Category Archives: Transhuman News

Death was conquered, via an elaborate cloning technique, and everything looked as if things were finally turning around for Charles Xaviers friends and foes.

And then Powers of X explicitly states that things will always turn out badly for mutants.

Its much worse than that. We always lose, Moira MacTaggart tells Xavier midway through the series, and she should know; by this point in the narrative, she has lived and died nine different times, trying alternative ways to maintain the survival of the mutant race without success. (As the final issue of Powers of X reveals, Moira has lived for a thousand years in one timeline and it still ended with the mutantkind being outstripped by a humanity augmented by its own invention.

Mutants are an evolutionary response to an environment. You are naturally occurring. The next step in human evolution, a character from 1,000 years in the future explains in the issue. But what happens when humanity stops being beholden to its environment? When man controls the building blocks of biology and technology Evolution is no match for genetic engineering. What good was one mutant adapting to its environment when we could make ten super men?

Turning the franchises long-running theme on its head, the core conflict of the X-Men property isnt homo superior (mutant) versus homo sapien (man), but homo superior versus homo novissima (post-human, or genetically engineered human) a battle that, its suggested, mutantkind will lose no matter what.

Armed with this knowledge, Moira has manipulated events throughout the franchise and certain people to try and equip mutantkind as best she can in the upcoming conflict, leading to a united Xavier and Magneto announcing that she has honed them into perfect tools for an imperfect age that would change things moving forward.

The new era of X-Men comics, therefore, is one in which the majority of characters believe that theyre living in a golden age of mutantkind, but theyre actually part of the latest in a series of conflicts for survival that they are, perhaps, destined to lose. How this thread will continue through the multiple Dawn of X spinoff titles remains to be seen, but with Powers of X author Jonathan Hickman writing the ongoing X-Men series launching in the wake of this reveal, one thing is for certain: This isnt an idea that is going to go away anytime soon.

Powers of X No. 6 is available now in comic book stores and digitally.

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Marvel's 'Powers of X' Ends With Surprising Revelation - Hollywood Reporter

Senior automation engineer optimizing automated lab protocol on colony picker.

At one of the world's largest synthetic biology conferences this week, a food truck handed out papaya and yogurt samples to hundreds of attendees.

The papaya wasn't any ordinary papaya: It was a genetically engineered fruit that Dr. Dennis Gonsalves designed to be naturally resistant to the ringworm virus. Because of his invention, pesticide use dropped in Hawaii and production flourished.

The conference was SynBioBeta, and it has gotten so big that it moved this year from a conference center in San Francisco's Mission Bay, which is often reserved for biotech meetings, to a large converted Honda dealership on the grittier side of San Francisco's downtown core. The event has been around since 2012 to bring together founders working on biological alternatives to chemical-based processes, and its organizer John Cumbers previously worked as a synthetic biologist at NASA.

The event was a refreshing break from the current malaise facing the traditional "tech" industry.

Many of the big consumer tech companies that started after the Great Recession, like Uber and WeWork, were supposed to make investors and employees rich, but instead have collapsed in value amid scandals and persistently unprofitable business models. Giants of the industry, like Facebook and Google, are under assault from both sides of the aisle in Washington, D.C., for being too powerful, too careless with privacy and too addictive. Venture capitalists are fighting with banks over the IPO process. The smartphone revolution is more than a decade old, and the would-be replacements -- self-driving cars, computerized eyeglasses -- always seem to be another five to ten years away.

This conference presented a much more optimistic view of technology's potential, focused on biology rather than microprocessors.

At booths stationed throughout the space, entrepreneurs presented inventions ranging from industrial robotics to designer proteins. They all hailed from different industries including retail, food and manufacturing, but they shared a common vision that after decades of investment in information technology, it was biology's turn.

A food truck promoting GMOs

Christina Farr, CNBC

"The conference has an irreverent, counter culture vibe to it," said Jorge Conde, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, who spoke at the event. Conde said that the founders are a "new breed" and they reminded him of the first generation of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in the era of Steve Jobs.

"You're seeing this explosion of creativity, and also idealism," he said. Many of the founders, he noted, are attempting to build real, money-making businesses while also attempting to create solutions that are more sustainable and eco-friendly in an era of climate change.

Conde, who has been attending the event for a few years now, described synthetic biology as "the ability to design or program organisms to make things for us."

He's one of a growing number of investors in the space, alongside billionaires like former Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who are spurred in part by the success of the Beyond Meat IPO. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt personally spoke at the event, noting that "biology will undoubtedly fuel computing." The synthetic biology market is now expected to hit $55 billion by 2025.

