Monthly Archives: March 2014

Koichi Wakata becomes International Space Station first Japanese commander – Video

Posted: March 11, 2014 at 5:45 pm


Koichi Wakata becomes International Space Station first Japanese commander
The International Space Station has a new commander. Koichi Wakata took over the reins during a ceremony on the ISS which was watched by ground control. He i...

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3 space station crew members back on Earth

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The Soyuz TMA-10M crew, relaxing shortly after returning to Earth from the International Space Station; left to right: flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy, commander Oleg Kotov and NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins NASA TV

Despite strained relations over Russian actions in Ukraine, superpower cooperation in space continued unabated Monday with two cosmonauts and a NASA astronaut departing the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz ferry craft and plunging to a landing in snowy Kazakhstan to close out a 166-day mission.

Landing in arctic conditions, with low clouds, snow and temperatures near zero degrees Fahrenheit, the Soyuz TMA-10M crew module settled to a jarring parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown at 11:24 p.m. EDT (9:24 a.m. Tuesday local time).

Earlier in the day, the weather prompted concern the crew's return might be delayed. Russian recovery forces deployed in a fleet of MI-8 helicopters were unable to initially reach the landing site because of rotor icing and had to return to a staging area in nearby Karaganda.

But mission managers ultimately decided to press ahead, and Soyuz commander Oleg Kotov, flight engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy and NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins were cleared to proceed with the entry, undocking from the International Space Station's upper Poisk module at 8:02 p.m.

"Bye, bye, station," one of the crew members radioed on the translated space-to-ground audio loop.

After moving a safe distance away from the space station, Kotov, strapped into the craft's center seat, monitored a four-minute-50-second rocket firing starting at 10:30 p.m. to slow the spacecraft by about 286 mph. That was just enough to lower the far side of the orbit into the atmosphere for a steep plunge to Kazakhstan.

"Everything is fine on board. Pressure is stable, everything is (normal)," a crew member radioed.

Moments before falling into the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of 87 miles, the three modules making up the TMA-10M spacecraft split apart, and the central 6,400-pound crew module positioned itself with its heat shield forward to endure the extreme temperatures of atmospheric entry.

The entry appeared to go smoothly, and the spacecraft's main parachute unfurled at an altitude of about 6-and-a-half miles, slowing the craft to about 16 mph for the final stages of the descent. Because of cloud cover, the landing was not seen in real-time video, but Russian flight controllers in radio contact with the spacecraft said the crew was in good condition.

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Space Station crew returns to Earth

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Washington, Mar 11 : Three crew members from the International Space Station returned to Earth Monday after 166 days in space, during which they made 2,656 orbits around the planet and traveled almost 70.5 million miles

Expedition 38 crew members Michael Hopkins of NASA, and Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) touched down southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, at about 11:24 p.m. EDT (9:24 a.m., March 11, in Dzhezkazgan).

During Expedition 38, the crew members participated in a variety of research, including protein crystal growth studies and biological studies of plant seedling growth to technology demonstrations that are helping to improve our understanding of how liquid moves in microgravity.

They conducted student experiments that observed celestial events in space. One of several key research focus areas during Expedition 38 was human health management for long duration space travel, as NASA and Roscosmos prepare for two crew members to spend one year aboard the space station in 2015.

During their time aboard the orbiting laboratory, the three men were there to welcome three visiting cargo spacecraft. Two Russian Progress crafts docked to the station, bringing tons of supplies.

In January, Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Cygnus spacecraft loaded with cargo and experiments flew to the space station as part of the Orbital-1 cargo resupply mission. This was the company's first of at least eight cargo delivery flights through 2016 to the station under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract.

Kotov, Ryazanskiy and Hopkins were on hand as Mastracchio, Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency arrived on Nov. 7, 2013, bearing the Olympic torch used to light the Olympic flame at Fisht Stadium in Sochi, Russia, which marked the start of the 2014 Winter Games in February.

Hopkins and fellow Expedition 38 NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio ventured outside the confines of the space station during two spacewalks in December to replace a suspect ammonia pump that is part of the station's equipment cooling system. On the Russian side, Kotov and Ryazanskiy conducted three spacewalks.

The first trip outside was to install and replace experiments and hardware attached to the exterior of the Russian segment and display the Olympic torch. The other two walks were to install a pair of cameras on the hull of the station's Zvezda Service Module that are part of a Canadian commercial endeavor with Roscosmos designed to downlink Earth-observation imagery to Internet-based subscribers.

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Genetic engineering got wrong – Video

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Genetic engineering got wrong
Frankenstein version.

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Gene therapy for lysosomal storage disease shown to be safe and well tolerated

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

11-Mar-2014

Contact: Jennifer Quigley jquigley@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2149 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, March 11, 2014Several young children suffering from a severe degenerative genetic disease received injections of therapeutic genes packaged within a noninfectious viral delivery vector. Safety, tolerability, and efficacy results from this early stage clinical trial are reported in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Human Gene Therapy website.

