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Category: bioengineering – Page 116

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER (FL), October 19, 2020 – The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced three flight projects that were selected as part of a joint solicitation focused on leveraging the International Space Station (ISS) U.S. National Laboratory to further knowledge in the fields of tissue engineering and mechanobiology. Through this collaboration, CASIS, manager of the ISS National Lab, will facilitate hardware implementation, in-orbit access, and astronaut crew time on the orbiting laboratory. NSF invested $1.2 million in the selected projects, which are seeking to advance fundamental science and engineering knowledge for the benefit of life on Earth.

This is the third collaborative research opportunity between CASIS and NSF focused on tissue engineering. Fundamental science is a major line of business for the ISS National Lab, and by conducting research in the persistent microgravity environment offered by the orbiting laboratory, NSF and the ISS National Lab will drive new advances that will bring value to our nation and spur future inquiries in low Earth orbit.

Microgravity affects organisms—from viruses and bacteria to humans, inducing changes such as altered gene expression and DNA regulation, changes in cellular function and physiology, and 3D aggregation of cells. Spaceflight is advancing research in the fields of pharmaceutical research, disease modeling, regenerative medicine, and many other areas within the life sciences. The selected projects will utilize the ISS National Lab and its unique environment to advance fundamental and transformative research that integrates engineering and life sciences.

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“This is kind of a nice bookend to 16 years of research,” says Deisseroth, a neuroscientist and bioengineer at Stanford University. “It took years and years for us to sort out how to make it work.”

“The result is described this month in the journal Nature Biotechnology.”

“Optogenetics involves genetically engineering animal brains to express light-sensitive proteins—called opsins—in the membranes of neurons.”

Optogenetics can now control neural circuits at unprecedented depths within living brain tissue without surgery.

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A team of researchers at Duke University have developed an imaging technology for tagging structures at a cellular level that overcomes the shortcomings of existing antibody-based techniques. Immunofluorescence imaging is a key part of the cell biologist’s toolbox, in which a fluorescent ‘flare’ attached to an antibody allows them to visualize the presence of specific target proteins in cell or tissue samples. The issue is that this specificity isn’t always 100 percent — sometimes the antibodies bind to other closely related proteins as well, making it difficult to interpret the results.

Duke’s cell biology chair Scott Soderling has led a team that developed Homology-independent Universal Genome Engineering (HiUGE), an innovation that uses gene-editing technology to rise above the shortcomings of traditional commercial antibodies for imaging.

“We had this idea that CRISPR could be a really amazing tool to address the pressing problem of trying to identify and label these hundreds of proteins,” said Soderling.

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Dr. Adam Freund PhD., Calico Life Sciences, Discussing Google Quest to Solve Aging.

Ira Pastor, ideaXme life sciences ambassador interviews Dr Adam Freund, PhD, Principal Investigator at Calico Life Sciences (Calico). https://www.calicolabs.com

Ira Pastor comments:

Calico is a research and development focused biotechnology company founded and backed by Google / Alphabet with the goal of combating aging and associated age-related diseases.

Calico has a billion dollar partnership with the bio-pharma giant AbbVie, focused on aging and age-related diseases, such as neuro-degeneration and cancer. Calico also has partnerships with the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and 2M Companies (regarding drug development for neurodegenerative disorders), the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (to advance research on age-related diseases and therapeutics), and a partnership with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

Continue reading “Google / Alphabet’s Quest to Solve Aging” | >

Just like humans, microbes have equipped themselves with tools to recognize and defend themselves against viral invaders. In a continual evolutionary battle between virus and host, CRISPR-Cas act as a major driving force of strain diversity in host-virus systems.

A new study led by Professor of Life Sciences Shai Pilosof (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel), Professor of Microbiology Rachel Whitaker (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Professor of Ecology and Evolution Mercedes Pascual (University of Chicago) highlights the role of diversified immunity in mediating -pathogen interactions and its eco-evolutionary dynamics. The study also included Professor of Bioengineering and Bliss Faculty Scholar Sergei Maslov (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Sergio A. Alcal´a-Corona (University of Chicago), and Ph.D. graduate students Ted Kim and Tong Wang (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign).

Their findings were reported in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

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It looks like micro-plastics are now found inside human bodies.

Researchers found evidence of plastic contamination in tissue samples taken from the lungs, liver, spleen and kidneys of donated human cadavers.

“We have detected these chemicals of plastics in every single organ that we have investigated,” said senior researcher Rolf Halden, director of the Arizona State University (ASU) Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering.

There’s long been concern that the chemicals in plastics could have a wide range of health effects ranging from diabetes and obesity to sexual dysfunction and infertility.

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The CRISPR-Cas9 system has revolutionized genetic manipulations and made gene editing simpler, faster and easily accessible to most laboratories.

To its recognition, this year, the French-American duo Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna have been awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for chemistry for CRISPR.

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Experts say that COVID-19 almost certainly arose naturally, rather than being bioengineered.

But that doesn’t mean the next pandemic won’t involve a deadly virus designed by an adversary, as distinguished fellow at Harvard Law Vivek Wadhwa argues in a new essay for Foreign Policy.

“It is now too late to stop the global spread of these technologies — the genie is out of the bottle,” he wrote. “We must treat the coronavirus pandemic as a full dress rehearsal of what is to come — unfortunately, that includes not only viruses that erupt from nature, but also those that will be deliberately engineered by humans.”

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