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Category: genetics – Page 368

750 million genetically engineered mosquitoes approved for release in Florida Keys

A plan to release over 750 million genetically modified mosquitoes into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022 received final approval from local authorities, against the objection of many local residents and a coalition of environmental advocacy groups. The proposal had already won state and federal approval.

“With all the urgent crises facing our nation and the State of Florida — the Covid-19 pandemic, racial injustice, climate change — the administration has used tax dollars and government resources for a Jurassic Park experiment,” said Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the International Center for Technology Assessment and Center for Food Safety, in a statement released Wednesday.

“Now the Monroe County Mosquito Control District has given the final permission needed. What could possibly go wrong? We don’t know, because EPA unlawfully refused to seriously analyze environmental risks, now without further review of the risks, the experiment can proceed,” she added.

Ancient gene family protects algae from salt and cold in an Antarctic lake

Glycerol, used in the past as antifreeze for cars, is produced by a range of organisms from yeasts to vertebrates, some of which use it as an osmoprotectant—a molecule that prevents dangerous water loss in salty environments—while others use it as an antifreeze. Here, scientists from the University of Nevada and Miami University in Ohio show that two species of the single-celled green algae Chlamydomonas from Antarctica, called UWO241 and ICE-MDV, produce high levels of glycerol to protect them from osmotic water loss, and possibly also from freezing injury. Presently, only one other organism, an Arctic fish, is known to use glycerol for both purposes. Both species synthesize glycerol with enzymes encoded by multiple copies of a recently discovered ancient gene family. These results, published today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant Science, illustrate the importance of adaptations that allow life to not only survive but to thrive in extreme habitats.

The researchers collected both Chlamydomonas species from depths of 13 to 17 m, a region with a steep salinity gradient, in Lake Bonney, a permanently ice-covered lake in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land, Antarctica. Previously, they showed that both species are remarkably adapted to their extreme habitat, with a photosynthetic apparatus adapted to cold, saline, and light-poor conditions, novel proteins, more fluid cell membranes that function at low temperatures, and ice-binding proteins that protect against freeze-thaw injury.

“Our overall goal is to understand how microorganisms survive in extreme environments. The Chlamydomonas species of Lake Bonney are well-suited for such studies because they are exposed to many extremes, including low light, low temperature, oxidative stress, and high salinity. The present results are the first to show that glycerol production by microorganisms, which is well-known in warm, salty environments, is also important in polar regions,” says corresponding author Dr. James Raymond, Adjunct Research Professor at the School of Life Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA.

Genetics meets proteomics: perspectives for large population-based studies

In this Review, Suhre, McCarthy and Schwenk describe how combining genetics with plasma proteomics is providing notable insights into human disease. As changes in the circulating proteome are often an intermediate molecular readout between a genetic variant and its organismal effect, proteomics can enable a deeper understanding of disease mechanisms, clinical biomarkers and therapeutic opportunities.

Researchers accidentally breed sturddlefish

Both shocking and intriguing for the possibilities of gynogenesis reproduction in which sperm is used from one creature to fertilize an egg, but its DNA is ignored.

A team of researchers working at Hungary’s National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture, has accidentally bred a new kind of fish—dubbed the sturddlefish by some observers, it is a cross between an American Paddlefish and a Russian Sturgeon. In their paper published in the journal Genes, the group describes accidentally breeding the fish and what they learned by doing so.

In the past, scientists and others have bred animals from different species for various reasons, from research to utility—mules (crossed between donkeys and horses) are considered to have beneficial traits from both animals, and ligers (a cross between lions and tigers) have helped researchers understand their respective genetic backgrounds. In this new effort, the researchers claim that they were not trying to create a new type of fish, they were instead attempting to apply gynogenesis (a type of reproduction in which sperm is used from one creature to fertilize an egg, but its DNA is ignored) using American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon. To their surprise, the eggs produced fish that grew to adults.

In studying the hundreds of offspring produced, which some on the internet have named sturddlefish, the researchers found that they fell into one of three main categories: those that looked mostly like their mothers, those that looked mostly like their fathers and those that inherited features of both parents.

