Lifeboat Foundation

Self-assembly is ubiquitous in the natural world, serving as a route to form organized structures in every living organism. This phenomenon can be seen, for instance, when two strands of DNA—without any external prodding or guidance—join to form a double helix, or when large numbers of molecules combine to create membranes or other vital cellular structures. Everything goes to its rightful place without an unseen builder having to put all the pieces together, one at a time.

For the past couple of decades, scientists and engineers have been following nature’s lead, designing molecules that assemble themselves in water, with the goal of making nanostructures, primarily for biomedical applications such as drug delivery or tissue engineering. “These small-molecule-based materials tend to degrade rather quickly,” explains Julia Ortony, assistant professor in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), “and they’re chemically unstable, too. The whole structure falls apart when you remove the water, particularly when any kind of external force is applied.”

She and her team, however, have designed a new class of small molecules that spontaneously assemble into nanoribbons with unprecedented strength, retaining their structure outside of water. The results of this multi-year effort, which could inspire a broad range of applications, were described on Jan. 21 in Nature Nanotechnology by Ortony and coauthors.

Imagine going to a surgeon to have a diseased or injured organ switched out for a fully functional, laboratory-grown replacement. This remains science fiction and not reality because researchers today struggle to organize cells into the complex 3D arrangements that our bodies can master on their own.

There are two major hurdles to overcome on the road to laboratory-grown organs and tissues. The first is to use a biologically compatible 3D scaffold in which cells can grow. The second is to decorate that scaffold with biochemical messages in the correct configuration to trigger the formation of the desired organ or tissue.

In a major step toward transforming this hope into reality, researchers at the University of Washington have developed a technique to modify naturally occurring biological polymers with protein-based biochemical messages that affect cell behavior. Their approach, published the week of Jan. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses a near-infrared laser to trigger chemical adhesion of protein messages to a scaffold made from biological polymers such as collagen, a connective tissue found throughout our bodies.

A team of researchers at Columbia University has developed a way to allow DNA strands to store more data. In their study, published in the journal Science, the group applied a small amount of electricity to DNA strands to allow for encoding more information than was possible with other methods.

For several years, researchers have been looking for ways to increase data storage capacity—storage requirements are expected to exceed capacity in the near future as demand skyrockets. One such approach has involved encoding data into strands of DNA—prior research has shown that it is possible. In the early stages of such research, scientists manually edited strands to add characteristics to represent zeroes or ones. More recently, researchers have used the CRISPR gene editing tool. Most such studies used DNA extracted from the tissue of deceased animals. More recently, researchers have begun efforts to move the research to living animals because it will last longer. And not just in the edited strands—the information they contain could conceivably be passed on to offspring, allowing data to be stored for very long periods of time.

Back in 2017, another team at Columbia University used CRISPR to detect a certain signal—in their case, it was the presence of sugar molecules. Adding such molecules resulted in gene expressions of plasmid DNA. Over time, the editing process was improved as genetic bits were added to represent ones and zeroes. Unfortunately, the system only allowed for storing a few bits of data.

A keen sense of smell is a powerful ability shared by many organisms. However, it has proven difficult to replicate by artificial means. Researchers combined biological and engineered elements to create what is known as a biohybrid component. Their volatile organic compound sensor can effectively detect odors in gaseous form. They hope to refine the concept for use in medical diagnosis and the detection of hazardous materials.

Electronic devices such as cameras, microphones and pressure sensors enable machines to sense and quantify their environments optically, acoustically and physically. Our sense of smell however, despite being one of nature’s most primal senses, has proven very difficult to replicate artificially. Evolution has refined this sense over millions of years and researchers are working hard to catch up.

“Odors, airborne chemical signatures, can carry useful information about environments or samples under investigation. However, this information is not harnessed well due to a lack of sensors with sufficient sensitivity and selectivity,” said Professor Shoji Takeuchi from the Biohybrid Systems Laboratory at the University of Tokyo. “On the other hand, biological organisms use odor information extremely efficiently. So we decided to combine existing biological sensors directly with artificial systems to create highly sensitive volatile organic compound (VOC) sensors. We call these biohybrid sensors.”

Dr. Halima Benbouza is an Algerian scientist in the field of agronomic sciences and biological engineering.

She received her doctorate in 2004 from the University Agro BioTech Gembloux, Belgium studying Plant Breeding and Genetics and was offered a postdoctoral position to work on a collaborative project with the Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture in Stoneville, Mississippi.

Continue reading “Dr Halima Benbouza — Leading Biotech Development In Algeria For Health, Agriculture and Conservation” »

Annotated!

Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics.
Feel free to ask any related questions that you want Aubrey to try and answer!

Continue reading “Aubrey de Grey Longevity Q&A — The last 25 years, SENS, Longevity Escape Velocity, & More” »

Biologists have used CRISPR gene editing to store information inside DNA in living bacterial cells, which could become a storage medium of the future.

CRISPR gene editing in mice has been used to correct a mutation that can cause rapid ageing, dramatically improving the animals’ health and lifespan.

In Michelle O’Malley’s lab, a simple approach suggests a big leap forward in addressing the challenge of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Scientists have long been aware of the dangerous overuse of antibiotics and the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant microbes that have resulted. While over-prescription of antibiotics for medicinal use has unsettling implications for human health, so too does the increasing presence of antibiotics in the natural environment. The latter may stem from the improper disposal of medicines, but also from the biotechnology field, which has depended on antibiotics as a selection device in the lab.

“In biotech, we have for a long time relied on antibiotic and chemical selections to kill cells that we don’t want to grow,” said UC Santa Barbara chemical engineer Michelle O’Malley. “If we have a genetically engineered cell and want to get only that cell to grow among a population of cells, we give it an antibiotic resistance gene. The introduction of an antibiotic will kill all the cells that are not genetically engineered and allow only the ones we want — the genetically modified organisms [GMOs] — to survive. However, many organisms have evolved the means to get around our antibiotics, and they are a growing problem in both the biotech world and in the natural environment. The issue of antibiotic resistance is a grand challenge of our time, one that is only growing in its importance.”