UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Ateam of Penn State and University of Washington researchersrecentlydeveloped anewalgorithmtohelp prevent the failure of engineered genetic systems,ororganisms engineered to have new capabilities.

Engineered genetic systems are the source of biotechnology's revolution, said Howard Salis, Penn State associate professor of biological engineeringand chemical engineering andcorresponding author of the study. Engineered organisms produce a cornucopia of biorenewable products, including biodegradable plastic bottles, therapeutic proteins and nutritional supplements. Probiotic bacteria have been engineered to live in your gut and cure metabolic disease. TheImpossible Burgerwas made possible by engineering organisms to produceheme.

The Salis Lab at Penn State created thousands of highly non-repetitive genetic parts for engineering organisms with much greater genetic stability, using a newly developed algorithm that uses graph theory to solve a challenging computational problem.

In synthetic biology, engineers select genetic parts and assemble them into engineered genetic systems. However, problems arise when engineers reuse genetic parts in multiple locations or choose genetic parts with similar DNA sequences, which include genes and their controlling sequences.

Engineers often build systems by repeatedly using the same components, whether it's a multi-truss bridge or a multi-core CPU, Salis said. However, when synthetic biologists apply the same strategy to add new capabilities to organisms, millions of dollars of R&D [research and development] effort can be lost overnight. The key challenge is that reusing genetic parts will introduce long repetitive sequences of DNA into an organism,which often causes the organism to spontaneously break this DNA, removing the newly added capabilities.

Repetitive DNA is modified by a biological process called homologous recombination, where two regions of DNA with similar nucleotide sequences will swap locations or be deleted. When these sequences are modified, it disrupts the cells ability to produce RNA and protein molecules. This process severely limits synthetic biologists ability to engineer cells that produce several types of RNA and protein molecules at the same time, which is necessary for many biotechnology applications.

Our research has solved this challenge by developing a novel algorithm, the Non-Repetitive Parts Calculator, and using it to rapidly create thousands of highly non-repetitive genetic parts with desired functionalities, Salis said. We now have enough characterized non-repetitive genetic parts to completely rebuild the genomes of simple organisms.

As part of the study published in Nature Biotechnology, the research team designed, constructed and characterized 4,350 highly non-repetitive bacterial promoters and 1,722 highly non-repetitive yeast promoters. Promoters are genetic parts that express genes, using transcription to produce corresponding RNA molecules.

These promoters enable the co-expression of many genes at desired expression levels, all at the same time without inadvertently introducing repetitive DNA, Salis said. It increases the availability of characterized non-repetitive genetic parts from dozens to thousands.

According to Salis, the team's unique solution can prevent significant R&D losses when engineering organisms.

Large Fortune 500 companies have spent many millions of dollars on engineering metabolic pathways in organisms to produce a desired product, he said. And then their engineered organism self-deletes the introduced DNA when grown overnight in a bioreactor,shutting down all production, a costly failure. Our non-repetitive genetic parts will prevent spontaneous failures like these from occurring.

Along with Salis, other researchers involved in the study from Penn State include Ayaan Hossain, doctoral graduate student in bioinformatics and genomics; and Sean Halper, Daniel Centar and Alexander Reis, graduate students in chemical engineering. Researchers from the University of Washington include Eirberto Lopez, research scientist/engineer; Devin Strickland, senior research scientist; and Eric Klavins, professor and chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.

The study was supported by funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the United States Department of Energy, and a Graduate Research Innovation award to Hossain from Penn States Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences.

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Researchers offer solution for one of synthetic biology's biggest problems - Penn State News

Theres a certain kind of person who upon hearing or reading any praise of markets or capitalism, immediately demands clarification or expansion. Dont forget the government!

For instance: Mention Google or Amazon as great examples of American free enterprise, and they will immediately counter with What about ARPANet?, referring the Pentagon-backed predecessor to the modern internet. No ARPANet, no Amazon, no Google, no digital economy. Of course, no market-driven commercialization, no savvy entrepreneurs, no Amazon Prime, no amazingly efficient search engine.

Which brings us to Nikki Haley, former US ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina. (Maybe also a 2024 Republican presidential candidate.) Yesterday, Haley tweeted:

When you consider that the antiviral drug Remdesivir was developed by biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences and that private companies are playing a critical role in developing a vaccine [see below], crediting capitalism doesnt seem like much of a stretch to me.

Now as that chart shows, government is playing an important role by supplying market and funding certainty. And of course, government spends massively on medical research every year maybe not enough! I mean, we all know this. We all know federal research spending is important.

And yet Twitter went crazy nuts about Haleys tweet because she didnt also credit government. (Some of this group even blames, bizarrely, capitalism for the pandemic.) What about NIH? As if she thinks we are living in some minimalist government utopia where government doesnt spend quite a bit on science research.

On the other hand, many capitalism critics seem to think the private sector really contributes nothing, that drug companies merely exploit government research and US taxpayers for filthy profit. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, has said that by funding federal research agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the public is acting as an early investor, putting tons of money in the development of drugs that then become privatized. The American people get no return on the investment that they have made. Here is part of my 2019 podcast chat with biotechnology entrepreneur Safi Bahcall (also author of Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries):

There are three things that people who talk about this get wrong so often. Number one, that federal dollars pay for new drugs. No. Federal dollars pay for ideas. Heres the difference. I have an idea in the shower for a movie. Heres my vision: Robots take over the world. Thats an idea. Heres the product: the movie Terminator. The distance between an idea and basic research and a finished drug is roughly the distance between me having that idea in the shower and James Cameron making the movie Terminator. Its a huge, huge distance. So no, federal research does not pay for drugs. Federal research pays for ideas, and there are lots and lots of ideas for biology and drugs just like there are lots of ideas for movies. And very, very few actually get turned into something useful.

Number two, that federal research turning into something commercial is a bad thing. As you just said in that sentence, thats exactly the point of federal research. Federal research funds market failures, game-theory issues where it doesnt make sense for any one company to invest but it does make sense for the entire society. Lets say the invention of GPS or the internet or fusion power or nuclear power or genetic engineering. The goal of that is to create something commercial. Otherwise, what are we doing it for? Just for fun?

Number three, that the government doesnt get any economic return. Of course it does. Once its created, whether its the biotechnology industry or the satellites that deliver GPS and its empowered every smartphone in the world or the internet which has enabled these trillion-dollar companies. What do those companies do every year? They pay taxes, a lot of taxes. And what do those individuals who work at those companies do every year? They pay taxes. So, of course they get an economic return.

And, finally, to ignore the indispensable role of the private sector in frontier-pushing innovation and tech progress is a massive mistake. As I have written:

The old Soviet Union, recall, had plenty of natural resources and an educated population. In his famous analysis of why the Soviets centrally planned economy failed, economist Joseph Berliner wrote, It is only a slight exaggeration to assert that if the Soviet Union had succeeded in matching the technological attainment of the leading capitalist countries, there would have been no Gorbachev, no perestroika, and no retreat from socialism. But the Soviet economy lacked the Darwinian struggle for market share and profits that otherwise would have compelled industry to seek and adopt new innovation, either technological or operational. There was, Berliner explains, no invisible foot of competition where firms faced the threat of failure from new rivals if they did not innovate.

And if you think China is powerful counter-evidence, think again.

See the article here:

Nikki Haley, capitalism, and fighting the coronavirus pandemic - American Enterprise Institute

By Gretchen ReynoldsExercise may help change exercisers brains in surprising ways, according to a new study of physical activity and brain health. The study, which included both mice and people, found that exercise prompts the liver to pump out a little-known protein, and that chemically upping the levels of that protein in out-of-shape, elderly animals rejuvenates their brains and memories. The findings raise provocative questions about whether the brain benefits of exercise might someday be available in a capsule or syringe form essentially exercise in a pill.

We already have considerable evidence, of course, that physical activity protects brains and minds from some of the declines that otherwise accompany aging. In past rodent studies, animals that ran on wheels or treadmills produced more new neurons and learned and remembered better than sedentary mice or rats. Similarly, older people who took up walking for the sake of science added tissue volume in portions of their brains associated with memory. Even among younger people, those who were more fit than their peers tended to perform better on cognitive tests.

But many questions remain unanswered about how, at a cellular level, exercise remodels the brain and alters its function. Most researchers suspect that the process involves the release of a cascade of substances inside the brain and elsewhere in the body during and after exercise. These substances interact and ignite other biochemical reactions that ultimately change how the brain looks and works. But what the substances are, where they originate and how they meet and mingle has remained unclear.

So, for the new study, which was published this month in Science, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, decided to look inside the minds and bloodstreams of mice. In past research from the same lab, the scientists had infused blood from young mice into older ones and seen improvements in the aging animals thinking. It was like transferring a memory of youth through blood, says Saul Villeda, a professor at UCSF, who conducted the study with his colleagues Alana Horowitz, Xuelai Fan and others.

Those benefits were a result of the donor animals young age, though, not their exercise habits. The scientists suspected that exercise would spark additional changes in the bloodstream that might be transferable, whatever an animals years.

Intrigued, the scientists next set out to find what differed in the exercisers blood. Using sophisticated mass spectrometry and other techniques, they separated out and enumerated various proteins in the running animals blood that were not seen in similar profusion in blood from inactive mice.

Exercise may help change exercisers brains in surprising ways.

So, the researchers now employed genetic engineering to amplify the release of GPLD1 from the livers of old, inactive mice. Afterward, those animals performed almost like young mice on tests of learning and memory, and their brains teemed with far more newborn neurons than in other old mice. In effect, they gained the brain benefits of exercise without the effort of actually exercising.

To ensure that this reaction was not purely rodent-based, the scientists also checked blood drawn from elderly people. The older men and women who habitually walked for exercise showed higher levels of GPLD1 in their bloodstreams than those who did not.

The combined upshot of these findings seems to be that exercise improves brain health in part by prompting the liver to pump out extra amounts of GPLD1, Villeda says, although it is not yet clear how the protein then changes the brain. Subsequent experiments by the scientists showed that the protein probably does not breach the blood-brain barrier and act directly on the brain, Villeda says. Instead, it is likely to incite alterations in other tissues and cells elsewhere in the body. These tissues, in turn, produce yet more proteins that have effects on other tissues that eventually lead to direct changes to the neurotransmitters, genes and cells in the brain itself that undergird cognitive improvements.

Villeda believes that if further experiments show that GPLD1, in isolation, helps to initiate this molecular chain reaction, then it is at least conceivable that infusions of the substance might offer the brain benefits of exercise to people who are too frail or disabled for regular physical activity.

This experiment principally involved mice, though, not people, and does not tell us anything about the systemic effects of extra GPLD1, which in high amounts might be undesirable. More fundamentally, the findings highlight the pervasive, intricate, whole-body effects of exercise, with the liver, in this case, somehow changing minds and brains after workouts. At the moment, it is impossible to know if the same synchronized, interwoven processes all would occur in response to a GPLD1 exercise pill and, if not, whether it could be considered an exercise pill at all.

Villeda is quick to agree that pharmaceutical GPLD1, even if effective for brain health, would not recapitulate the benefits of exercise. There would be none of the usual fat burning, muscle building or cardiovascular improvements, he points out. But he hopes that, if future experiments in his lab with animals and people show consistent results, the substance might eventually help people who find moving difficult to think better.

Being diagnosed with any health problem is taxing, but correctly understanding it is the key to dealing with a progressive, neurological condition. One such neurological condition is Parkinsons disease, first described by James Parkinsons 200 years ago. It is characterised by tremours, overall slowing, rigidity, falls, speech troubles, constipation and more.

