7 June 2012

Councils protect their growers from GE

In the vacuum of inaction left by the National Government, local councils are having to lead the way in keeping New Zealand free of genetic engineering, the Green Party said today.

Hastings District Council have given official support to the GE free movement, voting unanimously in support of a proposal to declare the district GE free.

This is an exciting move made by the Hastings District Council but they have been forced to take this action because the National Government is refusing to, said the Green Party GE spokesperson Steffan Browning.

This region by region approach will be able to protect some growers but is not the real solution New Zealand needs.

The growers in the Hawkes Bay have identified that they need to be able to reap the significant branding benefits of being able to market GE free food, said Mr Browning.

These producers are receiving demand for GE free products and we need to be protecting their market for them

There are not sufficient liability protections for non GE growers should their produce get contaminated.

Farmers in Australia are already experiencing loss of income due to contamination by GE crops.

See more here:

Councils protect their growers from Genetic Engineering

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

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, June 6, 2012Awareness of the risks of heart disease and signs of a heart attack vary greatly among women of different racial and ethnic groups and ages. New data that clearly identify these disparities in heart health awareness are presented in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh.

In a pooled analysis from two American Heart Association surveys, Black and Hispanic women were 66% less likely than white women to be aware that heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, report Heidi Mochari-Greenberger, MPH, PhD, Lori Mosca, MD, MPH, PhD, New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center (New York, NY), and Kerri Miller, MA, Harris Interactive (Amherst, NH). Women younger than 55 years of age were also less well-informed about heart disease risk. Overall among women, awareness was low of the most common signs of heart attack, which tend to differ from those in men, according to the article "Racial/Ethnic and Age Differences in Women's Awareness of Heart Disease."

"Clearly, education that is targeted to racial/ethnic minority and younger women about heart disease risk is needed, as well as education of all women about the signs and symptoms of a heart attack," says Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women's Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health (Richmond, VA), and President of the Academy of Women's Health.

###

About the Journal

Journal of Women's Health, published monthly, is a core multidisciplinary journal dedicated to the diseases and conditions that hold greater risk for or are more prevalent among women, as well as diseases that present differently in women. The Journal covers the latest advances and clinical applications of new diagnostic procedures and therapeutic protocols for the prevention and management of women's healthcare issues. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. Journal of Women's Health is the Official Journal of the Academy of Women's Health.

About the Society

Academy of Women's Health (http://academyofwomenshealth.org) is an interdisciplinary, international association of physicians, nurses, and other health professionals who work across the broad field of women's health, providing its members with up-to-date advances and options in clinical care that will enable the best outcomes for their women patients. The Academy's focus includes the dissemination of translational research and evidence-based practices for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for women across the lifespan.

Continue reading here:

Racial and ethnic disparities in awareness of heart disease risk in women

Want to buy a customizable sneaker made from transgenic stingray leather? You would be better off saving your $1,800 — scientists say the claims of Rayfish Footwear go beyond what is possible with modern genetic engineering.

The rest is here:

Why 'Transgenic Stingray' Shoes Are Likely Fake

$1,800 is a lot of money to spend on a single pair of shoes. But a company called Rayfish Footwear has come up with a unique manufacturing process that's even more over-the-top than what it's charging for its creations: It's genetically-engineering stingrays for their skins.

The company claims that no two sneakers it produces are alike, and each stingray is grown specifically for each pair. Clients can choose from 29 different styles of stingray leather, combining up to nine different patterns for a truly unique design. Once they've made their selections, the DNA from each patterns is then combined and used to create a new stingray that's grown to maturity before being harvested to make the sneakers.

The idea might seem a little cruel, but it's no different than cows that are specifically grown for beef and leather. The only real difference here is the ludicrous price tag once these sneakers go on sale later in the year. But if they end up being popular, there's no reason the company couldn't raise the stingrays on a larger scale which would in turn help make them slightly more affordable.