In recent years, venture-funded companies like Zymergen and Ginkgo Bioworks have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital to provide a platform of sorts for the next generation of synthetic biology companies. The idea behind them is to make it easier for companies like Beyond Meat to flourish on the consumer side, but also to support industrial applications. (Note that Beyond Meat is the one tech-related IPO that's done spectacularly well this year, and is the only reason overall tech IPOs are outperforming the S&P 500.)

Ginkgo, for instance, is looking to spur a slew of new plant-based alternatives to meat by funding research into proteins and developing the key ingredients in the lab, so that food companies can focus on things like texture and flavor. Founded by a group of MIT scientists, it uses genetic engineering to design and print new DNA for a range of organisms, including plants and bacteria.

"A lot of start-ups come to this conference, but I've also seen 'futures' teams here from big companies like Lululemon and Adidas," said Christina Agapakis, a scientist turned creative director at Ginkgo, which has raised more than $700 million in venture capital. "These are people who are looking ten years out for new materials, and for more renewable and biodegradable options."

Christina Agapakis, a synthetic biology writer with Ginkgo Bioworks, displaying the company's magazine.

Christina Farr | CNBC

Ginkgo, one of the larger companies at the conference, set up its own espresso coffee booth and handed out a magazine called Grow to promote genetically modified organisms or GMOs. It also highlighted some of the companies that Ginkgo has started to invest in, like Motif, which is helping foster a lot more companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat by working on the plant-based proteins that provide that meat-like flavor, and Cronos, which is looking to create rare strains of cannabinoids in the lab, some of which are being researched as a pain management solution for chronically ill patients.

"A lot of folks in our world aren't using the term 'GMO,' and instead will say it's something like 'gene modification' or 'CRISPR,' said Agapakis, referring to a technique that allows for specific and rapid modification of DNA in the genome.

But Agapakis' company is embracing it. At last year's SynBioBeta, attendees took selfies in front of an "I heart GMO" sign. Agapakis is hoping that her company can help make GMOs distinct from companies like Monsanto, which spurred a reaction from activists for its use of genetic engineering to promote profits. Ginkgo is hoping to revitalize the term, and associate it with socially-conscious products like meat-free burgers and cow-free leather.

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As Silicon Valley faces a tech reckoning, biologists point to the next big opportunity - CNBC

Federal officials discuss Americas bioeconomy during a White House summit. (OSTP Photo via Twitter)

More than 100 biotech researchers, industry executives and government officials met at the White House today for a summit focusing on Americas bioeconomy the range of products, services and data derived from biological processes and bioscience research.

The bioeconomy is already an integral part of the general economy, White House chief technology officer Michael Kratsios told the attendees. In 2017, revenues from engineered biological systems reached nearly $400 billion.

He cited figures from SynBioBeta suggesting that the private sector alone invested more than $3.7 billion in early-stage biological engineering and manufacturing tech companies during 2018.

But we are not only here because of what biotechnology has done we are invested in what biotechnology is going to do, Kratsios said.

For example, in 2017 the Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment that makes use of CAR-T immunotherapy to fight leukemia. CAR-T that is, chimeric antigen receptor T-cells involves the use of genetic engineering to help a patients own immune cells kill off cancer cells more effectively. Several Seattle institutions, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, are leaders in the field.

Kratsios also cited the example of Project Medusa, a Pentagon-backed experiment that uses bacterial processes to harden the surface of a military-grade runway.

He noted that the White House lists bioeconomic innovation among its priorities for research and development funding, and that President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order aimed at modernizing how agricultural biotech products are regulated.

By speeding up the approval process for biotechnology, we will reduce the costs to review biotech plants by millions of dollars and bring new products to market faster, Kratsios said.

Looking ahead, Kratsios said the Trump administration would focus on building up the infrastructure for Americas bioeconomy, attracting talent and protecting genetic and biological data.

As the bioeconomy develops, we need to ensure it is rooted in American values and is always used for the benefit of the American people, he said.

Todays summit was meant to start the process: Officials from federal agencies ranging from the Defense Department to the Office of Science and Technology Policy laid out their perspectives on biotech, and representatives of biotech industries and academia talked about the opportunities as well as the challenges to U.S. bioeconomic leadership. Among the panelists was Rob Carlson, managing director at Bioeconomy Capital and an affiliate professor at the University of Washingtons Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering.

This is an enormous opportunity, and requires investment and bold thinking, Carlson was quoted as saying.

The summit concluded with a string of small-group breakout sessions.

