By Andrew Myers

If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a bit of a makeover.

The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13s key attributes its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or Bi-Fi. Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering.

Using the virus, Ortiz and Endy have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities. The advance could prove a boon to bioengineers looking to create complex, multicellular communities that work in concert to accomplish important biological functions.

Medium and message M13 is a packager of genetic messages. It reproduces within its host, taking strands of DNA strands that engineers can control wrapping them up one by one and sending them out encapsulated within proteins produced by M13 that can infect other cells. Once inside the new hosts, they release the packaged DNA message.

The M13-based system is essentially a communication channel. It acts like a wireless Internet connection that enables cells to send or receive messages, but it does not care what secrets the transmitted messages contain.

Effectively, weve separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community, said Ortiz, the first author of the study.

It is well-known that cells naturally use various mechanisms, including chemicals, to communicate, but such messaging can be extremely limited in both complexity and bandwidth. Simple chemical signals are typically both message and messenger two functions that cannot be separated.

If your network connection is based on sugar then your messages are limited to more sugar, less sugar, or no sugar explained Endy.

Cells engineered with M13 can be programmed to communicate in much more complex, powerful ways than ever before. The possible messages are limited only by what can be encoded in DNA and thus can include any sort of genetic instruction: start growing, stop growing, come closer, swim away, produce insulin and so forth.

Link:
Bionengineers Introduce "Bi-Fi" — The Biological Internet

Eds: Not for use before 0700 AEDT Tuesday October 9

By Michelle Henderson, AAP National Medical Writer

MELBOURNE, Oct 9 AAP - Vaccines given with a painless skin patch rather than needles are a step closer after Australian innovators secured a deal with international vaccine manufacturer Merck.

The Nanopatch, developed by University of Queensland Professor Mark Kendall and his bioengineering and nanotechnology team, uses 100 times less vaccine than a syringe and is smaller than a postage stamp.

The technology is being commercialised by an investor-backed company, Vaxxas, formed in August 2011, but the partnership with Merck has injected extra research funds and potentially opens up a suite of vaccines to eventually be used with the patch.

Merck, the international distributor of the Gardasil HPV vaccine pioneered by Australia's Professor Ian Frazer, will initially fund Vaxxas to evaluate the Nanopatch for use with one of its vaccines.

"This is an essential step for Vaxxas because for the first time we have a partnership with one of the world's largest vaccine manufacturers," Prof Kendall told AAP on Monday.

He said the deal validated the development of the Nanopatch, which was selected by Merck from a field of about 40 other international technologies.

Vaxxas raised about $15 million last year to commercialise the Nanopatch technology.

This process will involve several rigorous testing phases to ensure the patch is effective and safe.

See more here:
Needle-less technology partners with Merck

Bitter Seeds

Eco documentary. Directed by Micha Peled. (Not rated. 88 minutes.)

"Bitter Seeds," a poignant and insightful look into the human suffering caused by agricultural bioengineering, features an unlikely but appealing protagonist to tell its story about a global phenomenon.

Manjusha Amberwar is 18 years old and lives in central India, the site of a shocking wave of suicides, including her father's. She wants to be a journalist (against all odds for a village girl) and begins to investigate the reasons behind the crisis for the local newspaper.

Her journey, and that of her relatives, is the thread of a well-told story about how the U.S.-based Monsanto Co. persuaded often illiterate farmers to use its genetically altered (and more expensive) seeds, instead of relying on the conventional (and effective) ones that villagers had used for eons.

Unfortunately, the kind of seeds that may work for massive agricultural companies do not always work for small family farms, which don't have the resources to provide the necessary irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides to make their seed investment pay off. Farmers often go bankrupt and lose their land - a big problem in a world where 50 percent of the people are farmers, and where the use of genetically modified seeds is becoming more widespread.

This film doesn't provide a lot of bars or charts or fancy graphics. Just cue cards to give us perspective. And surprisingly beautifully shot scenes of an intimate family drama that takes place over a season of growing cotton. From time to time, Monsanto officials (straight out of central casting) appear, and you can almost see their noses growing as they rationalize the suicides and extol the virtues of their (very profitable) seeds.

One of my favorite things about the movie is that director Micha Peled (who also helmed "China Blue" and "Store Wars: When Walmart Comes to Town") does not resort to doomsday talk or hysterics. This is not a dreary film: Underneath it all is a strong sense of humanity.

