circuits -- like those in computers, smartphones and other devices -- are made up of components like transistors, capacitors and diodes that are connected with wires. As information -- in the form of voltage -- flows through the circuit, the components act upon it. By putting the correct components in the correct order, engineers can build circuits that perform computations and carry out complex information processing.

Genetic circuits also process information. Their components are segments of DNA that control whether or not a gene is expressed. Gene expression is the process in which DNA is read and converted to produce a product -- such as a protein -- that serves a particular purpose in the cell. If a gene is not "expressed," it is turned off, and its product is not produced. The bacteria used in Tabor's study have about 4,000 genes, while humans have about 20,000. The processes of life are coordinated by different combinations and timings of genes turning on and off.

Each component of a genetic circuit acts on the input it receives -- which may be one or more gene-expression products from other components -- and produces its own gene-expression product as an output. By linking the right genetic components together, synthetic biologists like Tabor and his students construct genetic circuits that program cells to carry out complex functions, such as counting, having memory, growing into tissues, or diagnosing the signatures of disease in the body.

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Rice synthetic biologists shine light on genetic circuit analysis

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

10-Mar-2014

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

New Rochelle, NY, March 10, 2014Nearly $7 billion is spent each year in the U.S. on diagnostic testing of the estimated three million people with symptoms of obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD). A new blood test that detects specific genes activated in individuals with obstructive CAD could exclude the diagnosis without the need for imaging studies or more invasive tests, reducing health care costs, as described in an article in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Population Health Management website at http://www.liebertpub.com/pop.

Louis Hochheiser (St. John's Medical Center, Jackson, WY), Jessie Juusola and Mark Monane (CardioDx, Palo Alto, CA), and Joseph Ladapo (New York University School of Medicine, NY), use a decision analysis model to compare the cost-effectiveness of "usual care" for obstructive CAD diagnosis with a strategy that includes "gene expression score (GES)-directed care." They present the results and potential value of this new diagnostic approach in the article "Economic Utility of a Blood-Based Genomic Test for the Assessment of Patients with Symptoms Suggestive of Obstructive Coronary Artery Disease".

"Work like this is vital to our understanding as we move from a world of volume to value," says Editor-in-Chief David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Dean and Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor, Jefferson School of Population Health, Philadelphia, PA.

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About the Journal

Population Health Management is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online that reflects the expanding scope of health care management and quality. The Journal delivers a comprehensive, integrated approach to the field of population health and provides information designed to improve the systems and policies that affect health care quality, access, and outcomes. Comprised of peer-reviewed original research papers, clinical research, and case studies, the content encompasses a broad range of chronic diseases (such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic pain, diabetes, depression, and obesity) in addition to focusing on various aspects of prevention and wellness. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Population Health Management website at http://www.liebertpub.com/pop. Population Health Management is the official journal of the Population Health Alliance.

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Genomic test to rule out obstructive CAD may reduce need for more invasive diagnostics