[Rayfish Footwear via FastCo Design]

Read the rest here:

$1800 Gets You Sneakers Made From Stingrays Customized Through Genetic Engineering [Clothing]

An international scientific team on Wednesday said it had unravelled the genetic code of the tomato, opening up ways to improve the fruit's taste, nutrition and shelf-life.

See the original post:

Scientists unravel the tomato's genetic code

When news broke a vial of Ronald Reagans blood was being auctioned, the price quickly jumped to $30,000 as websites and blogs explored a tantalizing possibility: Did this mean the late president could be cloned?

Before mad scientists got the chance to perform a Dolly-the-Sheep experiment with the 40th president, the seller succumbed to criticism and decided to donate the blood to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. But this should only encourage the cloning speculation because the Gippers DNA is now in the hands of those who would most like to reproduce him: Republicans.

Party officials have been making the pilgrimage to the Reagan Library this year to express their wish to re-create the great man. I believe boldness and clarity of the kind that Ronald Reagan displayed in 1980 offer us the greatest opportunity to create a winning coalition in 2012, vice presidential aspirant Paul Ryan said at the library last week.

Also making the trip were VP hopefuls Marco Rubio and Chris Christie. Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in what this country and its citizens can accomplish, the latter declared. The America I speak of is the America Ronald Reagan challenged us to be.

The man they hope to join on the ticket, Mitt Romney, once boasted he was not trying to return to Reagan-Bush. Now he says the partys standard-bearer should be in the same mold as Ronald Reagan.

But before they go filling that mold by mapping the Reagan genome, Republicans may wish to consider some genetic flaws that party scientists should repair in the cloning process. To make the Reagan clone more compatible with todays Republican Party, a bit of genetic engineering may be in order:

AFL-1: Reagans AFL-1 gene, on the labor chromosome, has a mutation that made him susceptible to workers rights. He said of unions: There are few finer examples of participatory democracy. He said the right to join a union is one of the most elemental human rights. And he said collective bargaining played a major role in Americas economic miracle.

EPA-4: Reagans EPA-4 gene, on the regulatory chromosome, has a protein that can summon anti-industry sympathies. He signed a law establishing efficiency standards for electric appliances and an update to the Safe Drinking Water Act punishing states that didnt meet clean-water standards.

SSA-2 and MDCR-1: These related genes, on the long arm of the retirement chromosome, are problematic. Reagan expanded Social Security in 1983 and imposed taxes on wealthy recipients. He also signed what was at the time the largest expansion of Medicare in its history.

DEBT-1, DEBT-2, DEBT-3: A trio of abnormalities on the fiscal chromosome caused Reagan to increase taxes several times after his initial tax cut, to embrace much higher taxes on investments than current rates and to sign 18 increases in the federal debt limit.

The rest is here:
Milbank: Before GOP clones Reagan genetic flaws must be fixed

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Dave Murphy: 20 Years of GMO Policy That Keeps Americans in the Dark About Their Food

Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Genetics Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail;Medical Devices / Diagnostics Article Date: 29 May 2012 - 11:00 PDT

Current ratings for: 'People's Geographic Origins Traceable With New Genetic Method'

5 (1 votes)

The team, from the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Tel Aviv University, write about their work in a paper published online in Nature Genetics on 20 May.

The researchers hope their method, which they call "spatial ancestry analysis" or SPA, will increase understanding of genetic diversity among populations, which in turn helps us better understand human disease and evolution.

Research areas that may benefit from the new method include finding links between genetic variants and disease and locating parts of genomes that have been subject to positive selection.

SPA is a software tool for analyzing spatial structure in genetic data. It models genotypes in two- and three-dimensional space.

With SPA researchers can model the spatial distributon of each genetic variant. And in this study, the team showed that particular frequency patterns of spatial distribution of gene variants are tied to particular geographic locations.

For genetic variants the team used SNPs ("snips", short for single-nucleotide polymorphisms) from various parts of the genome, including "the well-characterized LCT region, as well as at loci including FOXP2, OCA2 and LRP1B".