Continued here:
Review: 'Bitter Seeds' of farmer suicides

Originally published October 3, 2012 at 8:06 PM | Page modified October 3, 2012 at 8:39 PM

This region is a hot spot for the biomedical innovation that could revolutionize health care in the near future, and a key to that is the relationship between university researchers and the private sector.

The University of Washington Department of Bioengineering is trying to tend that relationship, through a Bioengineering Affiliates Program, directed by Charles McLien III.

The public sector can be a businessman's best friend, feeding established businesses new discoveries and nurturing young entrepreneurs. University researchers get to see their work put to practical use, and the institution gets royalty payments and esteem (and more grants).

At an open house Tuesday, business and nonprofit leaders, UW researchers and students talked about the intersections of their work and what it means for health care.

Paul Ramsey, CEO of UW Medicine, said in his keynote speech that this is a critical time for the U.S. health-care system, which is under pressure to improve care and cut costs.

Ramsey mentioned the new report from the independent Institute of Medicine that the U.S. health-care system wastes about $750 billion a year.

Better practices and treatments can help improve that, but only if the system will adapt.

Ramsey told the story of the Hungarian physician who discovered the benefits of hand-washing 150 years ago but couldn't persuade colleagues to clean their hands. Even today, Ramsey said, 50 percent of doctors don't wash before seeing a patient. At UW facilities nearly 100 percent do.

Ramsey also said a new treatment can take 15 to 20 years to move from lab to practice, from discovery to drug.

View original post here:
Healthful relationship between UW, business

The internet has revolutionized global communications and now researchers at Standford University are looking to provide a similar boost to bioengineering with a new process dubbed Bi-Fi. The technology uses an innocuous virus called M13 to increase the complexity and amount of information that can be sent from cell to cell. The researchers say the Bi-Fi could help bioengineers create complex, multicellular communities that work together to carry out important biological functions.

Cells naturally use chemicals to communicate with the chemical signals typically acting as both the message and the messenger. However, this method of communication is extremely limited in terms of complexity and bandwidth.

If your network connection is based on sugar then your messages are limited to more sugar, less sugar, or no sugar explains Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering. By separating the messenger and the message, Endy and Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, have been able to greatly increase the amount of data that can be transmitted.

They chose the virus M13 to act as the messenger because when it infects bacteria, it doesnt kill its host but makes itself at home indiscriminately sending out DNA strands that it reproduces within its host. The engineers are able to control these strands of DNA, so custom DNA messages can be wrapped within proteins produced by M13 and sent out to infect other cells. Once they arrive in a new host, they release the packaged DNA message.

The M13-based cell-to-cell communication system (bottom) represented with the framework of the Shannon communication system (top) (Image: Ortiz/Endy)

The researchers liken their M13-based system to a wireless internet connection that allows cells to send and receive messages but doesnt care about the content of the messages.

Effectively, weve separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community, said Ortiz.

Using DNA to store the message means that it can contain any sort of genetic instruction. M13 is known to have packaged DNA strands containing as many as 40,000 base pairs, which is far in excess of the majority of genetic messages of interest in bioengineering that range from several hundred to many thousand base pairs.

Ortiz has also used M13 to broadcast genetic messages between cells that are separated by over seven centimeters (2.7 in) of a gelatinous medium, which she says is considered a very long-range, cellularly speaking.

The researchers believe that their Bi-Fi biological internet could lead to the development of biosynthetic factories consisting of huge masses of microbes collaborating to produce complex fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful chemicals. Even more exciting, the researchers say that with improvements, the technology could one day be used in more complex three-dimensional programming of cellular systems, such as the regeneration of tissue of organs.

See the rest here:
Bi-Fi: New cell-to-cell communication process could revolutionize bioengineering

Public release date: 27-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andrew Myers admyers@stanford.edu 650-736-2245 Stanford University Medical Center

STANFORD, Calif. If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a bit of a makeover.

The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13's key attributes its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or "Bi-Fi." Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering.

Using the virus, Ortiz and Endy have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities. The advance could prove a boon to bioengineers looking to create complex, multicellular communities that work in concert to accomplish important biological functions.

Medium and message

M13 is a packager of genetic messages. It reproduces within its host, taking strands of DNA strands that engineers can control wrapping them up one by one and sending them out encapsulated within proteins produced by M13 that can infect other cells. Once inside the new hosts, they release the packaged DNA message.

The M13-based system is essentially a communication channel. It acts like a wireless Internet connection that enables cells to send or receive messages, but it does not care what secrets the transmitted messages contain.