With research ongoing to find a permanent cure, there are many things one can routinely do to keep its multifaceted symptoms under control.

On World Parkinsons Day, Dr Azad M Irani, Consultant Department of Neurology at Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, shares some points that will help you fight the disease.

Educating Oneself About Their IllnessUnderstanding the disease is a key to successful management. Once diagnosed with Parkinsons, request your doctor for reliable sources of information. Avoid reading unreliable information online as it may often be untrue and stressful. Advice received during small talks with relatives and friends must also be counter-checked as it may often be untrue and add to unnecessary stress.

Treatment Compliance And Timely Follow-UpsOne must take medicines on time. Dont miss follow-up appointments. Dont adjust your own medication. These can be harmful.

Physical ActivityAn essential part of successful treatment is daily exercise and physiotherapy, as this can delay progression of symptoms significantly if done regularly. Adequate sleep, preventing constipation are very important to minimise symptoms. The significance of weight loss for those overweight-obese should be emphasised. Continuing household chores, taking walks, and yoga help delay progression of symptoms significantly.

Healthy LifestyleKeeping oneself fit with a nutritious diet, sleeping on time, and daily meditation to relax calm a worried mind.

More here:

Scientists find the secret ingredient to improve brain power; exercise in a pill may soon be a reality - Economic Times

Stranded on a tiny Italian island, a cancer researcher grew increasingly alarmed to hear that one, and then three more visitors had fallen ill with Covid-19.

Paola Muti braced for a rapid spread of the coronavirus to the 800 closely-knit islanders, many of whom she knows well. Her mother was born on Giglio Island and she often stays at the family home with its charming view of the sea through the parlor's windows.

But days passed and none of Giglio's islanders developed any Covid-19 symptoms even though the conditions seemed favorable for the disease to spread like wildfire.

The Gigliesi, as the residents are known, socialise in the steep alleys near the port or on the granite steps that serve as narrow streets in the hilltop Castle neighbourhood, with densely packed homes built against the remnants of a fortress erected centuries ago to protect against pirates.

Follow latest updates on the Covid-19 pandemic here

Dr. Armando Schiaffino, the island's sole physician for around 40 years, shared Muti's worry that there would be a local outbreak.

Every time an ordinary childhood illness, like scarlet fever, measles or chicken pox strikes, within a very few days practically all get infected on Giglio, he said in an interview in his office near the port.

Muti, a breast cancer researcher at the University of Milan where she is an epidemiology professor, decided to try to find out why it wasn't happening this time.

Were residents perhaps infected but didn't show symptoms? Was it something genetic? Something else? Or just plain luck?

Dr. Schiaffino came to me and told me, 'Hey, look, Paola, this is incredible. In this full pandemic, with all the cases that came to the island, nobody is sick.' So I said to myself: 'Right, here we can do a study, no? I am here,' Muti said.

By then, Muti was trapped on the island by Italy's strict lockdown rules. What was especially puzzling to her was that many of the islanders had had close contact with the visitors.

Giglio's first known Covid-19 case was a man in his 60s who arrived on February 18 a couple of days before Italy's first native case" would be diagnosed in the north.

The man came to Giglio for a relative's funeral, and had been coughing all the way though the service, Muti said.

The virus is mainly spread through droplets when someone coughs, sneezes or talks. The man headed back on the ferry the same day to the mainland and died three weeks later in a hospital.

On March 5, four days before the national lockdown was declared, three more visitors came from the mainland and would test positive on the island. One of them was a German man from northern Italy, the initial epicenter of Europe's outbreak.

He socialised for several days with longtime friends in Giglio, including in public eateries. After a week, due to a bad cough, he was tested on the island and the result was positive. He self-isolated in a house on Giglio.

There were other known cases, including an islander who had lived in Australia for two years before slipping back onto Giglio in mid-March during lockdown to see his parents.

Three days after arriving on Giglio, he developed a mild fever and tested positive, Muti said. He self-isolated at his parents' home.

No other case has surfaced on Giglio, including since lockdown was lifted in early June, and tourists from throughout Italy have been arriving.

Giglio is part of Tuscany, and its health office quickly sent over kits to test for antibodies to see if others may have had Covid-19.

In late April, just before the first lockdown travel restrictions would be eased, the islanders had their blood tested, lining up outside the island's school and doctor's office.

Of the 800 or so year-round residents, 723 volunteered to be tested.

We all wanted to do it, to be tranquil about any possible infection, but also to help science,'' said Simone Madaro, who had been working at the cemetery while the infected man had gathered with fellow mourners.

The Reverend Lorenzo Pasquotti, the priest who conducted the service for around 50 mourners, and who himself was tested recalled: After the funeral, there were greetings, hugging and kissing, as is the custom.

Then came the procession to the cemetery, where there were more hugs and kisses.

Of the islanders tested, only one was found to have antibodies, an elderly Gigliese man who had sailed on the same ferry to the island with the German visitor, Muti said.

Intrigued about why the virus didn't seem to interact" with the island's native population, Muti hadn't reached any conclusions by the time she was preparing to leave the island this month. She plans to write up up her study for eventual publication.

It's possible, Muti guessed, that islanders weren't exposed to enough Covid-19 to get infected.

That possibility was also voiced by Massimo Andreoni, head of infectious diseases at Rome's Tor Vergata hospital. He noted some patients are simply less capable of spreading the disease for reasons that are still unclear.

Chance might have played a role, said Daniel Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London.

It could be something more or less trivial nobody got infected because through good luck there was little contact,'' he said in an email exchange.

Or, Altmann also noted that it could be something important and exotic, such as a genetic variant common among the island's population.

With many of the Gigliesi intermarrying through generations, Muti would like to do a genetic study someday if she could obtain funding.

Giglio lies in pristine waters in a protected regional marine sanctuary, and the islanders voice relief that they live in a natural environment they like to think is good for health, whatever Muti's study might determine.

As an island, as the environment goes, we're OK, no? said Domenico Pignatelli, as the elderly man kept company with friends in chairs placed on a stony street atop Giglio.

See more here:

Luck? Genetics? Italian island spared from Covid-19 outbreak - Deccan Herald

Until less than two centuries ago, millions of people were forcibly removed from Africa by European colonisers and taken across the Atlantic to become slaves in the Americas.

Helping to unravel the pervasive, ongoing impacts of this enslavement, an extensive population genetic study has added to historical records gathered by the slave trade database, concurring with them overall but adding some new insights.

For millions of people in the Americas, the story of the transatlantic slave trade is the story of their ancestral origins, says Steven Micheletti from 23andMe in Sunnyvale, US, and lead author of the study published in The American Journal of Human Genetics.

The team, which included a researcher from the University of Leicester, UK, analysed genetic data from more than 50,000 people on both sides of the Atlantic, working closely with historians, scholars of African American studies and other geneticists.

As predicted, they found strong genetic connections between people of the Americas and African regions where more people were enslaved, most with roots in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But a closer look revealed multiple deviations from the groups expectations, says Micheletti.

One discovery was that most US-based African Americans tend to have high Nigerian ancestry, even though relatively small numbers of their enslaved ancestors were taken directly to the US from present-day Nigeria.

This supports historical accounts of many enslaved people being transported across the Americas after the transatlantic slave trade was abolished, explaining why they found many distant relatives between the Caribbean and the US.

In contrast, African Americans had lower genetic connections with Senegambians than would be expected, possibly because these people tended to be transported to work in rice plantations that had high death rates from malaria.

Another important and tragic finding was the genetic sex bias in African women, showing they reproduced more than African men even though more than 60% of enslaved individuals were male.

For every African man in Central and South America and the Caribbean, the analysis found that about 15 African women had children.

This reflects known accounts of rape and exploitation of female African slaves, says Micheletti. Unexpectedly, the sex-bias was nearly 10 times larger in Latin America than the US, he adds, which could be explained by records of differences in systemic racism.

In the US, enslaved people were segregated and allowed to have children, a likely means of maintaining an enslaved workforce, known as slave breeding.

Conversely, other countries in Latin America, such as Brazil and Cuba, promoted racial whitening through immigration programs to encourage mating of white European males with dark-skinned African females to produce lighter skinned children and dilute African heritage.

This, and higher mortality, could explain why the proportion of people with more than 5% African ancestry was five times lower in Latin America, says Micheletti, even though more than two thirds of enslaved Africans disembarked there.

His goal is for the study to help African Americans find their roots and promote understanding of how their ancestors helped shape their communities.

We hope readers grasp not only the impact of the slave trade but also the deep contributions enslaved Africans made to the history, economy and culture of the Americas.

Go here to read the rest:

Genetic consequences of the slave trade - Cosmos

New York, July 21, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "COVID-19 Vaccine And Therapeutics Pipeline Analysis 2020" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05933754/?utm_source=GNW

The COVID19 vaccine and therapeutics pipeline analysis market covered in this report is segmented by product type into small molecules, biologics, blood & plasma derivatives, monoclonal antibodies, vaccines, others. It is also segmented by the phase of development into preclinical therapeutics & vaccines, clinical studies, by treatment mechanism & route of administration, and by type of sponsor into pharma/biotech company, academic research/institution, others.

The COVID19 vaccine and therapeutics pipeline analysis market report provides an analysis of the coronavirus (COVID-19) therapeutics and vaccines under development. The report includes existing vaccines developed against MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. The novel coronavirus-2019 (nCoV-19) has been named as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) due to its genetic similarity with the coronavirus responsible for the 2003 SARS outbreak. Currently, government agencies, international health authorities and institutions and biopharmaceutical companies worldwide are focusing on developing vaccines/drugs to prevent or treat the COVID-19 infection.

Ever since the coronavirus hit the world as a global pandemic, many key vaccine developers are collaborating to develop potential COVID-19 vaccine against coronavirus.Most recently, on 21st May 2020, CanSino Biologics Inc. and Precision NanoSystems announced a co-development agreement of an mRNA lipid nanoparticle (mRNA-LNP) vaccine against COVID-19. The parties will leverage Precision NanoSystemss proprietary RNA vaccine platform, comprising of lipid nanoparticle delivery system and the NanoAssemblr manufacturing technology, to rapidly advance a COVID-19 mRNA-LNP vaccine candidate towards human clinical testing and pursuant to regulatory approvals, and commercialization in different regions. Precision NanoSystems will be responsible for the development of the mRNA-LNP vaccine and CanSinoBIO will be responsible for pre-clinical testing, human clinical trials, regulatory approval and commercialization.Similarly, on May 19, 2020, IPharmaJet, the maker of innovative, needle-free injection technology announced that its Needle-free Injection System technology will be used to deliver a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine is being developed by Abnova Corporation, the worlds largest antibody manufacturer, based in Taiwan.

The development of potential drugs and vaccines for COVID-19 is progressing quickly. There is a massive increase in COVID-19 drugs and vaccines pipeline owing to the urgent need to contain the spread of disease. Government agencies, global health authorities and institutes, and biopharmaceutical companies are focusing on remedies to treat the patients and control the infection spread. Increasing every day, 450+ potential therapeutic candidates are under investigation. While two-thirds of the pipeline account for therapeutic drugs, the remaining one-third accounts for vaccines.

Of the confirmed active vaccine candidates, nearly 70% are being developed by private/industry developers, with the remaining 30% of projects being led by the academic, public sector and other non-profit organizations. Most COVID-19 vaccine development activity is in North America, with around 36 (46%) developers of the confirmed active vaccine candidates. China constitutes 18% with 14 developers, while, Asia excluding China and Europe also constitute 18% each with 14 developers in each region, respectively.

