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Category: genetics – Page 342

Scientists can now edit multiple sites in the genome at the same time to learn how different DNA stretches co-operate in health and disease.

CRISPR-based DNA editing has revolutionized the study of the human genome by allowing precise deletion of any human gene to glean insights into its function. But one feature remained challenging—the ability to simultaneously remove multiple genes or gene fragments in the same cell. Yet this type of genome surgery is key for scientists to understand how different parts of the genome work together in the contexts of both normal physiology and disease.

Now such a tool exists thanks to the teams of Benjamin Blencowe and Jason Moffat, both professors of molecular genetics at the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. Dubbed ‘CHyMErA’, for Cas Hybrid for Multiplexed Editing and Screening Applications, the method can be applied to any type of mammalian cell to systematically target the DNA at multiple positions at the same time, as described in a study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

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Canadian firm says it could make 10 million doses per month — if its innovative production method wins FDA approval.

A Canadian company says that it has produced a COVID −19 vaccine just 20 days after receiving the coronavirus’s genetic sequence, using a unique technology that they soon hope to submit for FDA approval.

Medicago CEO Bruce Clark said his company could produce as many as 10 million doses a month. If regulatory hurdles can be cleared, he said in a Thursday interview, the vaccine could start to become available in November 2021.

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First wave 🌊.

Your questions answered — an update (11−03−2020): Professor Neil Ferguson on the current status of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak, case numbers, intervention measures and challenges countries are currently facing.

Read all reports including estimates of epidemic size, transmissibility, severity, phylogenetics, undetected cases, prevalence and symptom progression here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-gida

Continue reading “Update on COVID-19 outbreak with Professor Neil Ferguson” | >

Just as there is a mysterious dark matter that accounts for 85 percent of our universe, there is a “dark” portion of the human genome that has perplexed scientists for decades. A study published March 9, 2020, in Genome Research identifies new portions of the fruit fly genome that, until now, have been hidden in these dark, silent areas.

The collaborative paper titled “Gene Expression Networks in the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel” is the culmination of years of research by Clemson University geneticists Trudy Mackay and Robert Anholt. Their groundbreaking findings could significantly advance science’s understanding of a number of genetic disorders.

The “dark” portion refers to the approximate 98 percent of the genome that doesn’t appear to have any obvious function. Only 2 percent of the human genome codes for proteins, the building blocks of our bodies and the catalysts of the chemical reactions that allow us to thrive. Scientists have been puzzled by this notion since the 1970s when gene sequencing technologies were first developed, revealing the proportion of coding to noncoding regions of the genome.

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Circa 2015 o.o take their Gene’s and could make immunity greater for stomaches.

Vultures have a unique genetic make-up allowing them to digest carcasses and guard themselves against constant exposure to pathogens in their diet, according to the first Eurasian vulture genome published in the open access journal Genome Biology. The study also finds that this species of Asian vulture is more closely related to the North American bald eagle than previously thought.

The cinereous vulture or black vulture, Aegypius monachus, is the largest bird of prey, and an iconic bird in the Far East. The species plays a key role in the ecosystem by removing rotting carcasses, thus preventing the spread of disease.

As their feeding habits involve constant exposure to pathogens, vultures are suspected to have strong immune systems, having evolved mechanisms to prevent infection by the microbes found in their diet. Despite the potential interest in the immune system of scavengers, little is known about the genetic variations involved in vultures’ immune processes.

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Over many years, the Mazmanian laboratory has described how Bacteroides fragilis in the gut produces beneficial molecules that protect mice from inflammatory bowel disease and autism-like symptoms. Like a densely populated city, a vast majority of the B. fragilis in the gut live within the central part of the intestinal tube, called the lumen. However, the Mazmanian laboratory discovered in 2013 that some B. fragilis reside in the bacterial equivalent of small towns, nestled into microscopic pockets within the tissue walls lining the tube. These sparse populations are protected by mucus and are largely unaffected by antibiotics, suggesting that they act as population reservoirs that ensure long-term colonization.

“For humans, where we live can dictate how we behave—for example, a person living in a city likely has a different everyday life than a person living in a small rural community,” says former graduate student Gregory Donaldson (PhD ‘18), the first author on the new paper. “For the bacteria that we study, the intestines represent their entire world, so we wanted to know how differently they behave depending on how far away from the intestinal surface they are.”

Though they may live in different habitats within the gut, these B. fragilis populations all have the same genetic code. What may differ, however, is how they express those genes—is a bacterium expressing a gene for replication and division, for example, or perhaps for an enzyme that digests food? Donaldson aimed to measure and compare gene expression in these two populations (intestinal wall tissue and lumen of the gut) to determine what, if any, differences were seen.

This posed a technical challenge. Because the population of bacteria living in the tissue lining is so small, their genetic material becomes obscured during sequencing by the genetic material of the mouse cells, which is far more abundant than that of the bacteria. Though mice and bacteria are distinctly different genetically, sifting through the mouse RNA to find the bacterial RNA is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Here, a crucial collaboration with Ashlee Earl of the Broad Institute made the research possible. Earl and her team led the development of a new technique, called hybrid selection RNA-sequencing, designed to fish out the elusive strands of bacterial RNA like using a magnet to search for the needles in a haystack.

Continue reading “Mapping Bacterial Neighborhoods in the Gut” | >