"Effectively, we've separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community," said Ortiz, the first author of the study.

It is well-known that cells naturally use various mechanisms, including chemicals, to communicate, but such messaging can be extremely limited in both complexity and bandwidth. Simple chemical signals are typically both message and messenger two functions that cannot be separated.

Read more here:
Stanford bioengineers introduce 'Bi-Fi' -- The biological internet

Bioengineers at Stanford University have created a communication network to send commands to and from cells within a biological body.

Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, an assistant professor of bioengineering said they succeeded in using the M13 bacteriophage as a carrier of genetic messages to build what they call a "biological Internet".

M13, a non-lethal virus which as the ability to "broadcast" DNA, can be used to pick up arbitrary DNA strands and transport them to certaincells over a distance of up to 7 cm, which is about 79,500 times its own length (880 nm). The researchers said that M13 transports messages in the form of commands, but does not care what the content of the message is. At its destination, M13 releases the command.

"Effectively, we've separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community," said Ortiz, the first author of the study.

According to the research, M13 can be used to create much more complex communication between cells and "include any sort of genetic instruction: start growing, stop growing, come closer, swim away, produce insulin and so forth." The vision is the creation of "biosynthetic factories in which huge masses of microbes collaborate to make more complicated fuels, pharmaceuticals and other useful chemicals." Even the regeneration of tissue and organs may be possible.

Contact Us for News Tips, Corrections and Feedback

The rest is here:
Stanford Scientists Create ''Biological Internet''

By MIKE THOMAS Staff Reporter/mthomas@suntimes.com October 1, 2012 5:08PM

Melody Swartz was named a MacArthur Foundation fellow. | Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

storyidforme: 37821798 tmspicid: 13869099 fileheaderid: 6386110

Updated: October 2, 2012 2:18AM

When Melody Swartz got word that shed been chosen to receive a coveted MacArthur Fellows Program award (known more commonly as a genius grant), the Switzerland-based bioengineering professor and Glen Ellyn native was in the middle of a grocery store with 80s music blaring from loudspeakers overhead.

Horrified at what the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation representative might think of the cheesy tunes streaming through her cell phone, she dropped her shopping basket and rushed to find a quiet corner.

I was completely flabbergasted, Swartz said via email. It came completely out of the blue.

Like the rest of this years 23 awardees which include such disparate pioneers as Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz, pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin Warf and stringed-instrument bow maker Benoit Rolland Swartz, 43, will receive a total of $500,000 paid out quarterly over five years.

Since 1981, with the help of anonymous, handpicked nominators, the MacArthur Foundation has doled out hundreds of grants and many millions of dollars to artists and entrepreneurs in a variety of disciplines.

In a written summary of her achievements, the MacArthur Foundation notes that Swartzs research has important implications not only for normal tissue development and maintenance but also for cancer biology.

Read more here:
MacArthur Foundation bestows 23 ‘genius grants’

MENLO PARK, Calif. & GRAMBACH/GRAZ, Austria--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

DNA2.0, the leading bioengineering solutions provider and VTU Technology, the leader in Pichia pastoris protein expression services, today announced a partnership to develop and refine a gene design algorithm to enable maximized protein production in the yeast P. pastoris. The collaboration will combine VTUs deep P. pastoris expertise and AOX1 promoter technology with DNA2.0s gene design technology for robust translation.

Pichia is ideally suited for high-level expression of recombinant proteins for therapeutic and industrial applications, said Dr. Thomas Purkarthofer, Head of Business Development of VTU Technology. We are excited to merge the unparalleled strength of our P. pastoris expression system with DNA2.0s industry-leading gene design and expression optimization technology.

VTUs P. pastoris protein expression platform is based on engineered versions of the AOX1 promoter, one of the strongest eukaryotic promoters known. VTUs approach delivers up to 20 g/L of secreted protein within a few weeks development time, and the company has a proven track record for expressing commercial levels of a wide range of proteins including serum proteins, cytokines, fusion proteins, Fabs, antibody derived fragments, scaffold proteins and enzymes.

The protein target for this collaboration is DNA2.0s IP-free CometGFP, which is part of a novel family of fluorescent and colorimetric proteins developed by DNA2.0. The corresponding IP-free genes are brought to market without expensive, constrained licensing.

