Chardan hosted its 4th Annual Chardan Genetic Medicines Conference in October 2020, featuring over 80 public and private companies representing in vivo gene therapy, ex vivo gene therapy, gene editing, RNA medicines, and other subsegments of the genetic medicines space. Among our various panels with preeminent thought leaders, we spoke with newly-minted Nobel laureate, President of the Innovative Genomics Institute, and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Chemistry at UC Berkeley, Jennifer Doudna.
PhD about open questions and areas of innovation in the CRISPR gene editing space.
Both science fiction and actual science have demonstrated the malleability of memory, from implanting artificial memories to suppressing bad ones. MIT researchers recently added to the body of memory work with their recent publication in Nature about swapping positive and negative memories in lab mice.
Memories are complicated. For one thing, as soon as we experience something, our brains go to work, associating the memory with context, whether it’s emotional or geographical or involving the people surrounding the event. Because memories aren’t exact recordings of what has actually happened (which is what makes eyewitnesses notoriously unreliable), psychologists and scientists have long been toying with it, seeing how they can manipulate people to either create new associations surrounding an event, remember things that had been long buried, or even implant new memories. MIT’s recent study sought to identify the neurological basis for such ideas.
The subjects in the study were mice that had been genetically engineered to express a protein sensitive to light—a handy move, given that the scientists can use a laser to activate different neurons. They created positive memories in half of the mice by allowing them to hang out with a female mouse, and they created negative experience in the other half of the mice by subjective them to mild electric shocks. Thus, the experiences activated the neurons in the hippocampus that give structure to memories, as well as the neurons in the amygdala that associate memories with emotions.
With billions of dollars flooding into longevity, what role will epigenetic clocks play in measuring and intervening in aging?
When Horvath first described epigenetic clocks, scientists began to speculate that altering them could reverse aging. After all, if certain patterns of DNA methylation at certain sites in cells in certain tissues of your body are hallmarks of aging, could shifting them somehow reverse aging?
Optimizing Human-System Performance — Dr. Greg Lieberman, Ph.D., Neuroscientist / Lead, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, U.S. Army Futures Command
Dr. Greg Lieberman, Ph.D. (https://www.arl.army.mil/arl25/meet-arl.php?gregory_lieberman) is a Neuroscientist, and Lead, Optimizing Human-System Performance, at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL).
DEVCOM ARL, as an integral part of the Army Futures Command, is the Army’s foundational research laboratory focused on operationalizing science to ensure overmatch in any future conflict. DEVCOM ARL shapes future concepts with scientific research and knowledge and delivers technology for modernization solutions to win in the future operating environment.
With a Ph.D. from the University of Vermont in Neuroscience, a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cognitive Neuroscience from University of New Mexico, and a BA from University of Massachusetts Amherst in Psychology, Dr. Lieberman’s research and research leadership experience ranges from genetics to learning theory, animal behavior to artificial intelligence, and human variability to team dynamics; with additional expertise in S&T strategy and the opportunities afforded by the Future of Work.
Specific areas of Dr. Lieberman’s technical expertise include maximizing human potential, human-autonomy teaming; neuroanatomical organization and connectivity; brain structure-function coupling; learning-driven neuroplasticity; non-invasive neurostimulation and cognitive enhancement; neuroimaging; mind-body medicine and mindfulness meditation; and the mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease, neuropathology, and brain injury.
In nature, evolutionary chromosomal changes may take a million years, but scientists have recently reported a novel technique for programmable chromosome fusion that has successfully created mice with genetic changes that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale in the laboratory. The findings might shed light on how chromosomal rearrangements – the neat bundles of structured genes provided in equal numbers by each parent, which align and trade or mix characteristics to produce offspring – impact evolution.
In a study published in the journal Science, the researchers show that chromosome level engineering is possible in mammals. They successfully created a laboratory house mouse with a novel and sustainable karyotype, offering crucial insight into how chromosome rearrangements may influence evolution.