In its summary of the summit proceedings, the White House said it would work with federal agencies to improve cooperation and make sure the bioeconomy is recognized as a priority in key R&D budgets.

Last month, OSTP issued a request for information seeking input about ways to boost the bioeconomy. The deadline for submitting comments is Oct. 22.

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Biotech experts gather at the White House for Summit on Americas Bioeconomy - GeekWire

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Cell Therapy - Technologies, Markets and Companies" report from Jain PharmaBiotech has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report describes and evaluates cell therapy technologies and methods, which have already started to play an important role in the practice of medicine. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is replacing the old fashioned bone marrow transplants. The role of cells in drug discovery is also described. Cell therapy is bound to become a part of medical practice.

Stem cells are discussed in detail in one chapter. Some light is thrown on the current controversy of embryonic sources of stem cells and comparison with adult sources. Other sources of stem cells such as the placenta, cord blood and fat removed by liposuction are also discussed. Stem cells can also be genetically modified prior to transplantation.

Cell therapy technologies overlap with those of gene therapy, cancer vaccines, drug delivery, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Pharmaceutical applications of stem cells including those in drug discovery are also described. Various types of cells used, methods of preparation and culture, encapsulation and genetic engineering of cells are discussed. Sources of cells, both human and animal (xenotransplantation) are discussed. Methods of delivery of cell therapy range from injections to surgical implantation using special devices.

Cell therapy has applications in a large number of disorders. The most important are diseases of the nervous system and cancer which are the topics for separate chapters. Other applications include cardiac disorders (myocardial infarction and heart failure), diabetes mellitus, diseases of bones and joints, genetic disorders, and wounds of the skin and soft tissues.

Regulatory and ethical issues involving cell therapy are important and are discussed. The current political debate on the use of stem cells from embryonic sources (hESCs) is also presented. Safety is an essential consideration of any new therapy and regulations for cell therapy are those for biological preparations.

The cell-based markets was analyzed for 2018 and projected to 2028. The markets are analyzed according to therapeutic categories, technologies, and geographical areas. The largest expansion will be in diseases of the central nervous system, cancer, and cardiovascular disorders. Skin and soft tissue repair, as well as diabetes mellitus, will be other major markets.

The report contains information on the following:

Key Topics Covered:

Part I: Technologies, Ethics & Regulations

Executive Summary

1. Introduction to Cell Therapy

2. Cell Therapy Technologies

3. Stem Cells

4. Clinical Applications of Cell Therapy

5. Cell Therapy for Cardiovascular Disorders

6. Cell Therapy for Cancer.

7. Cell Therapy for Neurological Disorders

8. Ethical, Legal and Political Aspects of Cell therapy

9. Safety and Regulatory Aspects of Cell Therapy

Part II: Markets, Companies & Academic Institutions

10. Markets and Future Prospects for Cell Therapy

11. Companies Involved in Cell Therapy

12. Academic Institutions

13. References

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9q5tz1

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Global Cell Therapy Technologies, Companies & Markets During the Forecast Period, 2018-2028 - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

The word agriculture conjures up an array of images: endless fields of corn stalks, amber waves of grain, the deserts of Africa Africa? While thoughts of the African landscape may tend to invoke a dry and empty countryside, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are working to develop self-sustaining plants that could eventually turn the Sahara into a sea of green.

Himadri B. Pakrasi, the Glassberg Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor in the department of biology in Arts & Sciences and director of the International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (InCEES), and Costas D. Maranas, professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, were recently awarded a $1.2-million grant from the National Science Foundation for their collaborative study of systems biology. Specifically, the Pakrasi and Maranas labs hope to decode the inner workings of cyanobacteria for the ultimate purpose of producing nitrogen-fixing crop plants.

For more than a century, farmers around the world have relied heavily on chemical fertilizers to help grow their plants and crops. Fertilizers contain nitrogen, an essential building block for all life forms to grow, and an element that is abundant in the earths atmosphere. However, creating man-made fertilizers is an energy intensive process that contributes to greenhouse gases and leads to run-off issues that severely damage the environment. A solution to this problem is to engineer plants to absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into fertilizer, a process known as nitrogen fixation, so that the plants would become self-sufficient.

If you have engineered seeds that you give to an African farmer, that farmer can then plant the seeds, which gives rise to a field of crops that would not need chemically synthesized fertilizer to grow, Pakrasi said. This has huge agricultural implications not just for the affluent, Western world,but to the areas hardest hit by climate change.