The long and costly drug development process is anticipated to limit the growth of the COVID19 vaccine & therapeutics. According to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the average cost of research and development of a new drug is approximately $2.6 billion. Moreover, the stringent regulations imposed by the various regulatory authorities such as European Medicines Agency and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in regards with clinical trials during the COVID19 outbreak attributing to the safety of trial participants, maintaining compliance with good clinical practice, and minimizing risks to trial integrity is a major challenge faced by the COVID19 vaccine and therapeutics market.

The compounds and medications that are under investigation can be grouped into three broad categories antivirals, immune-system based, and vaccines. The anti-virals including Darunavir, Favipiravir, Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, Lopinavir, and Remdesivir (GS-5734), immune system-related therapies including Tocilizumab, Tocilizumab, and Vitamin C, and other medications are currently being evaluated as therapies. Three key drugs are currently in phase III, of which are two small molecule-based drugs, Remdesivir by Gilead Sciences Inc. and Favipiravir by Fujifilm Toyama Chemical Co Ltd, and Sarilumab, a monoclonal antibody by Regeneron Pharmaceutical. With regards to the prophylactic vaccine pipeline, more than 90% are in early-stage development (discovery and preclinical), and only three in Phase II. These three COVID-19 vaccines are being developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd, the University of Oxford, and the third vaccine, named CIGB-2020, is being developed by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, worldwide, there are over 10.8 million cases of COVID-19. Globally, R&D spending has increased to find a potential drug or vaccine to combat this pandemic. Currently, there is no approved targeted therapy for patients with COVID-19. However, an array of drugs approved for other indications as well as several new investigational drugs are being studied in several hundred clinical trials. The increased R&D spending has contributed to the invention/discovery of more than 400 unique drugs to treat COVID-19 among which 298 are therapeutic drugs and 140 prophylactic vaccines that are spread across all stages of development (Discovery, Preclinical, Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III). As of June 2020, over 2,341 clinical trials are investigating potential therapies for COVID-19, of which nearly 800 are interventional trials.

Other Collaborations: Moderna and Lonza also announced their strategic collaboration to manufacture Modernas Vaccine (mRNA-1273) against novel coronavirus. AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford made an agreement for the global development and distribution of the Universitys potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine aimed at preventing COVID-19 infection from SARS-CoV-2. Catalent signed an agreement with Johnson & Johnson to be U.S. manufacturing partner for lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05933754/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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COVID-19 Vaccine And Therapeutics Pipeline Analysis 2020 - GlobeNewswire

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Mouse study suggests strategy may work against variety of cancers

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have combined two types of immunotherapy into a single treatment that may be more effective and possibly safer than current immunotherapies for blood cancers. Shown is a type of immune cell called a memory-like natural killer cell (right) attacking a leukemia cell (left). In the new study, the researchers modified the natural killer cells to help them find the leukemia cells more effectively.

Some of the most promising advances in cancer treatment have centered on immunotherapies that rev up a patients immune system to attack cancer. But immunotherapies dont work in all patients, and researchers have been searching for ways to increase their effectiveness.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have combined two immunotherapy strategies into a single therapy and found, in studies in human cells and in mice, that the two together are more effective than either alone in treating certain blood cancers, such as leukemia. Evidence also suggests that the new approach could be safer than one of the most recent cellular immunotherapies to be approved by the FDA, called CAR-T cell therapy, in which the immune systems T cells are engineered to target tumor cells. Cell-based immunotherapies are most commonly used against blood cancers but can be harnessed against some solid tumors as well, such as prostate and lung tumors and melanoma.

The study appears online in the journal Blood.

In the new research, the scientists have harnessed the technology used to engineer CAR-T cells and, instead of modifying specialized immune cells called T cells, they have used similar technology to alter different immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells. The resulting immunotherapy combines the benefits of both strategies and may reduce the side effects that are sometimes seen in CAR-T cell therapy. In some patients, for example, CAR-T cell therapy causes a cytokine storm, a life-threatening overreaction of the immune system.

Immunotherapies show great promise for cancer therapy, but we need to make them more effective and more safe for more patients, said co-senior author Todd A. Fehniger, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine. This combined approach builds on the treatment strategy that we developed for leukemia patients using natural killer cells. We can supercharge natural killer cells to enhance their ability to attack cancer cells. And at the same time, we can use the genetic engineering approaches of CAR cell therapy to direct the natural killer cells to a tumor target that would normally be overlooked by NK cells. It fundamentally changes the types of cancer that NK cells could be used to treat, both additional blood cancers and potentially solid tumors as well.

In past work, Fehniger and his colleagues showed that they could collect a patients own NK cells, expose the cells to a specific recipe of chemical signals that prime the cells to attack tumors, and then return the primed cells to patients for therapy. This chemical exposure is a sort of basic training for the cells, according to the investigators, preparing the NK cells to fight the cancer. When the cells are then returned to the body, they remember their training, so to speak, and are more effective at targeting the tumor cells. Because their training has given the NK cells a memory of what to do when they encounter tumor cells, the researchers dubbed them memory-like NK cells.

In small clinical trials conducted at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, such cells were effective in putting some patients with leukemia into a lasting remission, but they didnt work for everyone. Some tumor cells still evaded the memory-like NK cells, despite the cells basic training. To help the cells find the tumor cells, so their basic training can kick in and kill the correct target, the researchers modified the memory-like NK cells with the same CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) molecule that is typically used to target T cells to tumor cells. The CAR molecule is flexible and can be modified to direct the cells to different tumor types, depending on the proteins on the surfaces of the cancer cells.

The resulting hybrid cells were more effective in treating mice with leukemia than memory-like NK cells alone, leading to longer survival for mice treated with CAR memory-like NK cells. The researchers also found the therapy to be effective despite the fact that the mice were given relatively low doses of the cells.

One aspect of this study I find most exciting is how nicely these hybrid NK cells expand in the mice to respond to their tumors, said co-senior author Melissa Berrien-Elliott, PhD, an instructor in medicine. We can provide a tiny dose and see an incredible amount of tumor control. To me, this highlights the potency of these cells, as well as their potential to expand once in the body, which is critical for translating these findings to the clinic.

Fehniger also pointed out that an advantage of NK cells in general and for biological reasons that the scientists are still working to understand NK cells dont trigger a dangerous immune response or the long-term side effects that T-cell therapy can cause in attacking the patients healthy tissues, a condition called graft-versus-host disease.

In all of the clinical trials exploring any type of NK cells, we dont see the troublesome side effects of cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity that we see with CAR-T cells that can profoundly affect patients, Fehniger said. These side effects can be life-threatening and require intensive care. Were still working to understand how NK cells are different. But if you can get the benefits of CAR-T cells with few if any of the side effects, thats a reasonable line of research to pursue. Another benefit of this safer therapy is the potential to give these cells to patients at an earlier stage in their disease, rather than using them as a last resort.

Other groups have developed CAR-NK cells, but a major difference is that other groups NK cells came from donated cord blood or induced stem cells, rather than adult donors or the patients themselves.

The other groups have artificially differentiated stem cells into something that resembles an NK cell, Fehniger said. With that strategy, theres no guarantee that those cells will have all the properties of typical mature NK cells. In contrast, were starting with adult NK cells, so were more confident that they will have all the inherent properties and behavior of adult NK cells, which we have already shown to be effective in certain types of cancer patients, especially those with leukemia. Inducing memory properties adds to their persistence and effectiveness against many cancer types.

Over the next several years, we would like to be able to scale up this process to produce enough cells for a first-in-human clinical trial, and investigate their effectiveness in different types of human blood cancers, he said.

This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers F32CA200253, T32HL00708843, K12CA167540 and R01CA205239; and a NIH SPORE in Leukemia, grant number P50CA171063. Additional funding was provided by the Siteman Cancer Center through NIH grant number P30CA091842; the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society; the V Foundation for Cancer Research; the Childrens Discovery Institute at Washington University School of Medicine; the Jamie Erin Follicular Lymphoma Research Fund; and the Steinback Fund.

Berrien-Elliott and Fehniger are inventors on patents related to this study that have been filed by Washington University. Fehniger has received research support from ImmunityBio, Compass Therapeutics, and HCW Biologics, and advises Kiadis, Nkarta, Indapta, and Orca Biosystems. Other authors report serving as a consultant for Kiowa Hakka Kirin and C4 Therapeutics; receiving research funding from Bristol Myers-Squibb, Verastem Pharmaceuticals, Innate Pharmaceuticals, Genentech/Roche, Celgene, and Corvus Pharmaceuticals; having direct ownership of equity in and a consultancy with Wugen; serving on the consulting/advisory committee for Rivervest, Bioline, Amphivena and Bluebird, Celegene, Incyte, NeoImuneTech, and Macrogenics and ownership investment in Magenta and WUGEN.

Gang M, Marin ND, Wong P, Neal CC, Marsala L, Foster M, Schappe T, Meng W, Tran J, Schaettler M, Davila M, Gao F, Cashen AF, Bartlett NL, Mehta-Shah N, Kahl BS, Kim MY, Cooper ML, DiPersio JF, Berrien-Elliott MM, Fehniger TA. CAR-modified memory-like NK cells exhibit potent responses to NK-resistant lymphomas. Blood. July 2, 2020.

Washington University School of Medicines 1,500 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, ranking among the top 10 medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

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2 immunotherapies merged into single, more effective treatment - Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

The other day on the internet, I saw an old commercial of a semi truck that had these words painted on the side: JONNY KAT, KITTY LITTER. For some reason that had a profound affect on me. Imagine a semi full of kitty litter! 40,000 pounds of scented, colored, and packaged cat box contents!

That has to say something about our affluent society, about the shape of our civilization. Some of our past inventions are quite practical and ingenious. The self-sealing, puncture proof tire, mercury lights, insecticide ear tags, microwave ovens, the Salk vaccine, four wheel drive, frozen orange juice and boxed beef. Pistachio tree roots are susceptible to certain kinds of root rot. But peach tree roots are more resistant. So the pistachio growers graft pistachio trunks onto peach tree roots. Clever.

Consider how much artificial insemination has done to improve the quality of our livestock production. Genetic engineering is space age technology.

But sometimes when we strive to achieve we go off the deep end. Take the cell phone. When they first appeared on the scene they were expensive, heavy and required two hands to operate. Now you can get a disposable one with a camera that adds, subtracts, calculates square roots, tells you the time in Singapore, wakes you up, plays you a tune, gives you the weather and news, takes your pulse, calendars all your events and reminds you of them all, and controls all appliances in your house! What Id like to find is a cell phone that gives me more hours in a day!

And speaking of rotting edges affluence, how about aerosol cheese spread? I thought plastic wrapped, individual cheese slices were pretty decadent but you can also foam it onto your crackers like shaving cream.

Yep, weve surrounded ourselves with creations that have gone a step beyond their original purpose; fender skirts, square headlights and veterinarians with PhDs. Some might even include Pekingese, Chihuahua or Appaloosa in that group but I know how sensitive animal breeders are so I certainly wouldnt include them. Obviously our adventures into the extreme or entertaining are useful. We learn and perfect by doing.

Well, my digital ballpoint pen is playing Mammas Dont Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys, so I guess its time to brush my teeth and hit the sack. I hope the batteries are still charged in my computerized flosser.

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LIttered with progress - Fence Post

By weight, the pork belly prototypes contain 50% muscle cells grown in a bioreactor (without the use of bovine serum) and 50% plant-based proteins and fats; while the bacon contains 70% muscle cells and 30% plant-based materials.