We developed our initial Pichia gene design algorithm with the world-leading P. pastoris laboratory of Anton Glieder, and we are thrilled to expand the breadth and scope of our P. pastoris technology for industrial scale applications with the proven commercial leader in the field, VTU Technology, said Jeremy Minshull, Ph.D., cofounder and CEO of DNA2.0. Controllable, consistent and strong protein expression is the goal regardless of the type of research in which you are engaged, and our patented GeneGPS technology has been proven to produce orders of magnitude increases in protein expression.

About VTU Technology:

VTU Technology is a leading provider of comprehensive services based on exclusive and innovative Pichia pastoris protein production technologies. With exclusive know-how and extensive experience, VTUs skilled team delivers fast-track development of high-performance industrial protein production strains enabling high expression yields and economically attractive production processes.

Headquartered in Grambach/Graz, Austria, VTU Technology is a private company and a subsidiary ofVTU Holding, an Austrian enterprise that combines several technology and engineering companies in chemistry, pharma & life science as well as power and fuel industries. For more information, please visit http://www.vtu-technology.com

About DNA2.0:

View post:
DNA2.0 Taps VTU Technology as Research Partner for Industrial Scale Protein Expression

Public release date: 13-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andrew Myers admyers@stanford.edu 650-736-2245 Stanford School of Engineering

Christina Smolke, PhD, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, has won a Director's Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health. The award includes a five-year, $2.5 million grant to be used in highly innovative approaches that have the potential to affect a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research.

Smolke will use her Pioneer Award funding to explore the use of synthetic biology platforms and biosynthesis strategiesthe use of microbes to produce complex chemicalsto dramatically advance natural-product drugs. Natural products, and compounds inspired by them, make up the bulk of successful drugs, but challenges to their discovery, synthesis and manufacture limit the number of candidates that can be seriously explored and tested as drugs.

Smolke's approaches could transform the manufacturing scale and efficiency of these microbial systems and make possible the synthesis of an important class of molecules exhibiting diverse pharmacological activities.

"We're working on the tools that will lead to new capabilities for probing natural biosynthetic pathways and shed light on nature's biosynthesis processes. Ultimately, this will lead us to the discovery and scalable synthesis of new and desperately needed therapeutic molecules," said Smolke.

###

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Originally posted here:
Stanford bioengineer Christina Smolke wins NIH Director's Pioneer Award

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2012) If you were a bacterium, the virus M13 might seem innocuous enough. It insinuates more than it invades, setting up shop like a freeloading houseguest, not a killer. Once inside it makes itself at home, eating your food, texting indiscriminately. Recently, however, bioengineers at Stanford University have given M13 a bit of a makeover.

The researchers, Monica Ortiz, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering, and Drew Endy, PhD, an assistant professor of bioengineering, have parasitized the parasite and harnessed M13's key attributes -- its non-lethality and its ability to package and broadcast arbitrary DNA strands -- to create what might be termed the biological Internet, or "Bi-Fi." Their findings were published online Sept. 7 in the Journal of Biological Engineering.

Using the virus, Ortiz and Endy have created a biological mechanism to send genetic messages from cell to cell. The system greatly increases the complexity and amount of data that can be communicated between cells and could lead to greater control of biological functions within cell communities. The advance could prove a boon to bioengineers looking to create complex, multicellular communities that work in concert to accomplish important biological functions.

Medium and message

M13 is a packager of genetic messages. It reproduces within its host, taking strands of DNA -- strands that engineers can control -- wrapping them up one by one and sending them out encapsulated within proteins produced by M13 that can infect other cells. Once inside the new hosts, they release the packaged DNA message.

The M13-based system is essentially a communication channel. It acts like a wireless Internet connection that enables cells to send or receive messages, but it does not care what secrets the transmitted messages contain.

"Effectively, we've separated the message from the channel. We can now send any DNA message we want to specific cells within a complex microbial community," said Ortiz, the first author of the study.

It is well-known that cells naturally use various mechanisms, including chemicals, to communicate, but such messaging can be extremely limited in both complexity and bandwidth. Simple chemical signals are typically both message and messenger -- two functions that cannot be separated.

"If your network connection is based on sugar then your messages are limited to 'more sugar,' 'less sugar,' or 'no sugar'" explained Endy.

Cells engineered with M13 can be programmed to communicate in much more complex, powerful ways than ever before. The possible messages are limited only by what can be encoded in DNA and thus can include any sort of genetic instruction: start growing, stop growing, come closer, swim away, produce insulin and so forth.

