A potent molecular cocktail containing a compound from ayahuasca spurs rapid growth of insulin-producing cells.
- By Emily Willingham on December 21, 2018
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2273
Today, the application of engineering methodologies to the rational modification of organisms is a persistent goal of synthetic biology. Most synthetic biologists describe biological engineering as a hierarchy, wherein parts (genes, DNA) are used to build devices (many genes together), which in turn can be used to construct systems (a series of many devices). The challenge in transforming synthetic biology into a true engineering discipline is that the parts, which are the rudimentary building blocks of higher-order constructions, are fundamentally limited by the rigor of their characterization. This is really the case in all established engineering disciplines. In electrical engineering, for instance, the baseline components (transistors, resistors, wires, etc.) have been characterized so well that children can use them and the resulting circuits behave as expected. Once all ‘parts’ are standardized, it may be possible for synthetic biologists to use individual DNA building blocks to construct entirely synthetic life forms from the bottom-up.
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Coming up with potent anti-cancer drugs is one thing, delivering them to the site of a tumor inside the body is very much another. With a complicated organism guarded by a highly evolved immune system to navigate, getting these particles to there target in one piece is a challenging task, and one that scientists are continuing to tackle from all angles. A promising new approach developed at Virginia Tech leans on the penetrative properties of a salmonella infection, which they’ve found can be used as a vehicle to smuggle cancer-fighting nanoparticles into a tumor in a huge abundance.
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Had a great time with my regenerative biology Q&A session with Ayersville (Ohio, USA) Schools 2nd graders and high school advanced anatomy class — so happy to see kids out there that are interested in these topics at such a young age — creating the future, one mind at a time — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_uu9f7nafc
Plants are very good at producing oxygen that we all need in order to breath, but what about clearing the air of harmful chemicals? Past research has revealed that plants do a bit of housekeeping when it comes to cleaning the air of certain compounds but researchers wondered if they could help boost that function with a genetic tweak.
In new research published in Environmental Science & Technology, researchers explain how they were able to give a common house plant more power to clean the air around it, and it’s all thanks to DNA from a mammal.
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A biohacker injected himself with DNA sequence made from parts of the Bible and Koran in a risky experiment because he “wondered whether it would be possible.”
Adrien Locatelli, from Grenoble in France, translated religious passages into DNA code to build unknown proteins which he then poured into his body.
The high-school student risked potentially fatal consequences after conducting the procedure without any knowledge of the effects the proteins would have on his body.
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Nature’s 10
Posted in biotech/medical, genetics
I am overjoyed to be co-hosting the second “Undoing Aging” conference together with Michael Greve just one year after the first, thanks to the generosity and hard work of Michael’s Forever Healthy Foundation and their team.
It is now entirely appropriate to be holding conferences on rejuvenation biotechnology every year, given how rapidly the field and the industry have grown relative to a decade ago, when my conferences in Cambridge were biannual. As you will see below, we are again assembling a huge variety of world-leading speakers whose research spans all aspects of rejuvenation biotechnology.
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During the Fourth Eurosymposium on Healthy Ageing (EHA), which was held in Brussels, Belgium last November, we had the opportunity to meet Dr. Daniel Muñoz-Espín from the Oncology Department of the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Muñoz-Espín received his PhD from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, within the viral DNA replication group at the Centre of Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa, where he worked under the supervision of one of the most famous Spanish scientists, Dr. Margarita Salas. Dr. Muñoz-Espín’s postdoctoral research resulted in several published papers and a 2013 patent focused on DNA replication; he then joined the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas, or CNIO, the Spanish National Centre for Cancer Research, specifically the team of Dr. Manuel Serrano, co-author of The Hallmarks of Aging. The research that Dr. Muñoz-Espín conducted during this time demonstrated how cellular senescence doesn’t play a role just in aging and cancer but also in normal embryonic development, where it contributes to the shaping of our bodies—a process that was termed “developmentally-programmed senescence”, whose concept was very favorably received by the scientific community.
Currently, Dr. Muñoz-Espín serves as Principal Investigator of the Cancer Early Detection Programme at the Department of Oncology of Cambridge University; with his current team, Dr. Muñoz-Espín developed a novel method to target senescent cells, which was reported in EMBO Molecular Medicine. This topic was the subject of Dr. Muñoz-Espín’s talk at EHA2018 and one of the many fascinating others that he discussed in this interview.
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An extraordinarily promising new technique using ultrasound to clear the toxic protein clumps thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is moving to the first phase of human trials next year. The innovative treatment has proven successful across several animal tests and presents an exciting, drug-free way to potentially battle dementia.
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