Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: bioengineering – Page 76

CRISPR-Cas9 is considered a revolutionary gene editing tool, but its applications are limited by a lack of methods by which it can be safely and efficiently delivered into cells. Recently, a research team from Kumamoto University, Japan, have constructed a highly flexible CRISPR-Cas9 carrier using aminated polyrotaxane (PRX) that can not only bind with the unusual structure of Cas9 and carry it into cells, but can also protect it from intracellular degradation by endosomes.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and their accompanying protein, CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9), made international headlines a few years ago as a game-changing genome editing system. Consisting of Cas9 and strand of genetic material known as a single-guide RNA (sgRNA), the system can target specific regions of DNA and function as “molecular scissors” to make precise edits. The direct delivery of Cas9–sgRNA complexes, i.e. Cas9 ribonucleoproteins (RNPs), into the nucleus of the cell is considered the safest and most efficient way to achieve genome editing. However, the Cas9 RNP has poor cellular permeability, and thus requires a carrier molecule to transport it past the first hurdle of the cell membrane before it can get to the cell nucleus. These carriers need to bind with Cas9 RNP, carry it into the cell, prevent its degradation by intracellular organelles called “endosomes,” and finally release it without causing any changes to its structure.

In a recent paper published in the June 2022, Volume 27 of Applied Materials Today, a research team from Kumamoto University has developed a transformable polyrotaxane (PRX) carrier that can facilitate genome editing using Cas9RNP with high efficiency and usability. “While there have been some PRX-based drug carriers for and proteins reported before, this is the first report on PRX-based Cas9 RNP carrier. Moreover, our findings describe how to precisely control intracellular dynamics across multiple steps. This will prove invaluable for future research in this direction,” says Professor Keiichi Motoyama, a corresponding author of the paper.

Read more | >

EPFL scientists have developed a digital model of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, that realistically simulates the movements of the animal. The twin is a big step towards reverse engineering the neuromechanical control of animal behavior, and developing bioinspired robots.

“We used two kinds of data to build NeuroMechFly,” says Professor Pavan Ramdya at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences. “First, we took a real fly and performed a CT scan to build a morphologically realistic biomechanical . The second source of data were the real limb movements of the fly, obtained using pose estimation software that we’ve developed in the last couple of years that allow us to precisely track the movements of the animal.”

Ramdya’s group, working with the group of Professor Auke Ijspeert at EPFL’s Biorobotics Laboratory, has published a paper in Nature Methods showcasing the first ever accurate “digital twin” of the fly Drosophila melanogaster, dubbed “NeuroMechFly”.

Read more | >

Just as countries import a vast array of consumer goods across national borders, so living cells are engaged in a lively import-export business. Their ports of entry are sophisticated transport channels embedded in a cell’s protective membrane. Regulating what kinds of cargo can pass through the borderlands formed by the cell’s two-layer membrane is essential for proper functioning and survival.

Read more | >

Award-winning author and futurist Amy Webb examines the world of synthetic biology in her book “The Genesis Machine.” She sits down with Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the potential and the concerns of redesigning our lives.

Originally aired on April 28, 2022.

For more from Amanpour and Company, including full episodes, click here: https://to.pbs.org/2NBFpjf.

Like Amanpour and Company on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2HNx3EF

Continue reading “What is Synthetic Biology? How Scientists Are Rewriting Life | Amanpour and Company” | >

I have created an educational guide to the adenovirus capsid! The adenovirus is one of the most frequently used types of viruses for gene therapy (along with AAV and lentivirus). It is a powerful vehicle for delivering DNA to cells in the body. But to work with adenovirus as a technology, it is important to understand its fundamental biological structure and function. This guide will help you to gain a more holistic comprehension of a particularly important part of adenovirus biology: the capsid. I made the images using PyMol.