Easier said than done. Nitrogen fixation cannot take place in the cells of most photosynthetic organisms plants that convert sunlight into energy because when plants are undergoing photosynthesis, a byproduct is oxygen. And oxygen is like a poison when it mixes with nitrogenease, the enzyme that enables nitrogen fixation. However, there is an organism that can accommodate both photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation in the same cell: cyanobacteria.

Just like human beings, cyanobacteria have a robust circadian rhythm a 24-hour biological cycle during which they photosynthesize in the day and fix nitrogen at night. Scientists have long studied these bluish-green creatures, but do not have a detailed understanding of how circadian rhythms allow cyanobacteria to adjust its metabolism for both nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis to take place in the same cell. With advances in genetic modification tools, it is now possible to probe deeper into the details of this process.

There are still missing parts of the cyanobacterial puzzle, Pakrasi said. The only way to identify what those missing parts are is to actually go into the cyanobacterium and tease apart the machinery. And thats what this grant will allow us to do.

In other words, the Pakrasi lab will perform a series of genetic modifications to the cyanobacteria and generate new data. The Maranas lab will then take the data and develop a predictive model for the inner working of the cyanobacterium. This iterative process will take some time, but the research is imperative to combating the climate changes facing the planet, Pakrasi said.

Its kind of like building an electric pickup truck, Pakrasi said. How do you go from a gasoline fueled car to a Tesla pickup truck? The basic technology for making a gas fueled car is already known, but were moving to a new paradigm of production in the form of a Tesla truck. Once we figure it out, we can deploy the new technology to our partners all over the world.

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NSF funds research on nitrogen fixation | The Source - Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

PARIS: Few spots in todays world have remained mysterious to todays archaeologists and scientists, armed with the latest, hi-tech tools that enable them to visualise and recreate the world as it may have been thousands, or even millions, of years earlier.

Yet, AlUla, located on an important route with links to Damascus, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, continues to remain hidden in a veil of mystery even as teams experts try to pry open the diverse region to understand its origins and history.

Lying on the route that connected Aden in the south to Damascus in the north, and from there onwards to Europe, AlUla is believed to have been on the crossroads of several civilizations and multiple cultures. It was an important resting place on the trade route, with its abundant water supply feeding several oases and lush green farms.

Since the emergence of Islam, it has also been an important site on the route connecting most of northern Middle East and Africa with Makkah and Madinah.

A dedicated team of French and Saudi archaeologists, historians and researchers, assisted by a host of experts from around the world, has been trying to rebuild the story of AlUla since prehistoric times right up to today. Dr Laila Nehm, a French historian and archeologist, has been involved in uncovering the mysteries of AlUla for nearly 30 years. She and her colleagues have been able to fill in many holes in the sites timeline and reconstruct, using a clutch of modern tools and computer software, a fairly comprehensive story of a site that appears to have been continuously inhabited by humans for more than 200,000 years.

This is the story being told in a breathtaking exhibition entitled AlUla Wonder of Arabia that has been organized by the Royal Commission of AlUla, in collaboration with the French culture ministry and the Institut du Monde Arabe (Institute of the Arab World) in Paris. The exhibition showcases all aspects of AlUla and its evolution in the past 200,000 years, including 7,000 years of human inhabitation.

Covering more than 30,000 square kilometers, an area equivalent to that of Belgium, AlUla has seen several transformations in its geological as well as zoological composition. An impressive 3D model of the region, illuminated by computer software, recreates the geological and natural evolution of the region, with a range of diverse incidents such as large-scale floods, immense volcanic eruptions and of course the seemingly endless desertification.

All of these incidents have had a huge impact on AlUlas history and this is what is recreated in the exhibits at the IMA.

The exhibition, was inaugurated on Monday by the Saudi Culture Minister Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan and Franck Rieter, the French culture minister, as well as Jack Lang, the President of the IMA and a former French minister.

Nehm says that AlUla is literally a living museum, with its extremely well-preserved tombs, historic dwellings, monuments as well as captivating sandstone outcrops that hide in their hearts a largely untold story of more than 200,000 years of history. And despite the 30-years put in by her and dozens of other researchers, AlUla seems to be preciously guarding its secrets. For instance, Nehm says that it is very difficult to predict with any degree of certainty the human dimensions of AlUla, especially the variations in its population over the several cycles of ups and downs that the region clearly has seen over the course of its long history.

I would say it is difficult to put a finger on the exact figure of what might have been the maximum or even the optimum population of AlUla at a given time, notably in the early years of Dadanite and other pre-Roman eras. I might venture to say between 5,000 to 20,000, but it is only a guess and not based on any scientific certitude, Nehm told Arab News during a preview offered to leading media from around the world just before the official inauguration.