Were already seeing hybrid burgers and nuggets [combining conventional and plant-based meat from US meat giants such as Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms], and I absolutely think youll see this with cell-based meat as well, said co-founder and CEO Benjamina Bollag, who was speaking to FoodNavigator-USA shortly afterbiotech research lab 3D Bioprinting Solutions unveileda collaboration with KFC to bring hybrid nuggets containing 80% plant-based materials to the Russian market.

Combining cell-based meat - which will likely enter the market in small quantities at a premium price - with plant proteins and fats, could help startups enter the market with more affordable products and ease consumers into the concept, she said, although Higher Steaks longer-term ambition is to make 100% cell-based products cost competitive.

Higher Steaks is using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which behave like embryonic stem cells in that they can replicate/proliferate extensively (without having to keep going back to the original source) and differentiate into multiple cell types such as muscle and fat, said Bollag,a chemical engineer who co-foundedHigher Steaksin 2017 with stem cell scientist Dr. Stephanie Wallis and Prof. David Hay, chair of tissue engineering at the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

Stem cell scientist Dr Ruth Faram has since joined as head of R&D, while Dr James Clark, formerly CTO at Predict Immune, recently joined as chief science officer to help the startup scale up its technology, she added.

Right now, the team is still exploring whether it makes most sense to grow these cell types separately and combine them at the end to make products, or to co-culture them, said Bollag, who could not go into details as the company has filed a provisional patent covering its innovations, but claims that it has some compelling IP that will help it differentiate itself in the nascent cell-based meat industry.

Were working on a portfolio of patents to reinforce this main patent. Were still working out which is the best method to use at scale, but our next prototypes will include fat [from animal cells rather than plants]if not more cell types [as well as muscle] in the mix.

However, the process of reprogramming adult stem cells to behave like embryonic master cells does not involve genetic engineering, a key factor for any company trying to enter the European market, stressed Bollag, who anticipates bringing products to market in 2-5 years, perhaps beginning in high-end restaurants in the EU, where cell-cultured meat would be considered a novel food and therefore subject to pre-approval under the Novel Food Regulation.

We have some more work to do before we would submit a Novel Food application, and then it might take another year and a half [for the approval process]

She added:Were a technology company, so well launch on a small scale, but for a larger scale launch, we want to partner with larger organizations to leverage their expertise in distribution, packaging and consumer insights and so on and then the productscould be [launched under]our brand or their brand or a co-brand.

She would not go into details on materials Higher Steaks is exploring as scaffolding (edible structures upon which firms can seed cells in order to grow more 3D structures), but said Higher Steaks is testing several materials.

There are also a lot of new companies popping up sending us their scaffolds to test, which is really exciting.

As for finding alternatives to fetal bovine serum that can serve as cost-effective growth media (ie. food for the cells), she said: We have very clear pathways on how to get the cost down of both the growth media [to help the stem cells proliferate] and the differentiation media [to signal them to differentiate and mature into different cell types such as fat, muscle etc].

One of the things is reducing the number of growth factors you need, and there are specific things were working on internally, but there are also a lot of companies working in this space so its an area for collaboration.

The decision to focus on pork was made for multiple reasons, said Bollag, who is currently backed by some very supportive angel investors: Pork supply is under significant threat because of African swine fever and on top of that, a lot of antibiotics used[in meat production]are used in pork and poultry, and one of the main challenges we are trying to address is antibiotic resistance.

Pork is also used in a ton of processed products such as sausages that are easier to create [in bioreactors]than something like a [beef]steak. Its also genetically similar to humans, so its easy to adapt the work that has been done on the medical side[to large scale cell-based meat production].

As to what to call meat cultured from animal cells, Bollag says shes happy with the terms cell-based meat, and cultivated meat, adding: Its really about finding something that works for consumers and regulators but doesnt alienate the meat producers but also describes the product accurately.

Cell-based meat: From the laboratory to the market

Despite all the hype, most startups in the space are still working in a laboratory (as opposed to a factory), although several have recently raised more substantial sums (Memphis Meats: $161m,BlueNalu: $20m,Future Meat Technologies: $14m,Wild Type: $12.5m,Aleph Farms: $12m,Meatable: $10m) to support the construction of pilot-scale facilities.

Maastricht-basedMosa Meat which is gearing up for a small scale commercial launch in 2022 assuming it has cleared regulatory hurdles - recently joined forces with Nutreco (which has invested an undisclosed sum in the firm along with Lower Carbon Capital) to work on growth media; San Diego-basedBlueNaluhas also partnered with Nutreco and aims toproduce small quantities of product for commercial launch in late 2021; while Jerusalem-basedFuture Meat Technologiesplans to release hybrid products in 2021 and a second line of 100% cell-based ground meat products suitable for burgers and nuggets at a cost ofless than $10 per pound in 2022.

However, the recent$161m investment in Memphis Meats- which says it has a pretty clear pathto achieving cost parity with conventional meat has given the whole sector a confidence boost, says Krijn de Nood, CEO at Dutch cell-based meat startupMeatable.

Its a huge positive for the industry, it shows there are very serious investors that have done their due diligence and think this is really going to happen.

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Hybrid products could drive first wave of cell-based meat launches, predicts Higher Steaks as it unveils pork belly, bacon prototypes -...

Jul 18th 2020

A Dominant Character: The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J.B.S. Haldane. By Samanth Subramanian. W.W. Norton; 400 pages; $40. Atlantic Books; 20.

TOWARDS THE end of his life, J.B.S. Haldane was inseparable from a pebble that had been found in the Valley of Elah in Israel, where David felled Goliath with a similar projectile. A king-size man who towered over British biology for several decades in the middle of the 20th century, Jack Haldanethe half-Danewas a more obvious Goliath, but he always took the side of the underdog.

That is the contradiction at the heart of Samanth Subramanians astute and sympathetic biography. An Eton- and Oxford-educated communist, who with a handful of others fleshed out Darwins theory of natural selection by marrying it to genetics and grounding it in maths, Haldane was born into privilege but came to identify himself with the masses. And if his unconscious sense of entitlement can sometimes be grating, it is more than offset by his humour, facility for language, intellectual generosity andthe product of all thishis giant contribution to the popularisation of science.

Science was his first and most enduring love. Aged three, studying blood trickling from a cut, he is supposed to have asked, Is it oxyhaemoglobin or carboxyhaemoglobin? Thus began a life of inquiry in which he was always either being experimented onnotably by his father, the physiologist J.S. Haldaneor experimenting on himself or others. Bertrand Russell thought that science could rarely be beautiful, but for Haldane beauty came through understanding. Until I took to scientific plant-breeding, he wrote, I did not appreciate the beauty of flowers.

Haldane wrote a great deal, in learned journals but also in the popular press and in response to letters from the scientifically curious, and on a breathtaking range of subjects. Please send me no more caterpillars, he pleaded on one of the many occasions that his mailbag threatened to overwhelm him. As he coped with his own and other peoples inquisitiveness, world events intruded. He wrote parts of a paper on genetic linkagewhereby two genes that sit close to each other on a chromosome are more likely to be inherited togetherwhile serving in the trenches during the first world war.

It was in the trenches, too, that Haldanes rejection of his birthright crystallised. As disappointed by the officer class as he was by army chaplains, he wrote to his mother that, when the revolution came, the people would strangle the last Duke in the guts of the last parson. But he was attracted to Marxism for more than just its egalitarian ideals; it struck him as practical, transparentin short, scientific. Though he kept his distance from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) until 1942, MI5 had him down as a subversive from the time of his only visit to the Soviet Union, in 1928.

Haldanes politics and his science clashed mightily in 1948, when as the CPGBs foremost intellectualand, by then, one of the most influential geneticists in the worldhe refused to publicly condemn the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko. Stalins favourite agronomist claimed that he could drum desirable traits into wheat by altering its environment, just as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had once believed giraffes had stretched their necks through practice. In the Soviet Union scientists who disagreed with Lysenko vanished. One of them, Nikolai Vavilov, had hosted Haldane in Moscow. Haldanes own science contradicted Lysenkoism. Nobody who knew him could fathom his stance.

Mr Subramanian doesnt defend it either. He makes it clear that Haldane ignored overwhelming evidence of Vavilovs internment and death in the gulag. But he uses the episode to illustrate a wider truth, which is that science cannot be extricated from politics. Today many scientists describe their research as apolitical, but Haldane knew that was impossible: I began to realise that even if the professors leave politics alone, politics wont leave the professors alone.

It meant that he was prepared to change his mind. Eugenics was a mainstream theory when he entered biology, and he partially embraced it. But he also warned that genetics was too young a science to be applied successfully. His ideas evolved until they fell into line with those of the scientists now wielding genetic-engineering tools to improve humanity (though they would reject the eugenics label).

Haldane changed his mind too slowly about the Soviet Union, but having done so he found new hope in India, where he moved in 1957. Its bureaucracy maddened him and he said so loudly and oftenflashing his white male privilege like a peacocks tailbut its tropical profusion provided him with a natural laboratory, and the climate was kinder to a body damaged by decades of self-experiment. When he died there in 1964, still holding the stone from Elah, it was no surprise to anyone that he donated his body to science.

This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Trial and error"

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The flawed brilliance of J.B.S. Haldane - The Economist

ROSH HANIKRA, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Rahan Meristem, with the aid of our Colombian partner Mr. Luis Alberto Restrepo President of Banarica Colombia, developed Cavendish banana plants with apparent resistance to Panama disease TR4, reports the Scientific Director Dr. Eli Khayat. The data were recently published and received tremendous public and scientific attention. The technology, does not entail genetic engineering. These data corroborate the Companys earlier findings that its proprietary In-vitro mutagenesis technology is effective for creating novel traits. In addition to these disease-resistance data, Rahan has previously shown both an increase in banana fruit production and improvement in plant architecture.

The data lead to the achievement of Rahan's R&D objective developing a "Cavendish" banana with resistance to fungal diseases.

TR4 strain of Panama disease is the primary constrain in the banana industry, stated Mr. Ron Diner, CEO of Rahan: The fact that our technology can benefit the banana industry in a variety of ways is our major strategic goal. We are working with our partners to salvage the Cavendish banana.

About Rahan Meristem

Rahan Meristem is considered one of the most outstanding companies for plant breeding and propagation. We use cutting edge molecular biology breeding techniques, and developed tissue culture protocols for over 200 plant genera. Rahans labs are among the most advanced in the world. Rahan operates 4 laboratories worldwide, in Israel, Colombia, Ecuador and the Philippines. The R&D department specializes in breeding crops by in vitro mutagenesis and genome editing.

Certain statements included in this press release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from such statements expressed or implied herein as a result of a variety of factors, including, but not limited to: the development of the Companys gene technology; the approval of the Companys patent applications; the successful implementation of the Companys research and development programs and joint ventures; the success of the Company's license agreements; the successful conversion of the Companys letter of intent into a license agreement; the acceptance by the market of the Companys products; competition and the timing of projects and trends in future operating performance, as well as other factors expressed from time to time in the Companys periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"). As a result, this press release should be read in conjunction with the Companys periodic filings with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained herein are made only as of the date of this press release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update such forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

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Rahan Meristem (1998) LTD and its Partner Banarica Report Success in Mitigating Panama Disease After Field Trials in the Philippines - Business Wire

Ultrasound imaging, as most people are familiar with it, is used for taking pictures of a fetus while it is still inside the womb, but it has other medical purposes, such as diagnosing diseases of organs and tissues.

