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Archive for the ‘bioengineering’ category: Page 45

Mar 27, 2023

How cell mechanics influences everything

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

“People study cells in the context of their biology and biochemistry, but cells are also simply physical objects you can touch and feel,” Guo says. “Just like when we construct a house, we use different materials to have different properties. A similar rule must apply to cells when forming tissues and organs. But really, not much is known about this process.”

His work in cell mechanics led him to MIT, where he recently received tenure and is the Class of ’54 Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

At MIT, Guo and his students are developing tools to carefully poke and prod cells, and observe how their physical form influences the growth of a tissue, organism, or disease such as cancer. His research bridges multiple fields, including cell biology, physics, and mechanical engineering, and he is working to apply the insights from cell mechanics to engineer materials for biomedical applications, such as therapies to halt the growth and spread of diseased and cancerous cells.

Mar 27, 2023

How We’re Reverse Engineering the Human Brain in the Lab | Sergiu P. Pasca | TED

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

Neuroscientist Sergiu P. Pasca has made it his life’s work to understand how the human brain builds itself — and what makes it susceptible to disease. In a mind-blowing talk laden with breakthrough science, he shows how his team figured out how to grow “organoids” and what they call brain “assembloids” — self-organizing clumps of neural tissue derived from stem cells that have shown the ability to form circuits — and explains how these miniature parts of the nervous system are bringing us closer to demystifying the brain.

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Continue reading “How We’re Reverse Engineering the Human Brain in the Lab | Sergiu P. Pasca | TED” »

Mar 24, 2023

The Rise Of Genetic Engineering | Gene-Editing | Documentary

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

Genetic Engineering extends far beyond the controversial news headlines that obsess over ‘designer babies’. In the science community, gene-editing tools like CRISPR and PRIME editing will do nothing less than save the planet.

The Rise Of Genetic Engineering (2022)
Writers: Kyle McCabe, Christopher Webb Young.
Stars: Rodolphe Barrangou, George Church, Mary Beth Dallas.
Genre: Documentary.
Country: United States.
Language: English.
Release Date: August 24, 2022 (United States)

Continue reading “The Rise Of Genetic Engineering | Gene-Editing | Documentary” »

Mar 17, 2023

#176 Human organoids are new AI frontier; Listening to the big bang through the cosmic microwave background

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, ethics, information science, robotics/AI

Brainoids — tiny clumps of human brain cells — are being turned into living artificial intelligence machines, capable of carrying out tasks like solving complex equations. The team finds out how these brain organoids compare to normal computer-based AIs, and they explore the ethics of it all.

Sickle cell disease is now curable, thanks to a pioneering trial with CRISPR gene editing. The team shares the story of a woman whose life has been transformed by the treatment.

We can now hear the sound of the afterglow of the big bang, the radiation in the universe known as the cosmic microwave background. The team shares the eerie piece that has been transposed for human ears, named by researchers The Echo of Eternity.

Mar 17, 2023

CRISPR Gene-Editing Technique Reverses Vision Loss in Mice

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

Summary: Using a highly versatile form of CRISPR gene editing, researchers successfully restored vision in mice with retinitis pigmentosa.

Source: Rockefeller University Press.

Researchers in China have successfully restored the vision of mice with retinitis pigmentosa, one of the major causes of blindness in humans.

Mar 15, 2023

Could AI-powered object recognition technology help solve wheat disease?

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, economics, health

A new University of Illinois project is using advanced object recognition technology to keep toxin-contaminated wheat kernels out of the food supply and to help researchers make wheat more resistant to fusarium head blight, or scab disease, the crop’s top nemesis.

“Fusarium head blight causes a lot of economic losses in wheat, and the associated toxin, deoxynivalenol (DON), can cause issues for human and animal health. The disease has been a big deterrent for people growing wheat in the Eastern U.S. because they could grow a perfectly nice crop, and then take it to the elevator only to have it get docked or rejected. That’s been painful for people. So it’s a big priority to try to increase resistance and reduce DON risk as much as possible,” says Jessica Rutkoski, assistant professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at Illinois. Rutkoski is a co-author on the new paper in the Plant Phenome Journal.

Increasing resistance to any traditionally means growing a lot of genotypes of the crop, infecting them with the disease, and looking for symptoms. The process, known in plant breeding as phenotyping, is successful when it identifies resistant genotypes that don’t develop symptoms, or less severe symptoms. When that happens, researchers try to identify the genes related to and then put those genes in high-performing hybrids of the crop.

Mar 15, 2023

Detect, bind and cut: Biomolecular action at the nanoscale

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

Researchers at Kanazawa University report in ACS Nano how high-speed atomic force microscopy can be used to study the biomolecular mechanisms underlying gene editing.