Another big mystery about AlUla is the transition between various kingdoms and empires. In the span of less than 800 years, from the 6th century BC to 2nd century AD, AlUla changed hands between the neolithic empires of Dadanites and Lihyanites and then onto the Nabateans from the Jordan valley and finally the Romans in the 2nd or 3rd century AD.

Despite the frequent changes, Nehm says the team of archaeologists has not been able to pinpoint the exact nature of these political changes.

We have not found any significant elements that can allow us to conclude that there may have been wars between the kingdoms, nor do we have any particular catastrophic moment that may have led to the change of power in AlUla.

For instance, if we had found traces of large-scale burnings or destruction at a particular time in history, we may have looked at possibilities like outbreaks of wars or diseases or even natural catastrophes. But here, so far, we have not yet found any such elements, says Nehm.

For Amr Al-Madani, the Chief Executive Officer of the Royal Commission of AlUla, these unresolved mysteries can only add to the allure of the region for not just scientists and researchers from all across the world, but tourists and those interested in learning about human civilization and its evolution as well as people that like nature and environment. AlUla has everything for anyone looking for any of these elements. It is a jewel of Saudi Arabia and we want to share this with the entire world and that is why we are mounting a series of events and activities to allow visitors from all over the world to come and enjoy at AlUla and relive the story of the evolution of human civilisation, Al-Madani said.

Amongst the several wonderful sights that await visitors in AlUla are thousands of rock inscriptions dating back to the prehistoric period and some of which also go on to show the evolution of the Arabic script as the Nabatean script slowly evolved into Arabic in the early centuries of the first millennium AD. AlUla also has hundreds of tombs built by Nabateans in the same style as in their most famous city, Petra, in Jordan. The most famous Nabatean site in AlUla is of course Mada'in Salih, also known as Hegra, which was recognised by UNESCO as the first World Heritage Site in Saudi Arabia.

AlUla is a repository not just of the beauty of human creations. There are plenty of natures wonders, too, for the visitors to admire. There are hundreds of sandstone and basalt rock outcrops, carved beautifully by nature over thousands of years that offer a breathtaking view.

Al-Madani said the Royal Commission of AlUla has planned a series of activities, beginning later this year, to allow visitors and tourists to relish the region, even though the site will be thrown open fully to tourists only in October next year.

While opening the AlUla to the world, Al-Madani also stresses that the royal commission will keep the focus on community involvement and sustainable tourism to ensure that not only the heritage of AlUla is well-preserved, but that the local community remains a major stakeholder and beneficiary of tourism and the cultural activities that would take place there. We need to be sure that we hand over AlUla to the future generations in the same unspoilt and well-preserved state in which we have inherited it, Al-Madani said.

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What We Are Reading Today: 1491 by Charles C. Mann - Arab News

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) In a dish sits a human liver.

Not removed from a person, but created from scratch.

Its not like wahoo and the next morning you think, ah, Im gonna make a human liver,' says Dr. Alejandro Soto-Gutirrez of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center.

It took five years of trial and error but using stem cells, genetic and tissue engineering, organ cultures and a team of experts in these areas, the researchers have come up with this.

Alexandra Collin de Lhortet, Ph.D. of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine explains the process.

A rat liver gets stripped of its cells so that only the connective tissue remains.

From a small piece of human skin, the scientists pluck out stem cells and coax them into becoming human liver cells and the cells are collected.

Then theyre injected into the chamber, called a bioreactor, where they take up residence in the empty rat liver.

The entire process from gathering the cells to make a liver, to get to this point, where you have an actual mini human liver in a bioreactor, takes several months.

It will stay alive, or viable, for only a few days.

But in that short time, the researchers can try different medicines to treat the diseased liver.

You could test any sort of therapeutic by simply injecting this chemical through the system, says Dr. Collin.

In the past, animal livers played a role in this kind of research but human livers didnt always respond in the same way.

With this system, the cells have had genetic modification to recreate diseases, for example, fatty liver, a growing problem in the United States.

This technology has the potential for personalized medicine. From your skin cells, they could grow your own mini liver to figure out which medicines would work for you.

I believe its a very good biological tool to screen treatments that are not otherwise being tested in humans themselves because its dangerous, says Dr. Soto.

As its designed, it would be a long stretch to create livers for transplantation.

If you mean how far we are to make actual livers for people, I think we are very far away. Were probably many years away. But this is a good step, Dr. Soto says.

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After 5 Years Of Trials, Doctors Create Human Liver From Scratch - CBS Pittsburgh