An SNP is a DNA sequence variation where there is a single nucleotide (A, T, C or G) difference in the "spelling" of the sequence.

Read the rest here:

People's Geographic Origins Traceable With New Genetic Method

A technician in Nigeria breeds cassava plants to maximize vitamin A.

Courtesy Harvest Plus

in 1994 Howarth Bouis stood before potential donors at a conference in Maryland and unveiled his plan for combating malnutrition in the developing world. Bouis, an economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), envisioned impoverished farmers in Africa and South Asia growing staple crops that are enriched in key nutrients like iron, zinc, and vitamin A. His presentation had the audience hookeduntil he said he would accomplish the feat via old-fashioned plant breeding techniques.

At that point Bouis might as well have been lecturing on plows and sickles. Conference attendees wanted to solve the hunger problem with high-tech science, the kind of advances that produced incredibly effective fertilizers and pesticides during the green revolution of the 1970s. Their attention had just turned to genetically modified crops, engineered with specific genes that would not only enhance nutrition, as Bouis proposed, but also boost yields and instill resistance to pests and weed killers. Bouis came away with a single $1 million granta fraction of the money needed to reach his goals.

People ignored Bouis then, but they dont anymore. While most genetically modified food projects are stuck in political purgatory, Bouiss HarvestPlus program has brought nutrient-rich crops to tens of thousands of African farmers, and they will soon be available to millions more. When you breed conventionally, Bouis says, theres no controversy.

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Bouiss passion for improving agriculture in the developing world began in the 1980s, when he went on aid expeditions throughout the Middle East and Asia. Some 65 percent of African and Southeast Asian children have iron deficiencies that can lead to anemia and fatigue. Vitamin A deficiency produces 500,000 annual cases of blindness among children under age 5 (half of whom do not survive), and lack of zinc kills 800,000 a year. They had so much strength and courage despite their poverty, he says. Thats always inspired me.

That inspiration drove Bouiss work IFPRI, where he began exploring the idea of taking native plants and mating them with similar varieties that have a desired trait. If an African species of sweet potato could attain the nutritional benefits of a North American variety naturally high in vitamin A, for instance, then perhaps malnourished African farmers could grow their own nutritious sweet potatoes. Unfortunately Bouis needed money to find out whether that would work. It was not easy selling a meticulous program dedicated solely to fighting malnutrition when geneticists said they were on their way to solving that and a slate of other problems.

In 1993 European researchers Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer began infecting rice grains with genetically modified bacteria that transmitted individual genes into the plants DNA. Seven years later, they found three genesone from a bacterium and two from a daffodilthat programmed the plant to produce beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. The genes also gave the grains a yellow tint, earning them the name Golden Rice. Further tinkering added genes to increase yields and ward off insects. When Potrykus and Beyer published their results in Science, many scientists and media outlets proclaimed that genetically modified crops would hasten a second green revolution.

Read the original here:

Big Idea: Fighting Hunger With Ancient Genetic Engineering Techniques | DISCOVER

Featured Article Academic Journal Main Category: Genetics Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail;Medical Devices / Diagnostics Article Date: 29 May 2012 - 11:00 PDT

Current ratings for: 'People's Geographic Origins Traceable With New Genetic Method'

5 (1 votes)

The team, from the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Tel Aviv University, write about their work in a paper published online in Nature Genetics on 20 May.

The researchers hope their method, which they call "spatial ancestry analysis" or SPA, will increase understanding of genetic diversity among populations, which in turn helps us better understand human disease and evolution.

Research areas that may benefit from the new method include finding links between genetic variants and disease and locating parts of genomes that have been subject to positive selection.

SPA is a software tool for analyzing spatial structure in genetic data. It models genotypes in two- and three-dimensional space.

With SPA researchers can model the spatial distributon of each genetic variant. And in this study, the team showed that particular frequency patterns of spatial distribution of gene variants are tied to particular geographic locations.