“The laboratory house mouse has maintained a standard 40-chromosome karyotype — or the full picture of an organism’s chromosomes — after more than 100 years of artificial breeding,” said co-first author Li Zhikun, researcher in the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Zoology and the State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology. “Over longer time scales, however, karyotype changes caused by chromosome rearrangements are common. Rodents have 3.2 to 3.5 rearrangements per million years, whereas primates have 1.6.”
Biotech start-up Pretzel Therapeutics launched Monday with $72.5 million in Series A financing to develop novel, mitochondria-based therapies for rare genetic disorders and diseases of aging.
Pretzel plans to target mitochondrial diseases, a highly heterogenous group of conditions caused by DNA mutations in the mitochondria or the nucleus. These disorders are very rare, afflicting around one in 5,000 people.
Pretzel CEO Jay Parrish told BioSpace the funding “should enable us to get close to the clinic if not into the clinic with one or more programs.”
You won’t be able to blame it on your genetics anymore: with CRISPR, it’s so easy to hacn into your DNA. CRISPR technology is our future, and experiments with DNA hacking are booming. CRISPR biotechnology is not science fiction anymore, it is our very near future. Would you hack and reprogram your own DNA with CRISPR? Breaking the code of life, hacking DNA at home.
Welcome to the world of a new nature. We can now literally cut and paste DNA with the new CRISPR technology. There is a revolutionary development going on that will have major consequences for humans, plants and animals. The new biotechnology is here.
‘Bio is the New Digital’. We are able to accurately reprogram the genetic code of our body cells, embryos, bacteria, viruses and plants. With the CRISPR technology we can adjust the characteristics of each organism to our needs. This allows us to permanently ban diseases, improve our body conditions and adapt plants to our food needs.
The special feature of CRISPR technology is that it is relatively simple. In the past year, the number of experiments and applications has exploded. Around the world, people have been tinkering with CRISPR: experimenting at home with the ‘Do it Yourself CRISPR kits’.
Scientists call for new ethical frameworks. The demand for the (un)desirable so-called designer babies is imminent. Although this is not yet the case, we can put an end to hereditary diseases in the short term. We may also want to make bacteria that can eat oil or plastic, pigs in which human organs can grow or bring extinct animals back to life. It looks like science fiction but it is now closer to our reality than ever. With: Emmanuelle Charpentier (geneticist), John van der Oost (microbiologist), Andrew Hessel (biotechnologist), Niels Geijsen (cell biologist), Josiah Zayner (biohacker) and Ivan van der Meij (FSHD patient).
U.S. regulators have approved a new purple tomato, genetically engineered to be packed with antioxidants and anthocyanins. The fruit will go on sale in 2023.
(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute has found what they believe is the DNA mutation that led to a change in function of a gene in humans that sparked the growth of a larger neocortex. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the team describes how they engineered a gene found only in humans, Denisovans and Neanderthals to look like a precursor to reveal its neuroproliferative effect.
A year ago, another team of researchers found the human gene that most in the field believe was a major factor in allowing the human brain to grow bigger, allowing for more complex processing. In this new effort, the researchers have found what they believe was the DNA change that arose in that gene.
To pinpoint that change, the researchers engineered the unique ARHGAP11B gene to make it more similar to the ARHGAP11A gene, which researchers believe was a predecessor gene—they swapped a single nucleotide (out of 55 possibilities) for another and in so doing, found the ARHGAP11B gene lost its neuroproliferative abilities. This, the team claims, shows that it was a single mutation that allowed humans to grow bigger brains. Such a mutation, they note, was not likely due to natural selection, but was more likely a simple mistake that occurred as a brain cell was splitting. Because it conferred an advantage (the ability to grow higher than normal amounts of brain cells) the mutation was retained through subsequent generations. They also point out that such a mutation would have resulted specifically in a larger neocortex—a portion of the cortex that has been associated with hearing and sight.