For years, Caltech's Mikhail Shapiro has been working to extend ultrasound imaging into the microscopic realm as well. Now, through a new breakthrough based on genetic engineering, he is making it possible for researchers to use ultrasound to watch enzymes at work within cells.

In a new paper appearing in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, Shapiro and lead authors Anupama Lakshmanan (PhD '19) and medical engineering graduate student Zhiyang Jin, and their fellow researchers, describe how they have harnessed the genes for a protein that helps bacteria float in water to create a microscopic ultrasound marker that indicates when certain enzymes are active inside cells.

This advance builds upon previous research Shapiro's lab conducted on so-called acoustic reporter genes, which encode proteins that can be seen from outside the cell with ultrasound. The researchers borrowed these proteins from a species of buoyant bacteria. In those bacteria, the proteins form tiny air-filled protein shells, known as gas vesicles, that help the bacteria float in water. Shapiro's team discovered that gas vesicles show up strongly in ultrasound imaging, including when the genes encoding them are incorporated into other bacteria or mammalian cells.

Gas vesicles are the ultrasound equivalents of the popular green fluorescent protein, which, true to its name, is a protein that glows bright green. Researchers commonly use the gene for green fluorescent protein as a so-called reporter gene. If a cell is glowing green as viewed with optical microscopy, the gene is active. The main drawback of fluorescent reporter genes is that their products cannot be seen deep inside tissues like muscle that are not transparentas would be the case with most of the human body. In contrast, acoustic reporter genes are visible to ultrasound, which can penetrate deep into living tissue.

The patterns of expression of reporter genes are useful for monitoring the internal behavior of cells. For example, to learn more about how cells become neurons, a researcher could insert the reporter gene alongside a neuronal gene into an embryo's DNA. When the embryo's cells turn on the neuron gene, they will also express the reporter gene, and the cells will show a characteristic signature. This allows the researcher to easily see that the genetic program that encodes neuron formation is active.

This is only the first step though, Shapiro says.

"Gene expression is just one of the hundreds of important biological processes happening inside the cell," he says. "So, watching that is great, but we want to extend our view to all other activities in the cell."

This extension has already been made with fluorescent proteins, variants of which have been designed to change their fluorescence in response to intracellular molecules such as calcium, lipids, or enzymes. These fluorescent "biosensors" are popular with researchers studying cellular biology under a microscope. But, as with other fluorescent proteins, they are hard to see in living tissues.

In their latest research, Shapiro's team developed the first biosensors for use with ultrasound, which allow researchers to tell when a specific enzyme has been busy at work within a cell located deep inside the body.

Enzymes are specialized proteins that act as biological catalyststhat is, they facilitate chemical reactions within a cell, creating new biological compounds and breaking down others, and they are involved in nearly every aspect of what a cell does in the course of its life. Because of the central role enzymes play in living things, researchers have been keen to understand how they behave inside cells.

Lakshmanan and Jin built upon what was learned in the prior gas-vesicle research and modified the gas vesicles, so they could be targeted by enzymes used by the cell.

They changed the proteins that form gas vesicles so that they could be recognized similarly to the natural targets of a few common and well-studied enzymes, which would thus cut the surface proteins to pieces.

"These surface proteins, we discovered, sit on the surface of the gas-vesicle shell and make it more rigid and influence its mechanical and acoustic properties," says Lakshmanan. "If you cut up the surface proteins, the shell becomes softer, so the gas vesicles are able to deform more easily." As a result, there is a brighter ultrasound signal when enzyme activity is increased. For her work with gas vesicles, Lakshmanan was awarded Caltech's 2019 Milton and Francis Clauser Doctoral Prize, which is given annually at commencement to the PhD candidate whose research is judged to exhibit the greatest degree of originality and potential for opening up new avenues of human thought and endeavor.

"These enzymes are the workhorses of the cell, and now we are watching the workhorses working," says Jin. "The beauty of our biosensor design is that it can be modified for whichever enzyme someone has an interest in studying. This is a platform for further research."

ReferenceLakshmanan, A., Jin, Z., Nety, S.P. et al. Acoustic biosensors for ultrasound imaging of enzyme activity. Nat Chem Biol (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-020-0591-0

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Ultrasound Imaging Extended Into the Microscopic Realm - Technology Networks

By Gretchen ReynoldsExercise may help change exercisers brains in surprising ways, according to a new study of physical activity and brain health. The study, which included both mice and people, found that exercise prompts the liver to pump out a little-known protein, and that chemically upping the levels of that protein in out-of-shape, elderly animals rejuvenates their brains and memories. The findings raise provocative questions about whether the brain benefits of exercise might someday be available in a capsule or syringe form essentially exercise in a pill.

We already have considerable evidence, of course, that physical activity protects brains and minds from some of the declines that otherwise accompany aging. In past rodent studies, animals that ran on wheels or treadmills produced more new neurons and learned and remembered better than sedentary mice or rats. Similarly, older people who took up walking for the sake of science added tissue volume in portions of their brains associated with memory. Even among younger people, those who were more fit than their peers tended to perform better on cognitive tests.

But many questions remain unanswered about how, at a cellular level, exercise remodels the brain and alters its function. Most researchers suspect that the process involves the release of a cascade of substances inside the brain and elsewhere in the body during and after exercise. These substances interact and ignite other biochemical reactions that ultimately change how the brain looks and works. But what the substances are, where they originate and how they meet and mingle has remained unclear.

So, for the new study, which was published this month in Science, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, decided to look inside the minds and bloodstreams of mice. In past research from the same lab, the scientists had infused blood from young mice into older ones and seen improvements in the aging animals thinking. It was like transferring a memory of youth through blood, says Saul Villeda, a professor at UCSF, who conducted the study with his colleagues Alana Horowitz, Xuelai Fan and others.

Those benefits were a result of the donor animals young age, though, not their exercise habits. The scientists suspected that exercise would spark additional changes in the bloodstream that might be transferable, whatever an animals years.

Intrigued, the scientists next set out to find what differed in the exercisers blood. Using sophisticated mass spectrometry and other techniques, they separated out and enumerated various proteins in the running animals blood that were not seen in similar profusion in blood from inactive mice.

Exercise may help change exercisers brains in surprising ways.

So, the researchers now employed genetic engineering to amplify the release of GPLD1 from the livers of old, inactive mice. Afterward, those animals performed almost like young mice on tests of learning and memory, and their brains teemed with far more newborn neurons than in other old mice. In effect, they gained the brain benefits of exercise without the effort of actually exercising.

To ensure that this reaction was not purely rodent-based, the scientists also checked blood drawn from elderly people. The older men and women who habitually walked for exercise showed higher levels of GPLD1 in their bloodstreams than those who did not.

The combined upshot of these findings seems to be that exercise improves brain health in part by prompting the liver to pump out extra amounts of GPLD1, Villeda says, although it is not yet clear how the protein then changes the brain. Subsequent experiments by the scientists showed that the protein probably does not breach the blood-brain barrier and act directly on the brain, Villeda says. Instead, it is likely to incite alterations in other tissues and cells elsewhere in the body. These tissues, in turn, produce yet more proteins that have effects on other tissues that eventually lead to direct changes to the neurotransmitters, genes and cells in the brain itself that undergird cognitive improvements.

Villeda believes that if further experiments show that GPLD1, in isolation, helps to initiate this molecular chain reaction, then it is at least conceivable that infusions of the substance might offer the brain benefits of exercise to people who are too frail or disabled for regular physical activity.

This experiment principally involved mice, though, not people, and does not tell us anything about the systemic effects of extra GPLD1, which in high amounts might be undesirable. More fundamentally, the findings highlight the pervasive, intricate, whole-body effects of exercise, with the liver, in this case, somehow changing minds and brains after workouts. At the moment, it is impossible to know if the same synchronized, interwoven processes all would occur in response to a GPLD1 exercise pill and, if not, whether it could be considered an exercise pill at all.

Villeda is quick to agree that pharmaceutical GPLD1, even if effective for brain health, would not recapitulate the benefits of exercise. There would be none of the usual fat burning, muscle building or cardiovascular improvements, he points out. But he hopes that, if future experiments in his lab with animals and people show consistent results, the substance might eventually help people who find moving difficult to think better.

Managing Parkinsons DiseaseBeing diagnosed with any health problem is taxing, but correctly understanding it is the key to dealing with a progressive, neurological condition. One such neurological condition is Parkinsons disease, first described by James Parkinsons 200 years ago. It is characterised by tremours, overall slowing, rigidity, falls, speech troubles, constipation and more.With research ongoing to find a permanent cure, there are many things one can routinely do to keep its multifaceted symptoms under control.On World Parkinsons Day, Dr Azad M Irani, Consultant Department of Neurology at Jaslok Hospital and Research Centre, shares some points that will help you fight the disease.

Educating Oneself About Their IllnessUnderstanding the disease is a key to successful management. Once diagnosed with Parkinsons, request your doctor for reliable sources of information. Avoid reading unreliable information online as it may often be untrue and stressful. Advice received during small talks with relatives and friends must also be counter-checked as it may often be untrue and add to unnecessary stress.

Treatment Compliance And Timely Follow-UpsOne must take medicines on time. Dont miss follow-up appointments. Dont adjust your own medication. These can be harmful.

Physical ActivityAn essential part of successful treatment is daily exercise and physiotherapy, as this can delay progression of symptoms significantly if done regularly. Adequate sleep, preventing constipation are very important to minimise symptoms. The significance of weight loss for those overweight-obese should be emphasised. Continuing household chores, taking walks, and yoga help delay progression of symptoms significantly.

Healthy LifestyleKeeping oneself fit with a nutritious diet, sleeping on time, and daily meditation to relax calm a worried mind.

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Scientists find the secret ingredient to keep brain healthy; exercise in a pill may soon be a reality - Economic Times

This article appeared in Electronic Design and has been published here with permission.

Unless youre involved in cellular-biology research, you may not know about electroporation, which is a powerful yet basic method for delivering small molecules (RNA, DNA, drugs) across cell membranes by application of an electrical field. Its used in situations such as genetic engineering of cells related to drug- and DNA-based vaccine delivery, whereby a tool called an electroporator applies a jolt of electricity to temporarily open cell walls.

(Technical aside for non-biology-lab audience: One of the roles of a cell membrane is to serve as a protective border, isolating the inner workings of a living cell from the outside environment. But with a brief jolt of electricityelectroporationthat membrane will temporarily open and allow foreign molecules to flow in. This process has been used for decades in molecular biology labs for tasks ranging from bacterial detection to genetic engineering.)

Quality test equipment and tools can be expensive, even for relatively simple ones such as electroporators, which deliver a controlled, high-voltage spark and can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. To enable smaller labs and schools to do experiments, a team at Georgia Institute of Technology (better known as Georgia Tech) developed a simple, inexpensive, handheld electroporator dubbed the ElectroPen, inspired by and derived from a common household piezoelectric stove/barbecue lighter (Fig. 1).

1. Shown is a common butane lighter (left) from which researchers obtained a piezoelectric component used in the ElectroPen (right)an inexpensive electroporator that has a 3D-printed case. (Source: Georgia Tech)

Unlike commercial units that require batteries or an ac power source, this electroporator is self-powered by a piezoelectric crystal, thus reducing cost and complexity. It delivers repeatable exponentially decaying pulses of about 2,000 V in 5 ms.

This electroporator wasnt a one-time hack where the objective was simply to successfully repurpose the lighter to another role and then conclude good enough, now were done. Instead their project encompassed upfront material analysis including measurement of various piezoelectric crystals, performance tests like assessing consistency of applied force and resultant voltage output, and even issues of manufacturability at the Georgia Tech location and independent sites (Fig. 2). In addition to electrical and mechanical evaluations at the bench, they also used their device successfully for its intended electroporation experiments.