For genetic variants the team used SNPs ("snips", short for single-nucleotide polymorphisms) from various parts of the genome, including "the well-characterized LCT region, as well as at loci including FOXP2, OCA2 and LRP1B".

An SNP is a DNA sequence variation where there is a single nucleotide (A, T, C or G) difference in the "spelling" of the sequence.

Read the original:
People's Geographic Origins Traceable With New Genetic Method

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Understanding the genetic diversity within and between populations has important implications for studies of human disease and evolution. This includes identifying associations between genetic variants and disease, detecting genomic regions that have undergone positive selection and highlighting interesting aspects of human population history.

Now, a team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Israel's Tel Aviv University has developed an innovative approach to the study of genetic diversity called spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), which allows for the modeling of genetic variation in two- or three-dimensional space.

Their study is published online this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

With SPA, researchers can model the spatial distribution of each genetic variant by assigning a genetic variant's frequency as a continuous function in geographic space. By doing this, they show that the explicit modeling of the genetic variant frequency -- the proportion of individuals who carry a specific variant -- allows individuals to be localized on a world map on the basis of their genetic information alone.

"If we know from where each individual in our study originated, what we observe is that some variation is more common in one part of the world and less common in another part of the world," said Eleazar Eskin, an associate professor of computer science at UCLA Engineering. "How common these variants are in a specific location changes gradually as the location changes.

"In this study, we think of the frequency of variation as being defined by a specific location. This gives us a different way to think about populations, which are usually thought of as being discrete. Instead, we think about the variant frequencies changing in different locations. If you think about a person's ancestry, it is no longer about being from a specific population -- but instead, each person's ancestry is defined by the location they're from. Now ancestry is a continuum."

The team reports the development of a simple probabilistic model for the spatial structure of genetic variation, with which they model how the frequency of each genetic variant changes as a function of the location of the individual in geographic space (where the gene frequency is actually a function of the x and y coordinates of an individual on a map).

"If the location of an individual is unknown, our model can actually infer geographic origins for each individual using only their genetic data with surprising accuracy," said Wen-Yun Yang, a UCLA computer science graduate student.

"The model makes it possible to infer the geographic ancestry of an individual's parents, even if those parents differ in ancestry. Existing approaches falter when it comes to this task," said UCLA's John Novembre, an assistant professor in the department of ecology and evolution.

SPA is also able to model genetic variation on a globe.

Read this article:
Nnew genetic method developed to pinpoint individuals' geographic origin

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2012) Understanding the genetic diversity within and between populations has important implications for studies of human disease and evolution. This includes identifying associations between genetic variants and disease, detecting genomic regions that have undergone positive selection and highlighting interesting aspects of human population history.

Now, a team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Israel's Tel Aviv University has developed an innovative approach to the study of genetic diversity called spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), which allows for the modeling of genetic variation in two- or three-dimensional space.

Their study is published online this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

With SPA, researchers can model the spatial distribution of each genetic variant by assigning a genetic variant's frequency as a continuous function in geographic space. By doing this, they show that the explicit modeling of the genetic variant frequency -- the proportion of individuals who carry a specific variant -- allows individuals to be localized on a world map on the basis of their genetic information alone.

"If we know from where each individual in our study originated, what we observe is that some variation is more common in one part of the world and less common in another part of the world," said Eleazar Eskin, an associate professor of computer science at UCLA Engineering. "How common these variants are in a specific location changes gradually as the location changes.

"In this study, we think of the frequency of variation as being defined by a specific location. This gives us a different way to think about populations, which are usually thought of as being discrete. Instead, we think about the variant frequencies changing in different locations. If you think about a person's ancestry, it is no longer about being from a specific population -- but instead, each person's ancestry is defined by the location they're from. Now ancestry is a continuum."

The team reports the development of a simple probabilistic model for the spatial structure of genetic variation, with which they model how the frequency of each genetic variant changes as a function of the location of the individual in geographic space (where the gene frequency is actually a function of the x and y coordinates of an individual on a map).