Cardiology trial shows potential benefit of genetic testing when selecting blood thinners

An international, first-of-its-kind cardiology trial used personalized genetic testing to reduce by 34 percent the number of serious adverse events following balloon angioplasty, a treatment for the most common form of heart disease.

For patients undergoing (PCI)—a non-surgical procedure where physicians inflate a balloon and place a metal stent in narrowed arteries to improve to the heart —the choice of antiplatelet therapy can be critical to post-treatment success, and to minimize the chance of heart attack or stroke.

The TAILOR-PCI trial, co-led by principal investigators Dr. Michael Farkouh, cardiologist and Multinational Clinical Trials Chair at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and Dr. Naveen Pereira, Professor of Medicine and cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, studied the effectiveness of genetic-guided therapy in patients that have had PCIs when compared to conventional therapy.

Transplanted brown-fat-like cells hold promise for obesity and diabetes

Obesity is the main cause of type 2 diabetes and related chronic illnesses that together will kill more people around the globe this year than the COVID-19 coronavirus. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have delivered a proof of concept for a novel cell-based therapy against this dangerous condition.

The potential therapy for obesity would transplant HUMBLE (human brown-like) , human white fat cells that have been genetically modified to become similar to heat-generating , says Yu-Hua Tseng, Ph.D., a Senior Investigator in Joslin’s Section on Integrative Physiology and Metabolism.

Brown fat cells burn energy instead of storing energy as white fat cells do, says Tseng, senior author on a paper about the work in Science Translational Medicine. In the process, brown fat can lower excessive levels of glucose and lipids in the blood that are linked to metabolic diseases such as .

Study leads to potential for new treatment approach to Alzheimer’s

Research looking at a possible new therapeutic approach for Alzheimer’s disease was recently published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation. The paper out of the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA) is titled “Therapeutic Trem2 activation ameliorates amyloid-beta deposition and improves cognition in the 5XFAD model of amyloid deposition”. The work looked at targeting inflammation by using an antibody. Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias have no disease-modifying treatments at this time and represent a looming public health crisis given the continually growing aging population.

The paper explains that current therapeutic approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer’s focus on the major pathological hallmarks of the disease which are and neurofibrillary tangles. They are the requirements for a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. However, the authors say there has been an explosion of genetic data suggesting the risk for sporadic Alzheimer’s disease is driven by several other factors including neuroinflammation, membrane turnover and storage, and .

In this study the researchers focused on triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cell-2 (TREM2). “TREM2 was identified several years ago as a gene that, when there’s a mutation, significantly increases risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The field thinks that this mutation reduces the function of the receptor, so we hypothesized that targeting TREM2 to increase its function might be a valid treatment for Alzheimer’s,” explained Donna Wilcock, SBCoA associate director.

Body fat transformed by CRISPR gene editing helps mice keep weight off

White fat cells can be turned into energy-burning brown fat using CRISPR gene-editing technology. These engineered cells have helped mice avoid weight gain and diabetes when on a high-fat diet, and could eventually be used to treat obesity-related disorders, say the researchers behind the work.

Human adults have plenty of white fat, the cells filled with lipid that make up fatty deposits. But we have much smaller reserves of brown fat cells, which burn energy as well as storing it. People typically lose brown fat as they age or put on weight. While brown fat seems to be stimulated when we are exposed to cold temperatures, there are no established methods of building up brown fat in the body.

Progress towards a cure for herpes

Researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, USA, have used gene editing to remove latent herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), also known as oral herpes.

In mice, the technique showed a 92% decrease in the latent virus – enough to keep the infection from coming back, according to the scientists. The study used two sets of “genetic scissors” to damage the virus’s DNA, fine-tune a delivery vehicle to the infected cells, and target the nerve pathways connecting the neck with the face, reaching the tissue where the virus lies dormant. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

“This is the first time that scientists have been able to go in and actually eliminate most of the herpes in a body,” said senior author Dr. Keith Jerome, Professor in the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at Fred Hutch. “We are targeting the root cause of the infection: the infected cells where the virus lies dormant and are the seeds that give rise to repeat infections.”

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