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In proof-of-concept experiments, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they have successfully cultivated human muscle stem cells capable of renewing themselves and repairing muscle tissue damage in mice, potentially advancing efforts to treat muscle injuries and muscle-wasting disorders in people.

A report on the experiments was published April 7 in Cell Stem Cell.

To make the self-renewing stem cells, the scientists began with laboratory-grown human skin cells that were genetically reprogrammed to a more primitive state in which the cells have the potential to become almost any type of cell in the body. At this point, the cells are known as induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells, and they are mixed with a solution of standard cell growth factors and nutrients that nudge them to differentiate into specific cell types.

Circa 2021 Synthetic silicon dna storage.

In research, the demand for DNA strands often outpaces supply. To help supply keep up, researchers may set aside traditional molecular cloning techniques and embrace polymerase chain reaction select PCR)-based techniques. Alternatively, researchers may perform gene synthesis, or the de novo chemical synthesis of DNA. Besides accelerating the creation of genetic sequences, gene synthesis avoids the need for template strands and simplifies procedures such as codon optimization and the fabrication of mutant sequences.

Although gene synthesis can be performed in house, many laboratories prefer to focus on their core competencies and outsource their gene synthesis projects to service providers, especially if sequences of over 1,000 base pairs are desired. Outsourcing also allows laboratories to take advantage of service providers’ economies of scale and quick turnaround times. Finally, service providers offer ease of use. Clients can go online, upload the desired sequences, choose the vector, get the price, and place the order. The entire process takes only a few minutes, and the genes can be delivered a few days later.

Continue reading “Synthetic DNA Manufacturer has the ‘Write Stuff’” »

The pancreas is a key metabolic regulator. When pancreatic beta cells cease producing enough insulin, blood sugar levels rise dangerously — a phenomenon known as hyperglycemia — thus triggering diabetes. After discovering that other mature pancreatic cells can adapt and partly compensate for the lack of insulin, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) demonstrates that the stem cells from which beta cells are derived are only present during embryonic development. This discovery puts an end to a long-standing controversy about the hypothetical existence of adult pancreatic stem cells that would give rise to newly differentiated hormone-producing cells after birth. The scientists also succeeded in precisely defining the ‘identity card’ of pancreatic endocrine cells, which is a promising tool for the production of replacement insulin-secreting cells. These results can be read in Cell Reports and Nature Communications.

Diabetes is a common metabolic disease. It is characterised by a persistent hyperglycemia that occurs when pancreatic cells responsible for the production of insulin — the beta cells — are destroyed or are no longer able to produce this regulatory hormone in sufficient quantities. Since 2010, studies performed by the team of Pedro Herrera, a professor in the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development and in the Diabetes Centre at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, as well as at the Geneva Institute of Genetics and Genomics (iGE3), reveal that the other pancreatic endocrine cells — namely alpha, delta and gamma cells, which produce other hormones useful for the metabolic balance — can “learn” to produce insulin when beta cells are absent or defective. This phenomenon, observed in mice and humans, demonstrates the plasticity of pancreatic cells and paves the way to new therapeutic strategies.

And if bacteria causes one kind, whos to say it doesnt cause every other kind.

Genetic information on the microbes has already allowed the scientists to piece together how they may behave in the body, including what toxins and other substances they might release. This has led them to develop half a dozen hypotheses around how the bugs could cause prostate cancer.

“We currently have no way of reliably identifying aggressive prostate cancers, and this research could help make sure men get the right treatment for them,” Luxton added.

Continue reading “Discovery of bacteria linked to prostate cancer hailed as potential breakthrough” »

An analysis of the genetic material in the ocean has identified thousands of previously unknown RNA viruses and doubled the number of phyla, or biological groups, of viruses thought to exist, according to a new study our team of researchers has published in the journal Science.

RNA viruses are best known for the diseases they cause in people, ranging from the common cold to COVID-19. They also infect plants and animals important to people.

These viruses carry their genetic information in RNA, rather than DNA. RNA viruses evolve at much quicker rates than DNA viruses do. While scientists have cataloged hundreds of thousands of DNA viruses in their natural ecosystems, RNA viruses have been relatively unstudied.

Cigarette smoking is overwhelmingly the main cause of lung cancer, yet only a minority of smokers develop the disease. A study led by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and published online on April 11, 2022, in Nature Genetics suggests that some smokers may have robust mechanisms that protect them from lung cancer by limiting mutations. The findings could help identify those smokers who face an increased risk for the disease and therefore warrant especially close monitoring.

“This may prove to be an important step toward the prevention and early detection of lung cancer risk and away from the current herculean efforts needed to battle late-stage disease, where the majority of health expenditures and misery occur,” said Simon Spivack, M.D., M.P.H., a co-senior author of the study, professor of medicine, of epidemiology & population health, and of genetics at Einstein, and a pulmonologist at Montefiore Health System.

Targeting Root Causes Of Diseases And Aging — Dr. Andrew Adams, Ph.D., Vice President, Neurodegeneration Research; Co-Director, Lilly Institute for Genetic Medicine, Eli Lilly.

Dr. Andrew Adams, Ph.D. is Vice President of Neurodegeneration Research at Eli Lilly (https://www.lilly.com/) and Co-Director of their new Lilly Institute for Genetic Medicine (https://lilly.mediaroom.com/2022-02-22-Lilly-Announc…ort-Site), a $700 million initiative to establish an institute for researching and developing genetic medicines, specifically acting at the nucleic acid level, to advance an entirely new drug class that target the root cause of diseases, an approach that is fundamentally different than medicines available today.

Continue reading “Dr. Andrew Adams, PhD — Lilly Institute for Genetic Medicine — Targeting Root Causes Of Diseases” »

Deep learning–based language models, such as BERT, T5, XLNet and GPT, are promising for analyzing speech and texts. In recent years, however, they have also been applied in the fields of biomedicine and biotechnology to study genetic codes and proteins.

Circa 2021

As described above, molecular therapeutics enabling expression of a truncated dystrophin have been far developed. However, an unprecedented opportunity to correct the disease-causing mutation has arisen with the advent of Crispr-Cas9 technology (Fig. 1).

Since the generation of a Cas9-transgenic mouse [28], which allowed for pinpoint gene alterations specifically in organs targeted by AAVs encoding for the corresponding guide RNAs (gRNAs), it became clear that the inevitable course of inherited diseases might be altered by Cas9-mediated correction. Although certain limitations were unmasked early on, such as the preference of non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) over homology-directed repair (HDR) upon enzymatic cleavage of the double stranded DNA by Cas9, or the packaging capacity of AAVs, muscular dystrophies seemed an ideal target for genome editing. DMD mutations inducing Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) seemed particularly well suited, since internal truncations of the protein may lead to a shortened but stable protein with partial functional restitution and a milder disease progression, as seen in the allelic Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD).

Continue reading “Genome editing for Duchenne muscular dystrophy: a glimpse of the future?” »