"If the location of an individual is unknown, our model can actually infer geographic origins for each individual using only their genetic data with surprising accuracy," said Wen-Yun Yang, a UCLA computer science graduate student.

"The model makes it possible to infer the geographic ancestry of an individual's parents, even if those parents differ in ancestry. Existing approaches falter when it comes to this task," said UCLA's John Novembre, an assistant professor in the department of ecology and evolution.

SPA is also able to model genetic variation on a globe.

Read more from the original source:

Nnew genetic method developed to pinpoint individuals' geographic origin

DARPA, the science arm of the US Department of Defense, is trying to find a way to create a streamlined manufacturing process for purpose-specific engineering of plants and animals, reports Popular Science's Rebecca Boyle. This program, called Living Foundries, "sets up an assembly line paradigm for life and its constituent parts," Boyle says. "Under this program, genetic engineering would no longer be limited to modification of existing organisms instead, scientists would be able to concoct anything they wanted from scratch, using a suite of ingredients and processes that could apply in any situation." And DARPA's first grants for the program have just been announced $15.5 million spread among six institutions and companies, including the J. Craig Venter Institute. This last pick is particularly appropriate, she says, given the group's work in synthetic biology.

The purpose of the grants is to build a basic library of modularized parts that can be used in assembling various organisms, Boyle says, like wires or circuits that can be used to build electronics. "The ultimate goal is a genetic starter set that could be snapped together like so many Legos, forming any system the military might require," she adds.

Our sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News has more on the project here.

Read more:
DARPA's Synthetic Army

Public release date: 23-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Wileen Wong Kromhout wwkromhout@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0540 University of California - Los Angeles

Understanding the genetic diversity within and between populations has important implications for studies of human disease and evolution. This includes identifying associations between genetic variants and disease, detecting genomic regions that have undergone positive selection and highlighting interesting aspects of human population history.

Now, a team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Israel's Tel Aviv University has developed an innovative approach to the study of genetic diversity called spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), which allows for the modeling of genetic variation in two- or three-dimensional space.

Their study is published online this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

With SPA, researchers can model the spatial distribution of each genetic variant by assigning a genetic variant's frequency as a continuous function in geographic space. By doing this, they show that the explicit modeling of the genetic variant frequency the proportion of individuals who carry a specific variant allows individuals to be localized on a world map on the basis of their genetic information alone.

"If we know from where each individual in our study originated, what we observe is that some variation is more common in one part of the world and less common in another part of the world," said Eleazar Eskin, an associate professor of computer science at UCLA Engineering. "How common these variants are in a specific location changes gradually as the location changes.

"In this study, we think of the frequency of variation as being defined by a specific location. This gives us a different way to think about populations, which are usually thought of as being discrete. Instead, we think about the variant frequencies changing in different locations. If you think about a person's ancestry, it is no longer about being from a specific population but instead, each person's ancestry is defined by the location they're from. Now ancestry is a continuum."

The team reports the development of a simple probabilistic model for the spatial structure of genetic variation, with which they model how the frequency of each genetic variant changes as a function of the location of the individual in geographic space (where the gene frequency is actually a function of the x and y coordinates of an individual on a map).

"If the location of an individual is unknown, our model can actually infer geographic origins for each individual using only their genetic data with surprising accuracy," said Wen-Yun Yang, a UCLA computer science graduate student.

Read more from the original source:
Researchers develop new genetic method to pinpoint individuals' geographic origin

DARPA, the science arm of the US Department of Defense, is trying to find a way to create a streamlined manufacturing process for purpose-specific engineering of plants and animals, reports Popular Science's Rebecca Boyle. This program, called Living Foundries, "sets up an assembly line paradigm for life and its constituent parts," Boyle says. "Under this program, genetic engineering would no longer be limited to modification of existing organisms instead, scientists would be able to concoct anything they wanted from scratch, using a suite of ingredients and processes that could apply in any situation." And DARPA's first grants for the program have just been announced $15.5 million spread among six institutions and companies, including the J. Craig Venter Institute. This last pick is particularly appropriate, she says, given the group's work in synthetic biology.

