Toggle light / dark theme

Seed oil components of an ornamental flower could provide a direct pathway for designing a new class of environmentally friendly lubricants. Researchers at the School of Science at IUPUI identified the compound in the seed oil that is produced in a manner unlike any other fatty acid. The study was published today online in the journal Nature Plants.

The Orychophragmus violaceus plant is a purple flower native to China; it’s commonly referred to as the February orchid. While collaborating on the O. violaceus plant’s biology and genetic makeup, researchers at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln encountered a bit of a mystery: All plant seeds contain oils as energy reserves for later growth, but researchers noticed the February orchid oils were unusual.

They called upon IUPUI bioorganic chemist Robert Minto, who specializes in identifying natural products and unknown .

Read more

Scientists in the US may be out in front developing the next generation of Crispr-based genetic tools, but it’s China that’s pushing those techniques toward human therapies the fastest. Chinese researchers were the first to Crispr monkeys, and non-viable embryos, and to stick Crispr’d cells into a real live human. And now, a team of scientists in China have used a cutting-edge Crispr technique, known as base editing, to repair a disease-causing mutation in viable human embryos.

Published last week in the journal Molecular Therapy, and reported first by Stat, the study represents significant progress over previous attempts to remodel the DNA of human embryos. That’s in part because the editing worked so well, and in part because that editing took place in embryos created by a standard in-vitro fertilization technique.

You’ve read your last complimentary article this month. To read the full article, SUBSCRIBE NOW. If you’re already a subscriber, please sign in and and verify your subscription.

Read more

Maryam shanechi, university of southern california.

With recent technological advances, we can now record neural activity from the brain, and manipulate this activity with electrical or optogenetic stimulation in real time. These capabilities have brought the concept of brain-machine interfaces (BMI) closer to clinical viability than ever before. BMIs are systems that monitor and interact with the brain to restore lost function, treat neurological disorders, or enhance human performance.

February 2018

Read more

A team of researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences in China and the University of Oxford in the U.K. has found a way to grow green revolution crops using less nitrogen with no reduction in yield. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their research efforts and the results they found when planting newly developed plant varieties. Fanmiao Wang and Makoto Matsuoka with Nagoya University offer a News & Views piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

The green revolution was characterized by big increases in crop production in developing countries—it came about due to the increased use of pesticides, fertilizers and changes in crop varieties used. One of the changes to the crops came about as and wheat plants were bred to grow less tall to prevent damage from wind and rain. While this resulted in improved yields, it also resulted in the use of more nitrogen-based fertilizers, which are environmentally harmful. In this new effort, the researchers wondered if it might be possible to re-engineer green-revolution crop varieties in such a way as to restrict height and therefore retain high productivity, while also using nitrogen more efficiently.

Prior research had shown that proteins in the DELLA family reduced plant growth. Crop breeding in the 1960s led to varieties of rice and wheat with genetic mutations that allowed the proteins to build up in the plants, thus stunting their growth. Unfortunately, DELLA proteins have also been found to be the cause of inefficient nitrogen use in the same —as a result, farmers used more of it to increase yields. To overcome this problem, the researchers crossbred varieties of rice to learn more, and found that the transcription factor OsGRF4 was associated with nitrogen uptake. Using that information, they engineered some varieties of rice to express OsGRF4 at higher levels, which, when tested, showed higher uptake of nitrogen. The team then planted the varieties they had engineered and found that they required less nitrogen to produce the same yields—and they were just as stunted. They therefore claim that it is possible to grow that require less .

Read more

This story is brought to you by SynbiCITE, which is accelerating the commercialization of synthetic biology applications. To learn how SynbiCITE is nucleating a sustainable UK economy, visit www.synbicite.com.

Just as Henry Ford’s assembly line revolutionized the automobile industry, synthetic biology is being revolutionized by automated DNA assembly (see SynBioBetaLive! with Opentrons). The key features of an assembly line translate well into the field of synthetic biology – speed, accuracy, reproducibility and validation. Instead of welding chassis together, small robotic arms are lifting delicate plates holding dozens of samples, adding and removing miniscule amounts of fluid.

In 2014, Imperial College London received £2 million to develop a DNA Synthesis and Construction Foundry to operate with SynbiCITE, the UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for synthetic biology. Speaking at the Foundry’s inception, SynbiCITE co-director Prof. Paul Freemont said, “Standardizing the methods for synthesising DNA is crucial if we are going to scale up efforts to design and create this genetic material. The new DNA Synthesis and Construction Foundry will streamline and automate the ‘writing’ of DNA at an industrial scale so that tens of thousands of designed DNA constructions can be built and tested.”

Read more

Consumer DNA tests have taken off in popularity, promising to give you clues to your heritage and health. But after the test is done, who owns your personal genetic data? Bloomberg QuickTake explains why you should think twice before sending in that vial.

____

Bloomberg is the First Word in business news, delivering breaking news & analysis, up-to-the-minute market data, features, profiles and more: http://www.bloomberg.com
Connect with us on…
Twitter: https://twitter.com/business
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bloombergbus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloombergbu
Twitter: https://twitter.com/business
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bloombergbusiness
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloombergbusiness/

Read more