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Archive for the ‘genetics’ category: Page 315

Aug 15, 2019

Swiss Scientists Upgrade CRISPR to Edit Many Genes at Once

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

A research group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has made it possible to edit hundreds of genes at once with CRISPR gene editing.

CRISPR gene editing has revolutionized the biotech industry by providing an easy and quick way to genetically modify organisms. So far, however, CRISPR techniques have only managed to edit a maximum of seven genes at once. This limits the potential of the technique in creating cell therapies, since whole networks of genes need to be reprogrammed to control each cell’s fate.

The Swiss research group devised a way to overcome this limitation with a CRISPR technique able to edit 25 genes in one go. This number could also be increased to up to hundreds of genes at a time. This method therefore makes it possible to edit gene networks, and reprogram stem cells to become cell therapies such as skin cells or insulin-producing pancreatic cells.

Aug 15, 2019

CRISPR enters its first human clinical trials

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

CUTTING ROOM Scientists will soon wield the molecular scissors CRISPR/Cas9 in the human body. Some people with a form of inherited blindness will have the gene editor injected into their eyes, where researchers hope it will snip out a mutation.

Aug 15, 2019

Dr. Denise Montell — UC Santa Barbara — Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology — Anastasis — ideaXme — Ira Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, bioengineering, biotech/medical, complex systems, cryonics, DNA, genetics, health, life extension, transhumanism

Aug 15, 2019

Dr. Michael West at Ending Age-Related Diseases 2018 — The Reversibility of Human Aging | LEAF

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, life extension

Dr. Michael West, CEO of AgeX Therapeutics and Founder of Geron Corporation, discusses breakthroughs in the understanding of biological regeneration and in induced tissue regeneration, through his talk “Hayflick Rewound: Somatic Restriction, Epigenetics, and the Reversibility of Human Aging”. This talk was given at the Ending Age-Related Diseases conference in NYC. Join us at http://lifespan.io/hero

►Conference Page: https://www.leafscience.org/ending-age-related-diseases-adva…prospects/
►Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/user/LifespanIO?sub_confirmation=1
►This video is presented by LEAF. Please support our work by becoming a “Lifespan Hero”: http://lifespan.io/hero

► #LifeExtension #MichaelWest #AgeX

Aug 14, 2019

Using Genetic Genealogy To Identify Unknown Crime Victims, Sometimes Decades Later

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

DNA combined with the study of family history has been used to solve high-profile cold cases such as the Golden State Killer. Now, volunteers are using the technique to identify crime victims.

Aug 14, 2019

Future Bioweapons Could Kill People With Specific DNA

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, existential risks, genetics, robotics/AI

In the future, we may have to deal with biological weapons that target specific groups of people, passing over everyone else.

That’s according to a new report out of Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk reviewed by The Telegraph. In it, the Cambridge researchers argue that world governments have failed to prepare for futuristic weapons based on advanced technology like artificial intelligence and genetic manipulation — or even a killer pathogen designed to kill only people of a particular race.

Aug 13, 2019

Gift Launches New UCSF Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, health

Faculty engaged in microbiome research across campus have previously shown that our microbiome plays a key role in defining human health. For example, microbial dysfunction in the infant gut – characterized by the enrichment of particular microbial genes and their products – drive immune dysfunction and can be used to predict the development of allergy and asthma in childhood. Perturbed microbial ecosystems across the human body have been linked to autoimmune disease, metabolic syndromes such as obesity and diabetes, skin diseases, and even multiple sclerosis. Gut microbes can even contribute to metabolizing drugs and influence how much enters the circulation.

Leveraging this expertise and collaborations with UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in Oakland and San Francisco and institutions nationwide, the UCSF Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine aims to develop a holistic understanding of our earliest interactions with microbes in utero, through birth, and in early life. These efforts aim to find ways of predicting and preventing not only asthma and allergy, but other childhood diseases – including dermatological, gastrointestinal, respiratory and neurological disorders.

“At the same time that we are developing therapeutic strategies to restore microbial ecosystems once they have been damaged,” Lynch said. “We also need to find ways to intervene in at-risk populations in very early life to prevent chronic diseases before they start.”

Aug 13, 2019

What the Golden State Killer Tells Us About Forensic Genetics

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, habitats

Three hundred and sixty-six days ago, CeCe Moore woke up to the headline that would change her world: “Suspected Golden State Killer, East Area Rapist Arrested After Eluding Authorities for Decades.” Later that day, those authorities would hold a press conference in front of the Sacramento County District Attorney’s office to explain how, a day earlier, they had finally put handcuffs on the man believed to have committed a series of sadistic rapes and murders that spread terror through California for more than 40 years. But Moore didn’t have to tune in to know how they had done it. “I knew immediately they had cracked it with genetic genealogy and GEDmatch,” she says.

She knew it because at the time, Moore was working as the genetic genealogy researcher on the PBS show Finding Your Roots and had a consulting business helping adoptees find their biological parents. To aid her searches, she regularly logged on to GEDmatch, a public database where hobbyists upload results from consumer genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry to find relatives with shared DNA and to reverse-engineer their family trees. It had come to her attention that another genealogist on the site, Barbara Rae-Venter, had been uploading files that seemed out of place, and Moore suspected they came not from family members, but from crime scenes. But she had never imagined that one of them belonged to the man believed to be one of the most notorious serial killers in US history. “This was going to be huge,” she remembers telling people that day.

Continue reading “What the Golden State Killer Tells Us About Forensic Genetics” »

Aug 12, 2019

Police can now use millions more people’s DNA to find criminals

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

By Chelsea Whyte

Policing power may be about to get much stronger, thanks to another advance in genetic analysis. A new technique can link the patchy, limited DNA information held in forensic databases to the rich DNA libraries held by family tree-building websites, raising further questions about genetic privacy.

Earlier this year, an ancestry database used by people looking to trace their family history was used to identify the suspected Golden State Killer, a serial killer active in California decades ago. Since his arrest in April, genealogy databases – which allow consumers to upload their DNA sequences – have been used to crack several other cold cases.

Aug 12, 2019

Multiplexed genome engineering

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics

The ability to modify multiple genetic elements simultaneously would help to elucidate and control the gene interactions and networks underlying complex cellular functions. However, current genome engineering technologies are limited in both the number and the type of perturbations that can be performed simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate that both Cas12a and a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) array can be encoded in a single transcript by adding a stabilizer tertiary RNA structure. By leveraging this system, we illustrate constitutive, conditional, inducible, orthogonal and multiplexed genome engineering of endogenous targets using up to 25 individual CRISPR RNAs delivered on a single plasmid. Our method provides a powerful platform to investigate and orchestrate the sophisticated genetic programs underlying complex cell behaviors.