The purpose of the grants is to build a basic library of modularized parts that can be used in assembling various organisms, Boyle says, like wires or circuits that can be used to build electronics. "The ultimate goal is a genetic starter set that could be snapped together like so many Legos, forming any system the military might require," she adds.

Our sister publication GenomeWeb Daily News has more on the project here.

Continued here:

DARPA's Synthetic Army

LOS ANGELES Understanding the genetic diversity within and between populations has important implications for studies of human disease and evolution. This includes identifying associations between genetic variants and disease, detecting genomic regions that have undergone positive selection and highlighting interesting aspects of human population history.

Now, a team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Israel's Tel Aviv University has developed an innovative approach to the study of genetic diversity called spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), which allows for the modeling of genetic variation in two- or three-dimensional space.

Their study is published online this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

With SPA, researchers can model the spatial distribution of each genetic variant by assigning a genetic variant's frequency as a continuous function in geographic space. By doing this, they show that the explicit modeling of the genetic variant frequency the proportion of individuals who carry a specific variant allows individuals to be localized on a world map on the basis of their genetic information alone.

"If we know from where each individual in our study originated, what we observe is that some variation is more common in one part of the world and less common in another part of the world," said Eleazar Eskin, an associate professor of computer science at UCLA Engineering. "How common these variants are in a specific location changes gradually as the location changes.

"In this study, we think of the frequency of variation as being defined by a specific location. This gives us a different way to think about populations, which are usually thought of as being discrete. Instead, we think about the variant frequencies changing in different locations. If you think about a person's ancestry, it is no longer about being from a specific population but instead, each person's ancestry is defined by the location they're from. Now ancestry is a continuum."

The team reports the development of a simple probabilistic model for the spatial structure of genetic variation, with which they model how the frequency of each genetic variant changes as a function of the location of the individual in geographic space (where the gene frequency is actually a function of the x and y coordinates of an individual on a map).

"If the location of an individual is unknown, our model can actually infer geographic origins for each individual using only their genetic data with surprising accuracy," said Wen-Yun Yang, a UCLA computer science graduate student.

"The model makes it possible to infer the geographic ancestry of an individual's parents, even if those parents differ in ancestry. Existing approaches falter when it comes to this task," said UCLA's John Novembre, an assistant professor in the department of ecology and evolution.

SPA is also able to model genetic variation on a globe.

Continue reading here:

New genetic method pinpoints geographic origin

Public release date: 23-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Wileen Wong Kromhout wwkromhout@support.ucla.edu 310-206-0540 University of California - Los Angeles

Understanding the genetic diversity within and between populations has important implications for studies of human disease and evolution. This includes identifying associations between genetic variants and disease, detecting genomic regions that have undergone positive selection and highlighting interesting aspects of human population history.

Now, a team of researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Israel's Tel Aviv University has developed an innovative approach to the study of genetic diversity called spatial ancestry analysis (SPA), which allows for the modeling of genetic variation in two- or three-dimensional space.

Their study is published online this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

With SPA, researchers can model the spatial distribution of each genetic variant by assigning a genetic variant's frequency as a continuous function in geographic space. By doing this, they show that the explicit modeling of the genetic variant frequency the proportion of individuals who carry a specific variant allows individuals to be localized on a world map on the basis of their genetic information alone.

"If we know from where each individual in our study originated, what we observe is that some variation is more common in one part of the world and less common in another part of the world," said Eleazar Eskin, an associate professor of computer science at UCLA Engineering. "How common these variants are in a specific location changes gradually as the location changes.

