Awesome! Just imagine all the benefits that we will see through this research. Not only will we figure out more on the root cause of gene mutations, and cures including CRISPR; but also we will be more effective in mimicking the human system in synthetic systems, synthetic cell or gene circuitry, humanoids, synthetic immune systems, combat aging more effectively, etc.
With more data, a pioneer of gene sequencing hopes to unlock the connections between DNA and illness.
A research team at the University of Washington has harnessed complex computational methods to design customized proteins that can self-assemble into 120-subunit “icosahedral” structures inside living cells—the biggest, self-booting, intracellular protein nanocages ever made. The breakthrough offers a potential solution to a pressing scientific challenge: how to safely and efficiently deliver to cells new and emerging biomedical treatments such as DNA vaccines and therapeutic interfering particles.
The work, funded by DARPA in a lead-up to the new INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) program, “opens the door to a new generation of genetically programmable protein-based molecular machines,” the researchers report in this week’s issue of the journal Science. The research paper is available here: http://ow.ly/LW8F302tOp3
Anyone familiar with the role-playing games Dungeons and Dragons and Munchkin need only picture the 20-sided die to understand what an organic, icosahedral cargo container looks like—symmetrical, triangle-shaped panels folded evenly on each side. Unlike a die that can be held in your hand, however, these creations are the size of small viruses and are designed to interact with cells in the same way viruses might—that is, by delivering their caged contents into a cell, albeit in this case with positive, customizable outcomes. Also, whereas dice are produced in molds on a factory assembly line, these nanocages build themselves inside cells, following with atomic precision instructions written in genetic code.
I never get tired of hearing more information on this research.
A synthetic genetic circuit programmed into an attenuated Salmonella enterica subspecies can be used to systemically deliver an anti-tumor toxin into mice with cancer. The circuit allows the bacterial cells inside a tumor to synchronously self-destruct by lysis, releasing the toxin directly in the tumor.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a strategy for using synthetic biology in therapeutics. The approach enables continual production and release of drugs at disease sites in mice while simultaneously limiting the size, over time, of the populations of bacteria engineered to produce the drugs.
“This impressive study represents a big step towards one of the great dreams of synthetic biology: rationally programming cells, in this case bacteria, to exhibit complex, dynamic, and beneficial behaviors in a host organism,” Michael Elowitz, whose Caltech lab builds synthetic genetic circuits and who was not involved in the work, wrote in an email to The Scientist.
Posted in biotech/medical, genetics
Hope; or at least I am hoping.
A novel gene-editing technique with potential to revolutionize cancer treatment has scientists in a race to test it on humans.
As the scientific journal Nature announced last week: “Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial.”
But wait. On the same page, there’s a link to another story from a month ago: “First CRISPR clinical trial gets green light from U.S. panel.”
AI and Quality Control in Genome data are made for each other.
A new study published in The Plant Journal helps to shed light on the transcriptomic differences between different tissues in Arabidopsis, an important model organism, by creating a standardized “atlas” that can automatically annotate samples to include lost metadata such as tissue type. By combining data from over 7000 samples and 200 labs, this work represents a way to leverage the increasing amounts of publically available ‘omics data while improving quality control, to allow for large scale studies and data reuse.
“As more and more ‘omics data are hosted in the public databases, it become increasingly difficult to leverage those data. One big obstacle is the lack of consistent metadata,” says first author and Brookhaven National Laboratory research associate Fei He. “Our study shows that metadata might be detected based on the data itself, opening the door for automatic metadata re-annotation.”
The study focuses on data from microarray analyses, an early high-throughput genetic analysis technique that remains in common use. Such data are often made publically available through tools such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), which over time accumulates vast amounts of information from thousands of studies.
Beautiful.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a strategy for using synthetic biology in therapeutics. The approach enables continual production and release of drugs at disease sites in mice while simultaneously limiting the size, over time, of the populations of bacteria engineered to produce the drugs. The findings are published in the July 20 online issue of Nature.
UC San Diego researchers led by Jeff Hasty, a professor of bioengineering and biology, engineered a clinically relevant bacterium to produce cancer drugs and then self-destruct and release the drugs at the site of tumors. The team then transferred the bacterial therapy to their MIT collaborators for testing in an animal model of colorectal metastasis. The design of the therapy represents a culmination of four previous Nature papers from the UC San Diego group that describe the systematic development of engineered genetic clocks and synchronization. Over the years, the researchers have employed a broad approach that spans the scales of synthetic biology.
New method for tracking single cells; definitely could be interesting for genetic mutation research such as cancer, Parkinson, etc.
As far as the scientists are concerned, the new possibilities that these programs offer should be available to as many researchers around the world as possible. Therefore the software is freely available, and can be downloaded from the following link: http://www.bsse.ethz.ch/csd/software/ttt-and-qtfy.html
Technical obstacles were removed as far as possible. “Our focus was on making the application also available to researchers who do not have background IT know-how,” Schroeder explains. And the application appears to work well: Two high-ranking publications can be traced back to the spyware for cells.
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Arthritis sufferers have been offered new hope after scientists grew a ‘living hip’ in the lab which not only replaces worn cartilage but stops painful joints returning.
Researchers in the US have used stem cells to grow cartilage in the exact shape of a hip joint while also genetically engineering the tissue to release anti-inflammatory molecules to fend off the return of arthritis.
The idea is to implant the perfectly shaped cartilage around the joint to extend its life before arthritis has caused too much damage to the bone.
Inspired by the large-scale sky surveys with which astronomers explore the cosmos, neuroscientists in Seattle, Washington, have spent four years systematically surveying the neural activity of the mouse visual cortex. The Allen Brain Observatory’s first data release, on 13 July, provides a publicly accessible data set of unprecedented size and scope, designed to help scientists to model and understand the human brain.
The project is part of an ambitious ten-year brain-research plan announced in 2012 by the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Designed to catalogue neurons and their electrical characteristics in minute detail, the initiative aims to enable new insights into how perception and cognition arise.
To compile the brain observatory’s first data set, researchers used a specialized microscope to record calcium waves that occur when neurons fire, sampling activity in 25 mice over 360 experimental sessions, while the animals viewed a battery of visual stimuli such as moving patterns of lines, images of natural scenes and short movies. The data set so far includes 18,000 cells in 4 areas of the visual cortex, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind. The set also includes information about each neuron’s location and its expression of certain genetic markers. At 30 terabytes, the raw data are too large to share easily, but users can download a more manageable processed data set, or explore it online.
Can serve many uses such as geneology, etc. However, the bigger advancement will be with criminal/ legal investigations.
Rice University researchers have developed gas biosensors to “see” into soil and allow them to follow the behavior of the microbial communities within.
In a study in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology, the Rice team described using genetically engineered bacteria that release methyl halide gases to monitor microbial gene expression in soil samples in the lab.
The bacteria are programmed using synthetic biology to release gas to report when they exchange DNA through horizontal gene transfer, the process by which organisms share genetic traits without a parent-to-child relationship. The biosensors allow researchers to monitor such processes in real time without having to actually see into or disturb a lab soil sample.