2. ElectroPen platform: (a) Design of the 3D-printed low-cost electroporation device along with a depiction of its size scale, demonstrating portability. The device is operated simply by pressing down the toggle to trigger the piezoelectric mechanism, resulting in electrical discharge. (b) Design of the alternative electroporation millifluidic channel. The millifluidic-channel design consists of two blocks (shown here in acrylic) covered with aluminum tape to act as electrodes and placed on a base with a gap distance of 0.1 cm. The millifluidic channel can be built out of other materials as an alternative for industrial equivalents. (c) Depiction of the origin of the piezoelectric ignition mechanism found within the common stove lighter. The inset is the striker/piezoelectric mechanism of the lighter. The region with the red cap consists of a metal housing encasing the piezoelectric crystal. The middle black region consists of the spring-latch mechanism that strikes the crystal. The bottom black region (rightmost) consists of a wedge thats the origin for user-applied force and triggers the spring mechanism. The toggle on a lighter directly exerts a force on this mechanism to produce a spark. (d) Illustration of the general protocol for using the ElectroPen system. The cellular suspension is added to the gap in the millifluidic channel, after which the ElectroPen is connected and pressed to trigger a voltage potential. The cell suspension is then recovered in Luria Bertani broth (a commonly used nutritionally rich medium for culturing bacteria) and plated. (e) Illustration of the individual components of the 3D-printed ElectroPen platform and custom millifluidic channel. (Source: Georgia Tech)

For example, the team tested several different lighter crystals to find ones that produced a consistent voltage using a spring-based mechanism with a 1000-frame/s camera to study the device mechanics in slow motion (Fig. 3). The final bill of materials (BOM) included copper-plated wire, heat-shrink wire insulation, and aluminum tape. To hold it all together, the researchers designed a 3D-printed casing that also serves as its activator. With all of the parts on hand, the device can be assembled in 15 minutes.

3. Spring-latch mechanisms for repeatable generation of high-voltage pulses. (a) Image of the striking mechanism (hammer action) found within the piezo igniter in a lighter (arrow indicates location of crystal) (i). The parts include, from top to bottom, metal conductor (gold-colored region) housing the piezoelectric crystal, springs, hammer, release spring and geometrical latch (ii). The presence of two springs is to decouple the loading and release phase for consistent voltage output. (b) Images of the hammer and PZT crystal. The circular surface area of the hammer comes into direct contact with a pin that strikes the piezoelectric crystal, generating a voltage through the piezoelectric effect. (c) Snapshots from high-speed video illustrating the position of the hammer during the loading, latch-release and relaxation phases (i). Free-body diagram indicating movement of each part through each phase of the hammer action, including activation and deactivation of spring forces (ii). (d) Plot of displacement of the hammer and the lower case as a function of time obtained using high-speed image video. (e,f,g) Zooming into the dynamics of the hammer during the latch-release phase reveals that the hammer achieves a peak velocity of 8 ms1 in 0.5 m/s, which corresponds to an acceleration of 30,000 m/s2. The explosive acceleration results in a 10-N force (mass of hammer is 0.3 grams) exerted over a tiny area of the PZT crystal. (Source: Georgia Tech)

Noted M. Saad Bhamla, assistant professor in Georgia Techs School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, One of the fundamental reasons this device works is that the piezoelectric crystal produces a consistently high voltage, independent of the amount of force applied by the user. Our experiments showed that the hammer in these lighters is able to achieve acceleration of 3,000 gs, which explains why it is capable of generating such a high burst of voltage.

As a final confirmation of the designs practicality, they shared the design files, sample protocols and digital instructions with research teams at other institutions, who were then able to build and use their own low-cost, DIY electroporators.

A detailed schematic, BOM, links to component sources, assembly instructions and related documentation for the ElectroPen device project are in their published paper or being made available along with the files necessary for creating a 3D-printed enclosure. The paper ElectroPen: An ultra-lowcost, electricity-free, portable electroporator, published in PLOS Biology, closes with a realistic assessment of the capabilities and limitations of this device compared to commercial ones. The Supplemental Information available via the same link also includes numerous text and video files covering design, test, and evaluation. The project was supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

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Composite Thermoelectric Generator Material Easily Flexes and Stretches - Machine Design

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic can be felt across the chemical industry. The growing inability in the production and manufacturing processes, in the light of the self-quarantined workforce has caused a major disruption in the supply chain across the sector. Restrictions encouraged by this pandemic are obstructing the production of essentials such as life-saving drugs.

Chromatography resins are used in the purification and separation of proteins and other bio-molecules in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, food manufacturing, and environmental analysis.Chromatography resins are of three types: Synthetic, natural and inorganic media. Natural polymers include agarose, cellulose and dextran, among others, while synthetic resins include ion exchange resins. The natural and synthetic typesare the more preferred chromatography resins as compared to inorganic media. Chromatography resins are used in affinity, mixed-mode, ion-exchange,hydrophobic interaction and size exclusion techniques.In terms of revenues,Protein A resins accounted for the highest share of the market.In technology terms, ion-exchange chromatography witnessed the highest consumption in the past few years. On the other hand, affinity chromatography resins held the key share by revenue largely due to the higher selling costsassociated with affinity resins

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The main driver for the chromatography resinsis huge demand for monoclonal antibodies.There has been a huge demand for monoclonal bodies owing to a growing number of critical diseases resulting in thesetypes of therapeutics to swiftly gain significance.Food analytics is also one of the major drivers for the chromatography resins market. Chromatography resins are used in nutraceuticals and nutritional chemistry. Chromatography resins are used to detect food additives (adulteration) which has been major issue in the food industry. Biotechnology & pharmaceuticals are the leading end-users for chromatography resins and are likely to gain more importance in the near future.Chromatography resins are also used in industrial applications such as water treatment and environmental analysis. Some of the academic uses of chromatography resins are in genetic engineering and drug recovery which can provide various opportunities for the chromatography resins market. In spite of numerous applications, regulations associated with these applications can act as a major restraint for the chromatography resins market in the coming years.

In terms of demand, North Americawas the leading region for the chromatography resinsmarket. The demand in this region was mainly driven by biotechnology and pharmaceutical applications. The U.S. exhibited a major demand for chromatography resins and this regions increasing health expense trendshave been indirectly driving the market for chromatography resins.Europe was the other leading market for chromatography resins in the past few years and is expected to show good growth numbers over the near future. Pharmaceuticals and food analytics were the major applications for the chromatography resins in this region. The major European countries such as Germany, UK, France and Italy were the major consumers of chromatography resins in the past decade. There is currently a huge demand for chromatography resins in Asia Pacific, particularly from China, South Korea and India due to the growing pharmaceutical industry in these countries.Additionally, the emergence of CMOs and CROs is further driving the chromatography resins market in the Asia Pacific region. The Rest of the World is likely to exhibit stable demand for chromatography resins market over the forecast period. South America and The Middle East region are anticipated to be the potential markets for chromatography resins.

Some of the key players in the chromatography resins market are Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., GE Healthcare Life Sciences, Tosoh Corporation, Merck KGaA, Life Technologies Corporation, Repligen Corporation, and Pall Corporationamong others.Lower prices with higher productivity and new innovative products had been the key strategies for the manufacturers to gain the competitive advantage in the market. Life Technologies is expected to unveil POROS chromatography resins in Biopharmaceutical Development & Production Week Conference (BPD) to be held in California. Purolite International Ltd. announced its plans to develop bio-separation chromatography resins based on the agarose media. The new product line is likely to meet growing demand of the biomolecules market.

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Chromatography Resins Market to Witness Rise in Revenues During the Period 2015 2021 - Cole of Duty

New London, the backdrop of Brave New World

In 1932, British novelist Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, considered by many to be the seminal work of modern dystopian science fiction in the English language. Along with Mary Shelley's Frankensteinand then, later, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, these nightmarish masterpieces have given society pause on the dangers of technological progress throughout the decades and have become part of many high school and college literary reading lists.

At the time of Brave New World's publication, the world was still recovering from the horrors of the 1918 pandemic and World War I, each claiming millions of lives. Society had entered an age of mass industrialization, pioneered by Henry Ford's assembly line. These developments, along with the emergence of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin's dictatorship, created a perfect backdrop for Huxley to create his dystopian future, one of a single world state, with no privacy, no individuality, no families, and no self-determination.

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Huxley's future takes place in 2540 AD. Its test-tube gestated, genetically engineered citizens are fed an endless supply of mood-stabilizing drugs. They are kept happy with all forms of sensory distractions, including non-stop sexual activity. It frightened and titillated the public in 1932and, perhaps, still does.

There have been several attempts to update Brave New World in television and film. However, the original work, when adapted, hasn't resonated particularly well with most audiences. As with Nineteen Eighty-Four, which took the idea of the world state, conformity, and mind control even further, it is a depressing, emotionally taxing tale. But it remains an essential, even foundational work of literature that others have shamelessly copied over the almost 90 years since its initial release.

We have seen echoes of the novel's dystopian themes in later works of film and television: THX-1138, Logan's Run, Brazil, The Fifth Element, The Matrix, Minority Report, GATTACA, Equilibrium, The Island, The Hunger Games, Elysium, Westworld, and so many others.

Brave New World has finally gotten the update it deserves with the launch of NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service, in the form of a nine-episode seriesthat expands upon and diverges from the original work. It even leaves open the possibility for a second season. The cast and characters are all outstanding, and it's well worth watching, especially with the service's free 7-day trial, which you can view on your web browser, mobile devices, and other supported hardware.

As with the original work, civilized society appears to be controlled by a single world government. Its citizens are kept in a state of constant emotional bliss by the use of "Soma," the generic pharmaceutical that appears to be infused in all the food and drink the citizens consume. It's the ever-present nonpareil candy that drops out of each citizen's Pez-like candy dispensers, which make their appearance with unnerving spring-loaded, double-clicking sounds in virtually every scene. They pop it, effortlessly, like Tic-Tacs. And they never run out.

Doors do not have locks, and everyone is fitted with an augmented reality contact lens "Optic" that provides the ability to recognize one another's status (signifier) as well as experience the life-logs and intimate thoughts and feelings of any individual, on-demand, connected to a network and decentralized AI known only as "Indra."

All citizens have and know their place in life, predetermined at conception, which is done artificially and using genetic engineering to determine intelligence level. Children are conceived in a laboratory rather and are raised and "conditioned" by the world government rather than growing up in a family environment.

Also:2084: What happens when artificial intelligence meets Big Brother

On the surface, it does sound awful. Except that there are too many upsides to ignore.

Let's begin with Soma. Sure, everyone is on drugs, but it's not like anyone is nonfunctional and can't go to work the next day after partying with it the night before. Nobody ever gets truly upset or completely emotionally distraught. At least in this TV version, it doesn't appear you can overdose on regular use of Soma (although there is an allusion to a "Soma Red" for euthanasia), nor does it appear to be physiologically addictive because nobody seems to go through withdrawal when they stop using it. It works instantly, and it appears to have a relatively short half-life. It's like super-CBD. Sign me up, tomorrow, on Amazon Subscribe and Save.

Compare this with benzodiazepines like Xanax and related drugs like Valium and Klonopin, which have been a first-line psychiatric medication for treating anxiety and depression for over five decades. Benzos, unlike Soma, create a physiological dependency to the point where discontinuing their use can result in seizures if not correctly weaned off.

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) drugs like Zoloft can cause debilitating side effects, including sexual ones. Can they help people? Sure. They're particularly useful for treating acute conditions and short-term issues, but withdrawal is also a problem.