"In this study, we think of the frequency of variation as being defined by a specific location. This gives us a different way to think about populations, which are usually thought of as being discrete. Instead, we think about the variant frequencies changing in different locations. If you think about a person's ancestry, it is no longer about being from a specific population but instead, each person's ancestry is defined by the location they're from. Now ancestry is a continuum."

The team reports the development of a simple probabilistic model for the spatial structure of genetic variation, with which they model how the frequency of each genetic variant changes as a function of the location of the individual in geographic space (where the gene frequency is actually a function of the x and y coordinates of an individual on a map).

"If the location of an individual is unknown, our model can actually infer geographic origins for each individual using only their genetic data with surprising accuracy," said Wen-Yun Yang, a UCLA computer science graduate student.

Read more:

Researchers develop new genetic method to pinpoint individuals' geographic origin

Darpa's "Living Foundries" program is looking to "transform biology into an engineering practice." Photo: VA

The military-industrial complex just got a little bit livelier. Quite literally.

Thats because Darpa, the Pentagons far-out research arm, has kicked off a program designed to take the conventions of manufacturing and apply them to living cells. Think of it like an assembly line, but one that would churn out modified biological matter man-made organisms instead of cars or computer parts.

The program, called Living Foundries, was firstannounced by the agency last year. Now, Darpas handed outseven research awardsworth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions. Among them are several Darpa favorites, including the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology. Two contracts were also issued to the J. Craig Venter Institute. Dr. Venter is something of a biology superstar: He was among the first scientists to sequence a human genome, and his institute was, in 2010, the first to develop an entirely synthetic organism.

Living Foundries aspires to turn the slow, messy process of genetic engineering into a streamlined and standardized one. Of course, the field is already a burgeoning one: Scientists have tweaked cells in order to developrenewable petroleumandspider silkthats tough as steel. And a host of companies areinvestigatingthe pharmaceutical and agricultural promise lurking with some tinkering, of course inside living cells.

But those breakthroughs, while exciting, have also been time-consuming and expensive.As Darpa notes, even the most cutting-edge synthetic biology projects often take 7+ years and tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to complete. Venters synthetic cell project, for example,costan estimated $40 million.

Synthetic biology, as Darpa notes, has the potential to yield new materials, novel capabilities, fuel and medicines everything from fuels to solar cells to vaccines could be produced by engineering different living cells. But the agency isnt content to wait seven years for each new innovation. In fact, they want the capability for on-demand production of whatever bio-product suits the militarys immediate needs.

To do it, Darpa will need to revamp the process of bio-engineering from the initial design of a new material, to its construction, to its subsequent efficacy evaluation. The starting point, and one that agency-funded researchers will have to create, is a library of modular genetic parts: Standardized biological units that can be assembled in different ways like LEGO to create different materials.

Once that library is created, the agency wants researchers to come up with a set of parts, regulators, devices and circuits that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, theyll also need test platforms to quickly evaluate new bio-materials. Think of it as a biological assembly line: Products are designed, pieced together using standardized tools and techniques, and then tested for efficacy.

The process, once established, ought to massively accelerate the pace of bio-engineering and cut costs. The agencys asking researchers to compress the biological design-build-test cycle by at least 10X in both time and cost, while also increasing the complexity of systems that can be designed and executed.

Continued here:

Darpa, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering

WEST BOYLSTON, Mass. & SOUTHBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

TransCytos: NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE

Enginasion and TransCytos announced today that their collaboration has resulted in a prototype transfection technology that is designed to have a dramatic and positive impact on the drug-research industry.

Enginasions product development partner, TransCytos, is developing a novel transfection instrument, Cytofector R1, based on a breakthrough, patent-pending hydrodynamic transfection technology. Transfection, the introduction of genetic material into living cells, is a fundamental and essential genetic engineering process in biomedical research, and drug and gene therapy development. It has revolutionized, worldwide, biotech and pharmaceutical R&D, including the research into such diseases as cancer, diabetes, arthritis, substance abuse, neurological disorders such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers, and also has applications in the study of anxiety, aging, and pain management. Furthermore, transfection is key in the production of recombinant human proteins such as insulin, hormones, antibiotics, and vaccines.

