Daniel G. Nocera, the Harvard professor who made headlines five years ago when he unveiled an artificial leaf, recently unveiled his latest work: an engineered bacteria that converts hydrogen and carbon dioxide into alcohols and biomass. One can be used directly as fuel to power vehicles that run on conventional fuels, while the other can be burned for energy.
My new article for Vice Motherboard on extreme biohacking that compares the Uncanny Valley to Speciation Syndrome:
Transhumanism tech like CRISPR, 3D printing, and coming biological regeneration of limbs will not only change lives for those that have deformities, but it will change how we look at things like a person with a three-foot tail and maybe even a second head.
At the core of all this is the ingrained belief that the human being is pre-formed organism, complete with one head, four limbs, and other standard anatomical parts. But in the transhumanist age, the human being should be looked at more like a machine—like a car, if you will: something that comes out a particular way with certain attributes, but then can be heavily modified. In fact, it can be rebuilt from scratch.
In the future, there may even be walk-in clinics where people can go to have various gene treatments done to affect their bodies. Already, we have IVF centers where people can use radical tech to privately get pregnant—and also control and monitor various stages of a child’s birth. Eventually, if government allows it, gene editing centers will also offer a multitude of designer baby traits, some which also would come via CRISPR. We might even eventually use artificial wombs for the whole process.
Economically, a trillion dollar industry could be created by the burgeoning genetic editing industry—one that greatly benefits human health and science innovation. But of course, first we must get over our fears of modifying the human body and the effects of speciation syndrome.
Awesome.
Researchers have developed a new gene editing tool that is more efficient and easier to use. CRISPR-EZ addresses the issue of target RNA accuracy and embryo viability in IVF transgenic mice.
( andrew modzelewski/lin he | university of california berkeley )
CRISPR gene editing has been the subject of many researchers around the world because of its great potential in the study human genetic disease. But more than that, scientists have high regard for this tool because it can help cure complex and debilitating diseases like dementia and cancer.
As more fine-tuning is done in the use of CRISPR gene editing, more diseases can be effectively cured. CRISPR-Cas9 has been used to accurately replace or change genes but it is mostly done in early embryos, and there is a need to increase its accuracy and ease of use. With this in mind, researchers from the University of California (UC) Berkeley have developed a new method called CRISPR-EZ (CRISPR ribonucleoprotein electroporation of zygotes) that would make gene editing easier.
“The possibility to selectively activate genes using various engineered variants of the CRISPR-Cas9 system left many researchers questioning which of the available synthetic activating Cas9 proteins to use for their purposes. The main challenge was that all had been uniquely designed and tested in different settings; there was no side-by-side comparison of their relative potentials,” said George Church, Ph.D., who is Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, leader of its Synthetic Biology Platform, and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. “We wanted to provide that side-by-side comparison to the biomedical research community.”
In a study published on 23 May in Nature Methods, the Wyss Institute team reports how it rigorously compared and ranked the most commonly used artificial Cas9 activators in different cell types from organisms including humans, mice and flies. The findings provide a valuable guide to researchers, allowing them to streamline their endeavors.
The team also included Wyss Core Faculty Member James Collins, Ph.D., who also is the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering & Science and Professor of Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Department of Biological Engineering and Norbert Perrimon, Ph.D., a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.
For the first time ever, scientists were able to successfully cut out the HIV genes from live animals, and they had over a 50% success rate.
A significant milestone was achieved today in the fight against HIV—scientists led by Kamel Khalili of the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Center at Temple University just reported that, for the first time, HIV genes have been successfully eliminated from the genomes of animals infected with the virus.
“In a proof-of-concept study, we show that our gene editing technology can be effectively delivered to many organs of two small animal models and excise large fragments of viral DNA from the host cell genome,” explained Khalili.
Fox 29 — Good Day Philadelphia
http://www.fox29.com/140735577-video
NBC TV 10
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Zombies-from-Phill…65101.html
CNN en Espanol
http://cnnespanol.cnn.com/video/cnnee-encuentro-intvw-joel-o…-cerebral/
A human-safe lifelike telepresence robot with the delicacy and precision needed to pick up an egg without breaking it or thread a sewing needle has been developed by researchers at Disney Research, the Catholic University of America, and Carnegie Mellon University.
The secret: a hydrostatic transmission that precisely drives robot arms, offering extreme precision with almost no friction or play.
The hybrid transmission design also makes it possible to halve the number of bulky hydraulic lines that a fully hydraulic system would require and allows for making its robotic limbs lighter and smaller, said John P. Whitney, an assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at Northeastern University, who led the development of the transmission while an associate research scientist at Disney Research.
KITCHENER — Big jumps in life expectancy will begin in as little as 10 years thanks to advances in nanotechnology and 3D printing that will also enable wireless connections among human brains and cloud computers, a leading futurist said Thursday.
“In 10 or 15 years from now we will be adding more than a year, every year, to your life expectancy,” Ray Kurzweil told an audience of 800 people at Communtech’s annual Tech Leadership conference.
Kurzweil, a futurist, inventor and author, as well as a director of engineering at Google, calls this “radical life extension.”
Hope for HIV patients.
In 2014, a team of researchers in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University became the first to successfully eliminate the HIV-1 virus from cultured human cells. Fewer than two years later, the team has made further strides in its research by eliminating the virus from the genome of human T-cells using the specialized gene editing system they designed.
In a new study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers show that the method can both effectively and safely eliminate the virus from the DNA of human cells grown in culture.
How this research differs In previous work, the team—led by Kamel Khalili, professor and chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Temple—had demonstrated the ability of their technology to snip out HIV-1 DNA from normal human cells. The newest findings used that same technology to snip out the virus from latently and productively infected CD4+ T-cells, which host the virus in persons infected with HIV.
Next time you go for a brain scan; you could actually see dissolvable electrodes.
Hmmm
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania in a study funded by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are developing implantable electrodes for brain monitoring that melt away at a predetermined rate. The devices could come in handy for monitoring and treating certain neurophysiological disorders such as Parkinson’s, depression and chronic pain.
The electrodes, which are made from layers of silicon and a chemical element, molybdenum, dissolve at a known rate according to thickness. The devices can provide “continuous streams of data for guiding medical care over predetermined periods of time,” Brian Litt, senior co-author on the study and a professor of neurology, neurosurgery and bioengineering at UPenn, said in a statement.
The dissolvable electrodes also “eliminate the risks, cost, and discomfort associated with surgery to extract current devices used for post-operative monitoring,” Litt said. Scientists recently published their findings online in Nature Materials.
