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Archive for the ‘bioengineering’ category: Page 154

Sep 24, 2018

Gene editing wipes out mosquitoes in lab

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

Researchers have used gene editing to completely eliminate populations of mosquitoes in the lab.

The team tested their technique on the mosquito Anopheles gambiae, which transmits malaria.

They altered part of a gene called doublesex, which determines whether an individual mosquito develops as a male or as a female.

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Sep 22, 2018

If We Made Life in a Lab, Would We Understand It Differently?

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, evolution, nanotechnology

Only time will tell what new forms life will take.


Joyce seeks to understand life by trying to generate simple living systems in the lab. In doing so, he and other synthetic biologists bring new kinds of life into being. Every attempt to synthesize novel life forms points to the fact that there are still more, perhaps infinite, possibilities for how life could be. Synthetic biologists could change the way life evolves, or its capacity to evolve at all. Their work raises new questions about a definition of life based on evolution. How to categorize life that is redesigned, the product of a break in the chain of evolutionary descent?

An origin story for synthetic biology goes like this: in 1997, Drew Endy, one of the founders of synthetic biology and now a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University in California, was trying to create a computational model of the simplest life form he could find: the bacteriophage T7, a virus that infects E coli bacteria. A crystalline head atop spindly legs, it looks like a landing capsule touching down on the Moon as it grabs onto its bacterial host. The bacteriophage is so simple that by some definitions it is not even alive. (Like all viruses, it depends on the molecular machinery of its host cell to replicate.) Bacteriophage T7 has only 56 genes, and Endy thought it might be possible to create a model that accounted for every part of the phage and how those parts worked together: a perfect representation that would predict how the phage would change if any one of its genes were moved or deleted.

Continue reading “If We Made Life in a Lab, Would We Understand It Differently?” »

Sep 22, 2018

Extreme biohacking: the tech guru who spent $250,000 trying to live for ever

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, business

Very interesting article on the ideas and daily life of the businessman and biohacker Serge Faguet.


Silicon Valley millionaire Serge Faguet thinks pills, injections and implants will turn him into a superhuman. Could they?

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Sep 21, 2018

Bioquark Inc. — The Health Hub Podcast — Ira S. Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biotech/medical, DNA, futurism, genetics, health, life extension, science, transhumanism

Sep 21, 2018

Bioquark Inc. — Unlimited Realities Podcast — Ira S. Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biological, biotech/medical, cryonics, DNA, futurism, genetics, life extension, transhumanism

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/unlimited-realities-with-lisa-z…lth-future

Sep 9, 2018

Towards data-driven biotechnology

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, economics, robotics/AI

Data centers are the new oil refineries, argues The Economist. Where black sludge and steam once marked the beating heart of the economy, now blinking servers laced with fiber optic cables indicate where the action is.

Biotechnology — like all other industries — must adapt. Synthetic biology teams that embrace modern tools like cloud computing, professionally built software, and laboratory automation will save time, reduce errors, streamline complex workflows, and maintain their agility in the digital economy. Those who fail to adopt new tools will be primed for disruption.

Software is already an integral part of biological research, but most scientific apps lag far behind the rest of the digital frontier. As the software giant Autodesk puts it:

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Sep 6, 2018

Administering Gene Therapy Without Triggering Immune Response

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

A new potential method to administer gene therapy without triggering an immune response.


Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine managed to administer effective gene therapy in mice without triggering an autoimmune reaction. The research, led by Dr. Peggy Ho, Ph.D., was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [1].

Study abstract

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Sep 4, 2018

Bioquark Inc. — 2bAhead Conference Video — Ira S. Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biological, biotech/medical, DNA, evolution, futurism, health, life extension, transhumanism

https://speaker.future.consulting/en/home/search/video/video…re-cancer/

Sep 3, 2018

Artificial cells are tiny bacteria fighters

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

“Lego block” artificial cells that can kill bacteria have been created by researchers at the University of California, Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering. The work is reported Aug. 29 in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

“We engineered from the bottom-up – like Lego blocks – to destroy ,” said Assistant Professor Cheemeng Tan, who led the work. The are built from liposomes, or bubbles with a cell-like lipid membrane, and purified cellular components including proteins, DNA and metabolites.

“We demonstrated that artificial cells can sense, react and interact with bacteria, as well as function as systems that both detect and kill bacteria with little dependence on their environment,” Tan said.

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Sep 2, 2018

Genetic Engineering Achieves Inter-Species Bacteria Communication

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, genetics

Researchers at the Wyss Institute were successful in engineering different species of bacteria that can talk to each other.

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