Read the original post:
Bioengineers introduce 'Bi-Fi' -- The biological 'Internet'

Public release date: 12-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Marilyn Daly dalymari@mail.nih.gov 301-402-1374 NIH/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering

Three projects aimed at enhancing interdisciplinary training for graduate students have won awards from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).The awards are part of a joint Interfaces Initiative partnership program that recognizes the importance of interdisciplinary research for the advancement of biomedical science.

These Training Innovation Program supplements (TIPs) are part of the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Initiative partnership program. The supplements respond to the growing need to share successful training strategies among biomedical research institutions developing graduate-level research training programs in emerging fields at the intersection of the life and physical sciences. The resources developed through the grants will be disseminated to the broader research community.

The Interfaces Initiative Program was founded in 2005, providing grants to train biomedical investigators to conduct research across disciplines. In the first phase, HHMI provided 10 $1 million awards. In 2008, NIBIB continued support with 10 more grants worth $16 million over five years.

The following TIPs awardees were selected for their innovative concepts to capitalize on successful aspects of their existing programs and to make them useful to the greater scientific training community:

1. Dr. El Fakhri, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (plus Harvard Medical School, Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology) Project title: Interactive Web-based Training in Biomedical Imaging Physics Project overview: Development of free, web-based video lectures that provide the basics on bioimaging and serve as an online reference manual describing recent developments in the field.

2. Arthur Lander, University of California, Irvine (UCI) Project title: Teaching Systems BiologyA regional Workshop Project overview: Oral presentations, discussions, and small group sessions to articulate and disseminate strategies on effective Systems Biology education, including white papers, videos, and teaching materials that will be available free from the National Centers for Systems Biology at UCI.

3. Andrew McCulloch, University of California, San Diego Project title: Disseminating Hands-on Training Experiences in Multi-Scale Biology Project overview: Development of Web-based training materials for seven labs that will incorporate the web tools and multimedia resources and make them available via YouTube.

"NIBIB continues to work in close partnership with HHMI to further the training of engineers, and biological, computational, and physical scientists," said Dr. William Heetderks, NIBIB associate director. "These awardees' innovative efforts will impact the broader interdisciplinary training community."

Go here to see the original:
NIBIB and HHMI announce graduate biomedical training awards

Public release date: 13-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Andrew Myers admyers@stanford.edu 650-736-2245 Stanford School of Engineering

Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, has won a Transformative Research Award of $22.48 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health through a program designed to encourage high-risk, high-reward approaches to science.

Deisseroth studies the brain as a complex biological system, exploring the extreme challenges of gathering high-resolution local information in specific parts of the brain, while maintaining a global perspective across the entire brain system.

The award will allow his interdisciplinary team to continue working on an approach, known as CLARITY, that may someday elucidate brain circuitry abnormalities involved in complex psychiatric diseases such as depression, PTSD, drug abuse, autism and schizophrenia.

"Specifically, we've united the tools of chemical engineering, molecular genetics and optics to gather detailed and specific information from within an intact brain," said Deisseroth, "However, these tools are not limited to the brain alone. They can be applied to study any intact biological system."

This year's total award funding comes from the NIH Common Fund and multiple NIH institutes and centers, and totals approximately $155 million. NIH director Francis Collins, MD, PhD, noted that the funding "provides opportunities for innovative investigators in any area of health research to take risks when the potential impact in biomedical and behavioral science is high."

###

Research on CLARITY was launched through Stanford's CNC Program, an interdisciplinary effort that includes key Stanford investigators Liqun Luo, Krishna Shenoy, Marc Levoy and Philippe Mourrain.

See the original post here:
Stanford bioengineer Karl Deisseroth wins NIH Transformative Research Award

Public release date: 6-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Brian Mullen mullen2@clemson.edu 864-656-2063 Clemson University

CLEMSON Clemson University's bioengineering senior design team won the annual National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) BMEStart undergraduate design competition for its project AssureFit, a novel chest tube anchoring device.

Under the direction of professor John DesJardins, the biomedical device was developed by a team of undergraduate bioengineering students as part of their senior design project. Team leader Breanne T. Przestrzelski of Swannanoa, N.C., and teammates Carlyn M. Atwood of Greenville, Lauren E. Eskew of Mount Pleasant and Brennen C. Jenkins of Liberty partnered with Greenville Hospital System pediatric surgeons Dr. John Chandler and Dr. Robert Gates to develop the innovative device.

