Category Archives: Transhuman News

Macaques in China are the first primates born with genomes engineered by precision gene-targeting methods.

Prime cuts: The faint ladder-rung patterns in an image of a DNA gel show that genome editing successfully modified a gene in two macaque infants (central columns), but not in an untreated animal (right column). The left column shows a size standard.

Researchers at Nanjing Medical University and Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research in Kunming, China, have created genetically modified monkeys using a new method of DNA engineering known as Crispr. The infant macaques show that targeted genome editing is feasible in primatesa potential boon for scientists studying complex diseases, including neurological ones, and an advance that suggests that the method could one day work in humans. The work was reported in the journal Cell on Thursday.

Scientists have previously used the new genome-editing technique to delete, insert, and modify DNA in human cells and other animal cells grown in petri dishes. The method has also been used to create gene modifications in whole animals such as mice, rats, and zebrafish. The new study shows for the first time that Crispr can create viable primates with genomes modified at specific targeted genes.

The Chinese researchers injected single-cell macaque embryos with RNAs to guide the genome-editing process. The team modified three genes in the monkeys: one that regulates metabolism, another that regulates immune cell development and a third that regulates stem cells and sex determination, says study coauthor Wezhi Ji, a researcher at the Yunnan Key Laboratory of Primate Biomedical Research. The researchers found that the genome-editing tools created multiple changes in their target genes at different stages of embryonic development. The infant monkeys are too young for the team to yet determine if the genetic changes have an effect on physiology or behavior, says Ji. But, he adds, data from this species should be very useful for curing human disease and improving human health.

Researchers have previously created a handful of transgenic monkeys, such as a rhesus macaque that produces the disease-causing version of theHuntingtons gene. Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta created this avatar of human disease by injecting a virus into macaque eggs. The virus delivered a disease-version of the human Huntingtons gene into a random location in the monkeys genome.

Primate pioneers: Twin infant macaques whose genomes were modified within three different genes.

Crispr, on the other hand, can be used to insert, delete, or rewrite a DNA sequence at a specific location within a genome. Like the random viral insertion used by the Emory team, the Crispr method employed by Ji and colIeagues can create genetically modified animals in a single generation, an important consideration for researchers working with animals that can take three years to reach sexual maturity and are expensive and difficult to rear.

Others say they are anxious to use Crispr to create their own monkeys. Robert Desimone, director of MITs McGovern Brain Institute for Brain Research, says he and colleagues are planning on using genome editing to create modified monkeys. He says its possible the success of the Chinese researchers will encourage other groups to use primates in their work. Although mice are giving us tremendous insight into basic brain biology and the biology of the disease, theres still a big gap in between the mouse brain and the monkey brain, says Desimone.

For example, he says, lots of drugs that work in mice to treat disease dont work in humans. Desimone says hes hoping that some success in monkeys will interest drug companies in neurosciencealluding to a recent trend of large drug companies abandoning research on brain diseases because the work often proved unsuccessful. The hope is that disease and drug research in monkeys will more likely lead to therapies in humans because the primates share complex behaviors and social structures. We are cautiously optimistic, says Desimone.

See original here:
Monkeys Modified with Genome Editing

Listen The genome test that may change everything Researcher Andrew Burton/Getty Images Kenneth Beckman: Director of the Biomedical Genomics Center at University of Minnesota Ashlee Vance: Technology writer for Bloomberg Businessweek

Genomics company Illumina unveiled a machine that can sequence a human genome for $1,000. The machine, named HiSeq X, hits a once-elusive benchmark but won't be available to the general population for some time.

More from Bloomberg Businessweek:

The biotech industry has been trying to reach the $1,000 genome mark for years. It's a figure that should make full genome sequencing much more mainstream. As more people get sequenced, researchers get more data to use in their analysis of how DNA variations manifest themselves in diseases. The high-speed, low-cost sequencing system arrives at a crucial time, with a number of biotech companies, research centers, and hospitals starting to show real clinical breakthroughs. "To figure out cancer, we need to sequence hundreds of thousands of cancer genomes, and this is the way to do it," Flatley said.

About a decade ago it cost much more than $1 billion to sequence a human genome, and the process took months. Illumina's new machine can knock out dozens of genomes in about a day. The HiSeq X systems, which cost $1 million each, should end up at large research centers and will be sold in groups of 10. Illumina has unveiled a smaller, $250,000 system called the NextSeq 500, which can fit on a laboratory counter and handle one genome at a time.

Kenneth Beckman, director of the Biomedical Genomics Centers at the University of Minnesota, calls next-generation sequencing "the killer app of genomics."

He joins The Daily Circuit along with Businessweek's Ashlee Vance to discuss what this new development means for health care and what else we can expect from biotechnology advances.

Read the original here:
New machine can sequence $1,000 human genome