The DNA of prokaryotes—single-cell organisms, for example bacteria—is known to contain sequences that are derived from DNA fragments of viruses that infected the prokaryote earlier. These sequences, collectively referred to as CRISPR, for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” play a major role in the antiviral defense system of bacteria, as they enable the recognition and subsequent neutralization of infecting viruses. The latter is done through the enzyme Cas9 (“CRISPR-associated protein 9”), a biomolecule that can locally unwind DNA, check for the existence of the CRISPR sequence and, when found, cut the DNA.

Continue reading “Detect, bind and cut: Biomolecular action at the nanoscale” »

Mar 13, 2023

Scientists create mice with two fathers after making eggs from male cells

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JsgnlBffCA

https://gotopnews.com/post/1979903

Scientists created mice with two biological dads by producing eggs from male cells, which is a development that opens radical new possibilities for reproduction. Progress can ultimately pave way for treatments for severe infertility forms and increase possibility of attracting couples of same gender to have a biological child in future. Hayashi, who presented development at the third International Human Genome Regulation Summit at Francis Crick Institute in London on Wednesday, predicts it would be technically possible to create a human egg from a male skin cell in ten years. Considering that human eggs did not create eggs, he argued this timeline was optimistic. Previously, scientists have created mice technically with a detailed step chain, including genetic engineering. This is first time that can be applied first time, eggs were raised from male cells and pointing to an important progress. He was trying to reproduce with human cells, but there would be important obstacles for use of eggs grown in laboratory clinical purposes, including creating safety. “In terms of technology, it will be possible even in 10 years in 10 years, ve he personally added that the technology used clinically to allow two men to have a baby. Orum I don’t know if they are ready reproduction,” he said.“This is a question not only for the scientific program, but also[society].” Technique, X chromosome is missing or partially missing a copy of the turner syndrome, including women with severe infertility forms can be applied to treat and Hayashi, this application is the primary motivation for research, he said. Others argued that translating technique into human cells may be challenging. Human cells need much longer agricultural periods to produce a mature egg, which can increase the risk of undesirable genetic changes. Profess George Daley, the Dean of Harvard Medical Faculty, described the study as “fascinating„ but other researches also showed that creating gamet creating from human cells in laboratory is more difficult than mouse cells.said. The study, which was sent to be leading magazine, was based on a number of complex steps to transform skin cell that carries the combination of male XY chromosomes into an egg. Men’s skin cells were re-programmed into a stem cell-like condition to form the induced pluripotent root cells. Then the Y chromosome of these cells was deleted and changed and ” borrowed from another cell to produce IPS cells with two identical X chromosome. Hayashi said, ” The trick, greatest trick, the reproduction of X chromosome,” he said. ” We really tried to establish a system to replicate the X chromosome.” Finally, cells were grown in an ovary organoid with a cultural system designed to replicate the conditions within ovary. When Yumurtas were fertilized with normal sperm, scientists obtained approximately 600 embryos implanted in the mice, which resulted in birth of seven mouse offspring. ‘Efficiency was lower than the efficiency obtained by normal female-derived eggs, where approximately 5% of the embryos continued to produce a lively birth. Baby mice looked healthy, had a normal life, and as an adult continued to the offspring. ” They look good, they grow normal, they become a father, Hay Hayashi said. He and his colleagues are now trying to increase the creation of eggs grown in the laboratory using human cells. Working on Gamets grown in the laboratory at the University of California Los Angeles, Prof Amander Clark said that it would be a ” big jump in, because scientists have not yet created human eggs from women’s cells. Scientists have created the premises of human eggs, but so far, cells, mature eggs and sperm, a critical cell division step, which has stopped development before the point of meiosis. It can be 10 years or 20 years.”

Mar 9, 2023

Researchers create mutant mice to study bipolar disorder

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

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating condition characterized by alternating states of depression (known as depressive episodes) and abnormal excitement or irritability (known as manic episodes). Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed that variations in the genes present on the fatty acid desaturase (FADS) locus are linked to an increased risk of BD.

Enzymes coded by FADS genes—FADS1 and FADS2—convert or “biosynthesize” omega-3 into the different forms required by the human body. Omega-3 fatty acids like (EPA) and (DHA) are crucial for the brain to function, and a reduction in the synthesizing activity of these molecules seems to increase susceptibility to bipolar mood swings.

Research on most diseases involves establishment of an animal model of the disease. So, keeping this knowledge in mind, a team of researchers including Dr. Takaoki Kasahara and Hirona Yamamoto from RIKEN Brain Science Institute and Dr. Tadafumi Kato from Juntendo University in Japan, used CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing to create that lack both Fads1 and Fads2 genes.

Mar 9, 2023

Can We Program Our Cells?

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical

Making living cells blink fluorescently like party lights may sound frivolous. But the demonstration that it’s possible could be a step toward someday programming our body’s immune cells to attack cancers more effectively and safely.

That’s the promise of the field called synthetic biology. While molecular biologists strip cells down to their component genes and molecules to see how they work, synthetic biologists tinker with cells to get them to perform new feats — discovering new secrets about how life works in the process. In this episode, Steven Strogatz talks with Michael Elowitz, a professor of biology and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

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