The AssureFit chest tube stabilization device is used to prevent surgical drains from dislodging following procedures, saving time and medical expense. The device also allows for greater patient mobility and comfort.

"The device solves a costly and critical health care issue that can currently lead to serious surgical complications. We are very impressed with what the students have produced in their design work, and are excited to see the device eventually introduced into clinical practice," said Gates.

The team has filed a provisional patent through the Clemson University Office of Technology Transfer, and hopes to have the device licensed for manufacture by a biomedical device company.

"Our team put in a tremendous amount of hard work this past year, but nothing would have been accomplished if it wasn't for the help and support of the bioengineering department," said senior design team member Eskew.

The design partnership between the Clemson bioengineering department and the Greenville Hospital System was initiated in 2011.

"This collaboration will accelerate the development of novel surgical tools that can make a significant impact on the care and treatment of our patients," said Dr. Eugene Michael Langan III, chairman of the department of surgery at the hospital.

Here is the original post:
Clemson bioengineering team wins undergraduate design competition

Tier und Naturfotografie J&C Sohns/Getty Images

Resurrecting long-dead species, bioengineering friendlier animals, and creating robot creatures made of artificial tissue: These are some of the concepts proposed by prominent zoo directors, animal behaviorists, conservationists, and architects at a first-ever symposium about the future of zoos, held in Buffalo, New York, this winter.

Some presenters touched on familiar themes of introducing more open terrain where large animals could roam freely. Others explored vertical zooshigh-rise exhibits that would have a small footprint in crowded cities. But the conference also plunged into more controversial territory. Within decades, advances in sequencing genes from ancient tissue could allow scientists to clone extinct dodo birds, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths, says Jeffrey Yule, an evolutionary ecologist at Louisiana Tech University. Researchers in Asia and Europe are working to piece together DNA from mammoth tissue preserved in Siberian permafrost. Someday they might be able to insert it into an elephant egg to produce an embryo that a surrogate elephant would carry. It could fall to zoos to look after these animals.

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Animals might also be bioengineered to better suit captivity, says John Fraser, former director of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Altering big cats, for example, to produce more endorphins might make them less aggressive. Weve spent a lot of time creating what look like barrier-less exhibits, but they still have barriers, Fraser explains. Animals could have more freedom without putting others at risk. Fraser also predicts robotics and lab-grown tissue will converge to create animal cyborgs with machine brains and living flesh, allowing visitors to interact with more species at petting zoos.

Some exhibits, like Detroits re-creation of the Arctic tundra, are already advancing, says Michael Noonan, a biologist at Canisius College, which hosted the event. The evolution is under way.

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Tomorrow’s Zoo: Cloned Dodos and Cyborg Giraffes? | DISCOVER Magazine

As a former major in the Rhode Island National Guard, Kevin Kit Parker has been called into duty in Afghanistan three times in the last decade. Somehow, he also finds time to run a 20-member bioengineering lab at Harvard thats innovating itself onto the cutting edge of microfluidics, tissue engineering and biomechanics. "For the last 10 years its been more than science--Ive had to fight a war at the same time." So how does he manage it all?

Busily!

In December of 2010, Parker, currently a member of the United States Army Reserve and a professor of applied mathematics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, was in Japan at a conference preparing to present his theoretical model of cell building to a room full of scientists. As his host ambled through a lengthy introduction, his BlackBerry buzzed. "While they were introducing me to give this talk I got an email saying, 'Youre going to Afghanistan next month.'"

Parker's lab (together with a Caltech group across the country) recently made headlines when they built a cyborg robot out of sheets of silicone and slices of living, lab-grown muscle, that mimicked the swimming strokes of a living jellyfish. Also on slow boil at the Parker group is research on wound-healing bandages, cellular simulators to observe the effect of blast injuries on neurons, and strong, sturdy nano fabrics spun out by what looks like a cotton candy machine. Recently, Parker was part of a Wyss Institute research team that won a $37 million DARPA grant to build a 10-organ "human on a chip" which would mimic, on a reduced scale, the physiology of the human body. In between, Parker has led counterinsurgency maneuvers in Afghanistan and used some of what he learned in the field to help Massachusetts State Police combat organized gang crime.

It comes as no surprise that Parker grew up multitasking. As a child, I played sports, and I played army and had a lab in my garage, he says. I had a Sears chemistry set. I used to scoop up dead animals and dissect them. Majors in physics and engineering led to a PhD and post doc at Vanderbilt. Parker had just secured an appointment at Harvard when he was called into Afghanistan in 2002. He told Harvard to wait a year, went out into battle, then came back to pick up his post.