The citizens of New London seem to have no dysfunctions at all. Not only are they incredibly sexually active (to the point of it being their primary source of entertainment, because "everyone belongs to everyone else" and after-hours life, night after night, is one big party), but everyone seems to be in perfect physical shape, attractive, and they never grow old. Violence and crime of any sort are unheard of, and are remnants of the "before times."

Oh yes, people do die, and there are a few scenes that discuss death and how people cope with it (spoiler: they don't have to), but it's never fully explained just how long people can live. Many citizens appear to live to at least a hundred years old, and the society's leaders, the Alpha Pluses, when shown, never look a day over fifty. Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, looks like she could be maybe 55 -- but we never really know just how old. She could be as much as two centuries old based on what is revealed in later episodes. So, medical technology in this society is absolutely top-notch (at least by 20th century standards).

Seriously, given the COVID-19 hellscape we are now living in, I'll take it.

Let's get into the world of New London itself -- it's so freaking clean, with beautiful open-air modern architecture that looks like Star Trek and Logan's Run had a love child, with none of the Trantor-esque downsides of futuristic overpopulated cities we've seen in Blade Runner, Judge Dredd, The Fifth Element, or Star Wars.

Gorgeous, huge towering white buildings, advanced public transportation systems, silent flying autonomous driven vehicles, beautiful public outdoor spaces with greenery, all interspersed with the technology. And absolutely no pollution whatsoever; it's always crystal clear even when it inevitably rains in New London. If you get bored with your surroundings, they have rocket ships that will take you on a sub-orbital parabolic flight to the other side of the planet, Virgin Galactic-style, in less than 15 minutes. Citizens can visit the "Savage Lands" theme park in New Mexico and view Epcot-like re-enactments of what life was like before everything became perfect and clean, in all their trailer park glory.

I'm trying to come up with a potential downside to this, and I can't.

Did I say it was clean? It's so spotless that, when people occasionally drop their Optic Interface contact lenses on the floor, they put them right back into their eyes! Who doesn't want to live in an environment like that? Everyone also has their own gorgeous, spacious condo -- well, at least if you are an Alpha or a Beta. But even the lowly Epsilons get their own single bedroom apartments and their needs are taken care of. Have you ever tried to rent an apartment in San Francisco on even a $200,000-per-year salary without a roommate? Yeah.

But that caste system. Oh yes, let's not forget about that. Society is led by a small number of Alphas, who are engineered to be smarter than the Betas (who, in addition to making up most of the skilled workforce, are there for everyone's sexual pleasure, because monogamy is taboo and considered destabilizing). Society would fall apart without the blue-collar Gamma servants, the Delta proletariat, and lastly, the Epsilons, which are clones with no emotional state whatsoever and do all the lousy menial labor (but, interestingly, get to live out in the verdant English countryside, which Alphas and Betas never see).

Yes, a caste system sounds terrible, but in this world, nobody is truly upset about their place in life, and everyone knows from early childhood based on the conditioning that they have a purpose. In some ways, that's better than billions of people on this planet who live short, unfulfilled lives in complete squalor and despair. And, yes, the idea of being raised by the state in high-tech orphanages is hideous, except when you compare that possibility with the fate that will befall hundreds of millions of children on this planet who grow up with no care at all, discarded, despite many having known who their parents were.

We should also point out that on the TV show, yes, there are castes, but (in an important departure from the novel) there's also no racism whatsoever. Races appear to be well-distributed across all the ranks -- World Controller Mond herself is a black woman. There's also no sexism; women are equal to men in seemingly every profession and also appear to occupy positions of significant societal importance.

Additionally, there are no moral implications or judgment applied to any form of sexual congress between people of any identity, either. Although it is not readily apparent that a concept of "trans" or "queer" even exists in this world, that's something they appear to have weeded out of us. Everyone consents, everyone gives themselves to everyone, when it is asked. When your average person attending a public orgy physically looks like they came out of the Sports Illustrated Year 2540 swimsuit calendar, why not? I doubt that these people even smell unpleasant after their fierce rounds of racquetball.

What may have been viewed as horrifying, repulsive, or shocking in 1932 sounds pretty liberating in 2020, as so many people are still struggling to be accepted just because of who they are and what they want to be, and who they want to be with. I'm not suggesting that life should be a Huxleyan orgy, but how New London's people conduct themselves as it relates to each and everyone else's bedroom antics is far more advanced than our version.

We could learn something from what Huxley calls these "decanted" folks, who emerge from a test tube into the world.

Also:Grandpa, tell me about the days before the Great Distancing

What else? There's no organized religion. Unlike the book, in which Henry Ford is worshiped as some sort of prophet, there is nothing worshipped here other than the technology itself. Their "god" is Indra, which fulfills the purpose of social network and an ever-present watchful eye (which everyone can tune into) and even the algorithm that runs and plans society itself.

Then there are all the distractions such as "feelies" (virtual and augmented reality taken to the dimension of physical sensations), all the crappy house-style music with no words, and no works of fiction or art, per se.

It's a society that operates in a Roman orgy-like state with virtually no culture, which is what Huxley viewed socialism and communism to be when taken to the absolute extremes.

But in many ways, we have our own "Indra." We have Facebook and Twitter, which serve as constant distractions and are cancerous sources of misinformation spread, which continuously make people miserable and help to create endless division and strife.

We choose to be endlessly connected to them, and we allow them to influence us, with all sorts of altered versions of the truth. It's true that the citizens of New London have no privacy and are under constant observation. Still, they can get the unfiltered truth anytime they want. That's not the case with our society, where competition for our collective attention originates from a never-ending feed of crap from questionable sources, and academic expertise and science are always questioned.

Whatever else this imagined future society has done to dehumanize itself, it has still managed to erase humanity's absolute worst social evils. We may not have "castes" in the strict Huxleyan sense, but we now have societal division among political, gender, ethnicity, and race-motivated lines that threaten to tear us apart.

Maybe it's time we start thinking about our old dystopias as sources of inspiration to improve our society. Talk Back and Let Me Know.

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Brave New World is looking pretty good, all things considered - ZDNet

A competition that is getting higher day by day has kept many challenges in front of the businesses. So, this Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market business research report is a definite source to gain valuable market insights and take better decisions about the important business strategies. This business document endows clients with the information on their business scenario with which they can build business strategies to thrive in the market. This Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market report also provides the details about the market drivers and market restraints for industry that help in understanding rise or fall of the demand of particular product with respect to market conditions.

Global nucleic acid isolation and purification market is expected to rise from its initial estimated value of USD 3292.28 million in 2018 to an estimated value of USD 6512 million by 2026, registering a CAGR of 8.90% in the forecast period of 2019-2026. This rise in market value can be attributed to the increasing advancement technological and automation of products.

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Competitive Analysis: Global Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market

Global nucleic acid isolation and purification market is highly fragmented and the major players have used various strategies such as new product launches, expansions, agreements, joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, and others to increase their footprints in this market. The report includes market shares of nucleic acid isolation and purification market for Global, Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, South America and Middle East & Africa.

Key Market Competitors: Global Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market

Few of the major competitors currently working in the nucleic acid isolation and purification market are Illumina, Inc. (US), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc (US), Agilent Technologies, Inc (US), QIAGEN (Germany), Protean (US), Hamilton Company (US), GENERAL ELECTRIC (US), Promega Corporation (US), Biocompare (USA), BiogeniQ Inc (USA), Envigo (UK), LGC Limited (UK), PerkinElmer Inc (US), New England Biolabs (US), Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (US), Synbio Technologies (US), addgene (USA), BD (US), InvivoGen (US), GeneCopoeia, Inc. (UAS), among others. LGC Limited

Global Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market By Product (Kits, Reagents, Instruments), Technology (Column-Based, Reagent-Based, Magnetic Bead-Based), Application (Plasmid DNA, Total RNA, Blood DNA, Genomic DNA, Messenger RNA, Micro RNA, PCR Cleanup), Type (Plasmid Dna Isolation and Purification , Total Rna Isolation and Purification, Genomic Dna Isolation and Purification, Messenger Rna Isolation and Purification, Microrna Isolation and Purification, Circulating Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification, PCR Cleanup), End User (Academic and Government Research Institutes, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies, Contract Research Organizations, Hospitals and Diagnostic Centers, Other End Users), Geography (North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa) Industry Trends & Forecast to 2026

Market Definition: Global Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market

Nucleic acid isolation and purification technique is the step in molecular biology studies and recombinant DNA techniques. This technique has extensive applications in the arena of genetic engineering, life science research, forensics and molecular diagnostics. Nucleic acid isolation helps in processing of more sample in less time, minimizes nucleic acid loss ad degradation and increases laboratory efficiency and effectiveness.

According to the US Department of Health & Human Services, in 2016 there were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, of these, 2.1 million were children (15 years old).

Market Drivers

Market Restraints

Segmentation: Global Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market

By Product

By Application

By Type

By End User

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Nucleic Acid Isolation and Purification Market Industry is Thriving with Rising Latest Trends by 2027 - Cole of Duty

Genetic engineering, the artificial manipulation, modification, and recombination of DNA or other nucleic acid molecules in order to modify an organism or population of organisms.

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origins of agriculture: Genetic engineering

The application of genetics to agriculture since World War II has resulted in substantial increases in the production of many crops. This...

The term genetic engineering initially referred to various techniques used for the modification or manipulation of organisms through the processes of heredity and reproduction. As such, the term embraced both artificial selection and all the interventions of biomedical techniques, among them artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization (e.g., test-tube babies), cloning, and gene manipulation. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the term came to refer more specifically to methods of recombinant DNA technology (or gene cloning), in which DNA molecules from two or more sources are combined either within cells or in vitro and are then inserted into host organisms in which they are able to propagate.

The possibility for recombinant DNA technology emerged with the discovery of restriction enzymes in 1968 by Swiss microbiologist Werner Arber. The following year American microbiologist Hamilton O. Smith purified so-called type II restriction enzymes, which were found to be essential to genetic engineering for their ability to cleave a specific site within the DNA (as opposed to type I restriction enzymes, which cleave DNA at random sites). Drawing on Smiths work, American molecular biologist Daniel Nathans helped advance the technique of DNA recombination in 197071 and demonstrated that type II enzymes could be useful in genetic studies. Genetic engineering based on recombination was pioneered in 1973 by American biochemists Stanley N. Cohen and Herbert W. Boyer, who were among the first to cut DNA into fragments, rejoin different fragments, and insert the new genes into E. coli bacteria, which then reproduced.

Most recombinant DNA technology involves the insertion of foreign genes into the plasmids of common laboratory strains of bacteria. Plasmids are small rings of DNA; they are not part of the bacteriums chromosome (the main repository of the organisms genetic information). Nonetheless, they are capable of directing protein synthesis, and, like chromosomal DNA, they are reproduced and passed on to the bacteriums progeny. Thus, by incorporating foreign DNA (for example, a mammalian gene) into a bacterium, researchers can obtain an almost limitless number of copies of the inserted gene. Furthermore, if the inserted gene is operative (i.e., if it directs protein synthesis), the modified bacterium will produce the protein specified by the foreign DNA.

A subsequent generation of genetic engineering techniques that emerged in the early 21st century centred on gene editing. Gene editing, based on a technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, allows researchers to customize a living organisms genetic sequence by making very specific changes to its DNA. Gene editing has a wide array of applications, being used for the genetic modification of crop plants and livestock and of laboratory model organisms (e.g., mice). The correction of genetic errors associated with disease in animals suggests that gene editing has potential applications in gene therapy for humans.