Frost & Sullivan estimates the 2010 transfection market at $350 million, with about 200 million transfections conducted per year. However, existing transfection technologies are limited to a small number of particular cell types just five cell lines make up as much as 50% of the market; in addition, low efficiency and cell viability, as well as very slow cell recovery, are slowing progress.

Because the new TransCytos transfection technology is gentle, highly effective, and does not physically damage cells, it is potentially capable of transfecting all cell types, says Dr. Otto Prohaska, CEO of TransCytos. Current transfection techniques represent a considerable bottleneck for biomedical and pharma R&D due to low efficiency, high variability, cellular toxicity, and the inability to introduce genetic material into many of the most important cell types relevant to major diseases. The majority of cells are hard or impossible to transfect, requiring lengthy, expensive procedures with low yield and poor reproducibility. Field testing of the Cytofector R1 prototype instrument showed (a) transfection of previously non-transfectable cells (e.g. neurons), and (b) better transfection efficiencies and expression of gene products in a shorter period of time, and at lower cost.

The TransCytos transfection process could contribute to a faster and more dependable path to drug discovery, a higher success rate for biotech and pharma, and better cures, added David Bonneau, CEO of Enginasion. The capability of transfecting primary cells effectively is expected to revolutionize progress in research, and especially in drug discovery, development, and production. Enginasion is very proud to be the product-development partner of TransCytos.

Click NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE link (above) for further information about TransCytos.

About Enginasion

For more than two decades, Enginasion (formerly Industrial Automation Systems) has been an invaluable partner to companies in the Industrial, Medical Technology, Military and Pharmaceutical sectors that need a sophisticated yet affordable engineering resource to help them overcome critical hurdles related to automation, control electronics, embedded software, and/or integrated product development. Since 1995, the Company has been providing key elements of successful R&D projects, manufacturing processes, and new high-tech products at innovative companies in the Northeast U.S.

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Enginasion Partners with TransCytos to Develop Breakthrough ‘Transfection’ Technology for Genetic Engineering ...

Public release date: 17-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Clea Desjardins clea.desjardins@concordia.ca 514-848-2424 x5068 Concordia University

Montreal, May 18, 2012 What do synthetic fuels, new treatments for malaria and genetic engineering have in common? In a word, biology. To examine the wide-reaching implications of this evolving discipline, Concordia University's Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics presents Building Biology: A Symposium on Synthetic Biology.

Held at Concordia's Loyola Campus on May 21, the symposium brings together the world's top researchers on the subject, including academics from Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and Johns Hopkins. Because this event is closely tied into the work of Concordia's cutting-edge genomics laboratory, the President and CEO of Genome Canada, Pierre Meulien, will give the welcoming address.

What: Building Biology: A Symposium for Synthetic Biology When: Monday, May 21, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Where: Concordia University, Loyola Campus, 7141 Sherbrooke Street West, SP S-110

The purpose of this symposium is to foster interaction between established synthetic biologists in Canada and North America. The event represents a cornerstone in the creation of a synthetic biology research hub for Canada while putting Concordia on the map as the prime location for research in synthetic biology.

Speakers include: Pierre Meulien (Genome Canada), Jay Keasling (University of California Berkeley), Jack Newman (Amyris Inc.), Peter Facchini (University of Calgary), Ron Weiss (MIT), Pamela Silver (Harvard University), Radhakrishnan Mahadevan (University of Toronto), Matthew Scott (University of Waterloo), Mads Kaern (University of Ottawa), Joel Bader (John Hopkins University) and Nathan Hillson (Joint BioEnergy Institute).

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This symposium is generously sponsored by Concordia University, Genome Quebec, CSFG, PhytoMetaSyn, CRIBIQ, DNA 2.0 and IDT.

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Concordia welcomes world's best synthetic biology researchers