Parker's first focus as a young scientist at Harvard was cardiac cell biology and tissue engineering. But he found himself getting called on by his army colleagues to study trauma effects of war on the brain. In the beginning, Parker resisted. Finally a friend of mine got wounded, Parker says, which was when he relented. "Think about this. I have all these resources available. What kind of jerk am I that I only work on the things that I want to work on?" Parker decided to focus his work on what he knew best--creating tissue-engineered sections of tissue--not of the heart, as he did in his PhD days, but of the brain.

I told DARPA, 'Listen, to do brain injury research, if I start blowing up goats in Harvard yard, Im not going to last long.' To better understand brain injuries, his first goal was to recreate, on the benchtop, the impact an explosion would have on brain tissue. And so members of Parkers lab, young veterans among them, put their heads together and combined what they knew about explosives and tissue engineering.

In September 2010, while the project was still in its early stages, Parker testified to a Congressional committee on what science knew about traumatic brain injuries. The issue is a complex and understudied scientific problem because, Parker said, "It can require a knowledge of explosives, shock physics, cell and tissue mechanics, molecular biology, neurobiology, psychology, and neurodegenerative diseases. I am not an expert in any of these fields, but I know a few words from each and that might be about as good as it gets."

The result is what Parker calls a concussion on a chip--a scaled-down explosion applied to a lab-grown bit of brain tissue. We hit paydirt, he says of the two papers the group published in 2011. I think we had a really big breakthrough. Everyone was excited because it pointed to some drug targets some pathways that were interesting based on what we found an explosion might feel like to a neuron.

The composition of Parker's lab group reflects his enthusiasm for collaborative, interdisciplinary research. It relies on the wide-ranging skills of biologists, chemists, engineers, and even employed a dentist at one point. Weve got a lot of crazy cats in there, Parker says. In fact, that's his recipe to stay ahead: "The cutting edge of a field is often putting two fields together--things that don't belong." For example, his lab studies cells using an algorithm law enforcement agencies use to do qualitative analysis of fingerprints.

Continue reading here:
How To Run A Harvard Lab From The Battlefield

If you thought America's problems were the first-to-invent vs. first-to-file, or the Apple-Samsung trial or the medical device tax as various golf-playing company executives and clueless Republican Congressmen from Indiana would have you believe...you are wrong. The American legal system's problem is...what appears to be a disastrous lack of baseline commonsense! Why would I go ahead and say that?

If like me, you have been reading the real news instead of Taylor Swift and the Kennedy she is dating or why Shia Labeouf and his girlfriend threw a lachrymal part on the streets, you have already heard about the Myriad decision.

Irresponsibility - A systemic problem

From Antonin Scalia to Tom Head, an otherwise inconsequential Judge in Texas who predicts a civil war if Obama is re-elected, the American Judiciary system is full of some very irresponsible individuals. The fact that the country and her future rests in the hands of such people can best be described as appalling. And now the Myriad decision comes as sound proof of what a mix of lack of scientific education, ethical responsibility combined with partisan judges can do for the future of science, technology and ultimately business in this country.

Nature is not an excuse

In the Myriad case, allowing the company to patent BRCA1 and BRCA2 the judge writing the majority opinion wrote - “Everything and everyone comes from nature, following its laws, but the compositions here are not natural products. They are the products of man, albeit following, as all materials do, laws of nature.”

If you read that as if he was interpreting that breast cancer is man-made. The statement also seems to open the doors for people to patent minor variations on naturally occurring substances. However, the problem is a bit deeper. Somehow a collective majority of judges at an appeals court don't even seem to have the level of scientific background that a 6th grader would be expected to have. 


Dangerous Precedent

This ruling sets a very dangerous precedent! If uninformed judges are allowed to get carried away and make such poor decisions, then the life sciences industry will truly be in shambles. And this is not some conspiratorial warning for the future - it is already here. Unless a full appeals board or the Supreme Court strikes it down, you will have a whole bunch of patented genes. What will this lead to? The answer is blindingly obvious:

1. Research will be stifled. If something as basic as BRCA1 or BRCA2 is patented, then who would want to continue research and drug development that influences either gene? 
2. If someone did want to conduct research, what would they have to do? License the very act of handling, using or talking about the genes from Myriad? How stupid is that?
3. It is not a stretch to conceive that people will start patenting SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) and make even simple diagnoses fall out of the reach of the masses. 