PDF version: Guide to the Structure and Function of the Adenovirus Capsid

For this guide, I will explain the fundamental biology of adenovirus capsid proteins with an emphasis on the context of gene therapy. While the guide is meant primarily for readers with an interest in applying adenovirus to gene therapy, it will not include much discussion of the techniques and technologies involved in engineering adenoviruses for such purposes. If you are interested in learning more about adenovirus engineering, you may enjoy my review paper “Synthetic Biology Approaches for Engineering Next-Generation Adenoviral Gene Therapies” [1]. Here, I will focus mostly on the capsid of human adenovirus serotype 5 (Ad5) since it is the most commonly used type of adenovirus employed in gene therapy research, but I will occasionally describe other types of adenoviruses when necessary. Many of the presented concepts remain the same or similar across other types of adenoviruses.

The adenovirus consists of an icosahedral protein capsid enclosing a double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) genome. It possesses 12 fiber proteins which protrude from the capsid and helps to facilitate cellular transduction. Adenoviruses are nonenveloped and approximately 90 nm in diameter (not including the fibers). The Ad5 genome is about 36 kb in size. Major capsid proteins of the adenovirus include the hexon, penton, and fiber. The minor capsid proteins are protein IIIa, protein VI, protein VIII, and protein IX. Inside the capsid, there are core proteins including protein V, protein VII, protein μ (also known as protein X), adenovirus proteinase (AVP), protein IVa2, and terminal protein (TP) [2].

Continue reading “Guide to the Structure and Function of the Adenovirus Capsid” | >

Eradicating Cancer With A Universal Preventative Cancer Vaccine — Dr. Stephen Johnston, Ph.D., ASU Biodesign Institute / Calviri

Dr. Stephen Johnston, Ph.D. (https://biodesign.asu.edu/stephen-johnston) is the Director for the Center for Innovations in Medicine (https://biodesign.asu.edu/Research/Centers/innovations-medicine), a Professor in the School of Life Sciences, and Director of the Biological Design Graduate Program at The Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University.

Dr Johnston is also Founding CEO and Chairman of the Board Of Directors of Calviri (https://calviri.com/).

Continue reading “Dr. Stephen Johnston, PhD — Calviri — Cancer Eradication Via A Universal Preventative Cancer Vaccine” | >

The dissemination of synthetic biology into materials science is creating an evolving class of functional, engineered living materials that can grow, sense and adapt similar to biological organisms.

Nature has long served as inspiration for the design of materials with improved properties and advanced functionalities. Nonetheless, thus far, no synthetic material has been able to fully recapitulate the complexity of living materials. Living organisms are unique due to their multifunctionality and ability to grow, self-repair, sense and adapt to the environment in an autonomous and sustainable manner. The field of engineered living materials capitalizes on these features to create biological materials with programmable functionalities using engineering tools borrowed from synthetic biology. In this focus issue we feature a Perspective and an Article to highlight how synergies between synthetic biology and biomaterial sciences are providing next-generation engineered living materials with tailored functionalities.

Read more | >

Whether a computer could ever pass for a living thing is one of the key challenges for researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence. There have been vast advancements in AI since Alan Turing first created what is now called the Turing Test—whether a machine could exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. However, machines still struggle with one of the fundamental skills that is second nature for humans and other life forms: lifelong learning. That is, learning and adapting while we’re doing a task without forgetting previous tasks, or intuitively transferring knowledge gleaned from one task to a different area.

Now, with the support of the DARPA Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) program, USC Viterbi researchers have collaborated with colleagues at institutions from around the U.S. and the world on a new resource for the future of AI learning, defining how artificial systems can successfully think, act and adapt in the real world, in the same way that living creatures do.

The paper, co-authored by Dean’s Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Alice Parker and Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, Francisco Valero-Cuevas and their research teams, was published in Nature Machine Intelligence, in collaboration with Professor Dhireesha Kudithipudi at the University of Texas at San Antonio, along with 22 other universities.

Read more | >