Genetic engineering has advanced the understanding of many theoretical and practical aspects of gene function and organization. Through recombinant DNA techniques, bacteria have been created that are capable of synthesizing human insulin, human growth hormone, alpha interferon, a hepatitis B vaccine, and other medically useful substances. Plants may be genetically adjusted to enable them to fix nitrogen, and genetic diseases can possibly be corrected by replacing dysfunctional genes with normally functioning genes. Nevertheless, special concern has been focused on such achievements for fear that they might result in the introduction of unfavourable and possibly dangerous traits into microorganisms that were previously free of theme.g., resistance to antibiotics, production of toxins, or a tendency to cause disease. Likewise, the application of gene editing in humans has raised ethical concerns, particularly regarding its potential use to alter traits such as intelligence and beauty.

In 1980 the new microorganisms created by recombinant DNA research were deemed patentable, and in 1986 the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the sale of the first living genetically altered organisma virus, used as a pseudorabies vaccine, from which a single gene had been cut. Since then several hundred patents have been awarded for genetically altered bacteria and plants. Patents on genetically engineered and genetically modified organisms, particularly crops and other foods, however, were a contentious issue, and they remained so into the first part of the 21st century.

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genetic engineering | Definition, Process, & Uses | Britannica

As the world endures the impacts of a rapidly changing climatesea level rise, extreme weather events, warming and acidifying oceans (among many others)policy makers and the public should critically examine how food production contributes to these worrying trends. Animal agriculture may be the best place to start since, many scientists argue, its the single biggest cause of biodiversity loss and a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Over a quarter of the worlds land surface is currently dedicated to raising animals for food, but that practice can be exceptionally wasteful. Despite taking up almost 80 percent of global agricultural land, livestock represents less than 20 percent of the worlds calories. Proper stewardship of the land, which absorbs nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, is critical in our fight against climate change, but human activities degrade roughly a quarter of it, and livestock production is perhaps the primary culprit.

To help combat these growing environmental challenges, concerned citizens around the world are eating more sustainable and arguably healthier diets that partially or entirely replace meat with fish, crustaceans, and other aquatic animals. Fish production generally has a lower environmental impact than land animal farming, owing to the fact that fish require less feed. Most fish are poikilotherms, which means they dont use energy to heat their bodies. And unlike most land animals (homeotherms), fish dont need to constantly maintain their body temperatures, which tend to fluctuate with their external environment. Moreover, the density of water carries the weight of the fish, eliminating the requirement for heavy bones.

Despite its lower environmental footprint, global fish productionwhich includes wild capture and aquaculture (fish farming)has its own sustainability issues. Around one-third of the worlds marine fish stocks have reached unsustainable levels due to overfishing. Simultaneously, the global demand for fish and nutritional oils containing omega-3 fatty acids is increasing rapidly as more consumers recognize that consuming them is linked to reduced cardiovascular disease risk. Saturation in capture fishing since the early 1990s means aquaculture is filling consumer demand for fish. But without significant changes, aquaculture isnt a long-term solution.

Fortunately, a valuable but misunderstood tool can help the industry become more sustainable. Of course, Im talking about biotechnology. Genetic engineering has sped up the production of fish, and enabled the development of sustainable fish feed sources and nutritional oils. All three innovations are marching toward commercialization, and the evidence indicates their collective impact will be enormous.

While commercial fish farms have greatly improved their production systems over the years, feeding fish with fish (primarily fishmeal and oils) still poses a significant sustainability threat. In 2018, global fish production reached around 179 million tons, and humans ate about 88 percent of the produce (156 million tons) while about 10 percent (18 million tons) went towards producing fishmeal and fish oils. Finding alternative feed sources would slash the environmental footprint of aquaculture and contribute to global food security goals.

Breeding better fish

Fish maturity is based on physical features such as shape and size. The faster fish grow, the lower their environmental impact, so innovators have targeted faster growth rates as a solution to the industrys sustainability problem. In 2015, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a bioengineered Atlantic salmon for consumption after decades of rigorous scientific review. The FDA concluded that the genetically engineered AquAdvantage salmon is as safe to eat as any non-genetically engineered Atlantic, and also as nutritious. This salmon is approved for sale in Canada and is slated for commercialization in the US.

Scientists at the biotech firm AquaBounty introduced two different bits of genetic information from other fish species into a bioengineered salmon: a growth hormone gene from the fast-growing Chinook salmon controlled by a DNA switch (promoter) from the ocean pout. Because the Chinook growth hormone gene works overtime, AquaBountys salmon grows to full size in about half the time required by conventional salmonand consumes 25 percent less feed as a result.

Faster growth means the energy and carbon emissions required to produce the fish are lower. And since AquaBountys land-based aquaculture facilities are located in Canada and the US, transporting these fish to market generates lower carbon emission than delivering conventional salmon by air or ship. Additionally, the expansion of genetically engineered fish production could significantly reduce overfishing, since some of salmon feed comes from other wild fish.

Some environmentalists have voiced concerns about the consequences of bioengineered fish escaping into the wild. In theory, genetically engineered fish may flee to the wild, breed with their wild relatives and create a hybrid that could out-compete other fish in the marine ecosystem. Quite rightly, these are serious concerns that require proper attention and strong mitigation plans.

Considering the trade-off between hypothetical risks and the demonstrated benefits of biotechnology in fish production helps us evaluate the situation. AquAdvantage salmon are produced in land-based facilities and are sterile. Regulators at the FDA have therefore concluded its extremely unlikely that the fish could escape and establish themselves in the wild.

Shorter production time and lower feed and energy requirements clearly outweigh the low risk of fish escaping into the wild. And we get all these without compromising the nutritional value of the fish itself. AquaBounty is scheduled to begin producing its bioengineered salmon in the US before the end of 2020, making it the first genetically engineered food animal to hit US markets. As COVID-19 continues to put pressure on food supplies, the introduction of genetically engineered salmon helps illustrate how biotechnology can help solve critical problems.

Alternative fish feeds and fish oils

Bioengineered fish is an important step in the right direction, but it doesnt fully address aquacultures sustainability issues. The industry has developed non-fish based feeds, cutting use of fishmeal and fish oil from 30 million tons in 1994 to about 18 million tons in 2018. But there are concerns that fish products grown on alternative feeds arent providing the same nutritional value as those fed real fish, which is high in omega-3 oils. To understand why, we need to look at the chemistry of these fatty acids.

Omega-3 oils are long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids existing mainly in three types: -linolenic acid (ALA); eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA); and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Plant oils contain ALA, which is the shorter version of EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids, typically found in marine organisms like microalgae and phytoplankton.

Our bodies cant make omega-3, so we mostly get it from eating fish, which incidentally also cant make omega-3 but accumulate it by eating microalgae and phytoplankton. As vegetable oils replace fish oil in aquafeeds, the level of beneficial fatty acids, EPA and DHA, have also declined considerably, reducing the nutritional value that fish offer. Therefore, the aquaculture industry needs to identify aquafeeds that are derived from alternative sources and provide the same level of nutrition.

Algae are a promising source to replace fish oil, but extracting algal oil is more expensive than producing fish oil and fishmeal, though the extraction technology is rapidly developing. Additionally, algae cultivation for aquafeed is sometimes limited to species that only produce DHA fatty acids, which means the algae-fed fish lack EPA, compromising their final nutritional value.

Again, scientists have turned to biotechnology to address this problem. Research teams have engineered plants like camelina and canola that contain high levels of EPA and DHA in their seed oil. These plants naturally produce the shorter version of omega-3, ALA, and scientists introduced microalgal genes that convert ALA into EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids typically found in fish. Research shows that fish fed with seed oil from these camelina plants show good growth, maintain feed efficiency and dont lose nutritional valueindicating that genetically engineered plants can provide a sustainable substitute for fish oil feeds.

Now innovators are aiming to produce omega-3 oils from camelina for aquafeeds and nutritional supplements. Biotech startup Yield10 Bioscience has fused artificial intelligence with synthetic biology to create a technology that identifies trait targets to produce better plants. Using their technology platform and genome editing, they have generated camelina plants that produce double seed yields with a high content of both EPA and DHA omega-3 oils. The company has recently launched field trials of their genome-edited seeds. They are scaling seed production, aiming to plant thousands of acres of camelina to produce plant-based omega-3 oil products for fish feed and human nutrition soon. Crucially, the USDA announced in January 2020 that it wont regulate gene-edited camelina, accelerating development of this sustainable omega-3 oil source.

Biotechnology is already accelerating production of environmentally friendly salmon, and is poised to provide more sustainable fish feed and nutritional oils in the coming years. It could also bring aquaculture production costs down, reducing incentives to overfish our oceans, which will no doubt be better for the marine ecosystem.

Surging fish demand will only be met by sustainable, low-cost solutions, enabled in key instances by biotechnology. Technical details aside, the benefits of broader biotechnology adoption in aquaculture will extend beyond the developed world to improve the lives of those most in needimpoverished people in the developing world.

Rupesh Paudyal holds a PhD in plant science and covers agriculture and the environment as a freelance writer. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter @TalkPlant

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Viewpoint: Fish farming has a sustainability problem and genetic engineering might be the solution - Genetic Literacy Project

Over the last century, the field of genetics and biotechnology has greatly developed because of the better understanding of the gene. Because of the improvement of technology, scientists have already gone up until the manipulation of the genome (complete set of genes) of organisms. This process is called genetic engineering. In this article, we will explore 13 important genetic engineering pros and cons.

The sharing of genetic material among living organisms is known to be a natural event. This phenomenon is known to be very evident among bacteria, hence they are called natures own genetic engineer. Such phenomenon is the inspiration of scientists in this endeavor.

In literature, there are in fact many synonyms of the term genetic engineering: genetic modification, genome manipulation, genetic enhancement, and many more. However, this term shall not be confused with cloning because genetic engineering involves the production of new set of genes while the latter only involves the production of the same copies of genes in the organism.

Genetic engineering is the process of manipulating an organisms genome using biotechnology and the products of it are either referred to as genetically modified or transgenic organisms. Check out the disadvantages of genetically modified foods here.

Basically, genetic engineering is done by inserting a gene of interest from sources like bacteria, viruses, plants, and animals into the target organism. As a result, the organism with the inserted gene of interest is now able to carry out the new trait or characteristic.

This technology grants us the ability to overcome barriers, exchange genes among organisms, and produce new organisms with favorable traits.

For a more detailed explanation of the process, check out this video below:

Now we will dive into the pros and cons of Genetic Engineering now.

Supporters of genetic engineering believe that genetic engineering is indeed safe and is still comparable to the traditional process of breeding in plants and animals. Advocates of genetic engineering support the technology primarily because of the following reasons:

On the other hand, there are several types of potential health effects that could arise from the insertion of a novel gene into an organism. Critics disagree with the methods of genetic engineering because of:

Because of the technology used to create genetically modified crops and animals, private companies that produce them do not share their products at a reasonable cost with the public.

In addition, they believe that the process is somewhat disrupting the natural way and complexity of life. In addition to this, critics fear the misuse and abuse of biotechnology.

Indeed, genetic engineering will always have two opposite sides. While the possibilities of what science can create are endless, and the harmful effects also are. At present, it is important to know that the real risks and benefits of genetic engineering lie in how science is interpreted and used.

But theres really no doubt that with the rapid advancements in technology, the creation of GM organisms are also increasing.

What do you think? Are GM organisms slowly becoming the future?

See the article here:

13 Important Genetic Engineering Pros And Cons | Bio Explorer