There are several other small and large disturbing possibilities. 

Protecting ourselves from the judges...

Now that we know a bunch of geniuses are stalking the halls of American Justice, we need to find ways to make sure that research and industry make progress despite them and not because of them: 

1. Get Congress to pass specific laws barring naturally occurring genes from being patented.

2. Carefully examine how judges get elected to the various echelons of the judiciary.

3. Establish procedures and guidelines that will quicken the process of censuring runaway judges and if possible, impeach them, or nudge them to retirement.

4. Be vigilant about for-profit companies that would constantly want to find loopholes and exploit them. This one seems so obvious, and yet, it cannot be emphasized too much. 

References:

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/business/court-reaffirms-right-of-myriad-genetics-to-patent-genes.html?_r=2

Source:
http://chaaraka.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

The University of Queensland's (UQ) Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) researcher Amanda Pearce is set to compete in the finals of the Three Minute Thesis competition next month.

Miss Pearce, formerly of Dalby, won UQ's Combined Institute Final of the competition hosted by UQ's Diamantina Institute for Cancer, Immunology and Metabolic Medicine on August 17.

She will represent AIBN in the UQ final on September 18.

The Three Minute Thesis competition challenges students to strip away the jargon and explain their research in a compelling way to a general audience within three minutes.

Miss Pearce was also named the People's Choice, with an explanation of her research in polymer chemistry.

When I explain my research, I want to broaden people's horizons and help find out about research, Miss Pearce said.

It is easy to underestimate Australia's research; people should know that cutting-edge research is conducted in this country.

Miss Pearce of Chapel Hill said her PhD research project involved developing a polymer system that could be used for diagnosing and treating prostate cancer.

Using hyperbranched polymers allows me to do three things: detect prostate cancer cells, introduce an imaging agent that will show up tumours in MRI scans and deliver chemotherapy medicines to kill tumours without targeting healthy cells, she said.

Even members of Miss Pearce's family found it difficult to understand her research project and were surprised that it involved opportunities for collaboration and international travel.

Go here to read the rest:
Bioengineering student takes out three-minute challenge

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August 24, 2012 15:38 PM

Singapore's IBN Develops Superior Fuel Cell Material

SINGAPORE, Aug 24 (Bernama) -- Using a mixture of gold, copper and platinum nanoparticles, the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) researchers have developed a more powerful and longer lasting fuel cell material.

This breakthrough was recently published in leading journal Energy and Environmental Science.

Fuel cells are a promising technology for use as a source of electricity to power electronic devices, vehicles, military aircraft and equipment.

A fuel cell converts the chemical energy from hydrogen (fuel) into electricity through a chemical reaction with oxygen, and can produce electricity continuously as long as there is a fuel supply.

Current commercially available fuel cells use platinum nanoparticles as the catalyst to speed up the chemical reaction because platinum is the only metal that can resist the highly acidic conditions inside such a cell.

-- BERNAMA

We provide (subscription-based) news coverage in our Newswire service.

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Singapore's IBN Develops Superior Fuel Cell Material

36579393 story Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 21, @07:20PM from the talk-to-the-hand dept. ananyo writes "A robot that can reproduce the dexterity of the human hand remains a dream of the bioengineering profession. One new approach to achieving this goal avoids trying to replicate the intricacy of the bones, joints and ligaments that produce our most basic gestures. A Sandia National Laboratories research team has adopted just such a strategy by designing a modular, plastic proto-hand whose electronics system is largely made from parts found in cell phones. The Sandia Hand can still perform with a high level of finesse for a robot, and is even capable of replacing the batteries in a small flashlight. It is expected to cost about $10,000, a fraction of the $250,000 price tag for a state-of-the-art robot hand today. The Sandia Hand's fingers are modular and affixed to the hand frame via magnets. This gives the researchers the flexibility to design interchangeable appendages tipped with screwdrivers, flashlights, cameras and other tools. The fingers are also designed to detach automatically to avoid damage if the hand hits a wall or other solid object too hard. The researchers say the hand can even be manipulated to retrieve and reattach a fallen finger. The Hand's current incarnation has only four fingers, including the equivalent of an opposable thumb. In the video with the article, the Sandia Hand demonstrates a number of capabilities, including, perhaps most impressively, dropping a AA battery into a flashlight."

God must have loved calories, she made so many of them.

Working...

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Cheap Four-fingered Robot Hand Edges Closer To Human Dexterity