Marc Tardieu, Universit Paris-Sud and INSERM, and a team of international researchers administered the adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector carrying a normal copy of the N-sulfoglycosamine sulfohydrolase (SGSH) gene into the brains of four children affected by mucopolysaccharidosis type IIIA (MPSIIIA), an inherited lysosomal storage disease in which the SGSH gene is defective. The AAV vector also delivered a sulfatase-modifying factor (SUMF1), needed to activate the SGSH protein.

In addition to measures of toxicity, adverse events, and tolerability, the researchers evaluated the children for brain shrinkage (a characteristic of MPSIIIA) and for changes in behavior, attention, sleep, and cognitive benefit. They describe their findings in the article "Intracerebral administration of AAV rh.10 carrying human SGSH and SUMF1 cDNAs in children with MPSIIIA disease: results of a phase I/II trial."

"This is an important new approach for treating CNS manifestations of lysosomal storage diseases that could be applied across a wide array of disorders," says James M. Wilson, MD, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Human Gene Therapy, and Director of the Gene Therapy Program, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia.

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About the Journal

Human Gene Therapy, the official journal of the European Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy, French Society of Cell and Gene Therapy, German Society of Gene Therapy, and five other gene therapy societies, is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published monthly in print and online. Human Gene Therapy presents reports on the transfer and expression of genes in mammals, including humans. Related topics include improvements in vector development, delivery systems, and animal models, particularly in the areas of cancer, heart disease, viral disease, genetic disease, and neurological disease, as well as ethical, legal, and regulatory issues related to the gene transfer in humans. Its sister journals, Human Gene Therapy Methods, published bimonthly and focuses on the application of gene therapy to product testing and development, and Human Gene Therapy Clinical Development, published quarterly, features data relevant to the regulatory review and commercial development of cell and gene therapy products. Tables of content for all three publications and a free sample issue may be viewed on the Human Gene Therapy website.

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Three-person IVF has nothing to do with eugenics

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March 12, 2014, 12:13 a.m.

A new technique looks set to soon allow consenting parents to have a child who will not suffer from a serious disability.

Parents in the UK look set to become the first in the world to use a radical IVF technique that some critics have condemned as eugenic engineering. If approved by parliament, so called "three person IVF" could be available on the National Health Service as early as next year.

Supporters hail the technique as a cure for the debilitating and incurable diseases caused by defective genetic material in a part of the mother's egg cell called the mitochondria. It involves implanting the nucleus of a woman's egg into another woman's egg cell which has healthy mitochondria and has had its nucleus removed. The process can take place before or after the egg is fertilised using a man's sperm.

Although the genetic contribution of the egg donor is very small (1 per cent) and won't be detectable in the child's appearance and psychological characteristics, the transfer of genetic material affects the genetic constitution of the egg and the embryo. This means that changes will not only affect the child but also the child's descendants, and there has been criticism of the risk of introducing bad traits through the generations though there have been government assurances that the process will be closely monitored in the UK.

One of the distinctions that ought to play a crucial role in this debate is between genetic engineering that aims to remove a serious disability and engineering designed to make people more intelligent, better looking, stronger or more assertive. And it is the latter that has raised the spectre of eugenics.

Eugenics, of course, is reviled because of the policies adopted by a number of states in the first part of the 20th century, most famously the Nazis, to build a more productive and healthy population by eliminating from the gene pool those regarded it regarded as unfit. And the debate over the ethical implications of mitochondrial transfer is very much alive.

In the Council of Europe, 34 member politicians declared that the creation of babies from the DNA of three parents was a form of eugenics "incompatible with human dignity and international law". They claimed it contravened a European Union human rights convention that forbids genetic interventions that affect the human germ-line by altering the genome of descendants.

The thinking behind this prohibition is that tampering of this kind is not only dangerous, but makes humans into a product of engineering. Even if intentions are good, the use of such techniques undermines the reasons we have for respecting human individuals. Humans are supposed to be valuable in themselves. Products are merely means to ends.

The bad history of eugenics is a good reason why a state should not be allowed to use genetic technology for its purposes. But the practice of mitochondrial transfer and the motivation behind it have nothing to do with eugenics as it was once practiced. It would allow consenting parents to have a child who will not suffer from a serious disability.

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'Fly' meeting to spotlight research advances in genetics

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

11-Mar-2014

Contact: Cathy Yarbrough sciencematter@yahoo.com 858-243-1814 Genetics Society of America

Over 1,500 scientists from Asia, Europe and the U.S. are expected to attend the Genetics Society of America (GSA)'s 55th annual Drosophila Research Conference, March 26 to 30, 2014, at the San Diego Town and Country Resort and Conference Center, San Diego, CA. Link to conference webpage: http://www.genetics-gsa.org/drosophila/2014/

At the conference's over 940 platform and poster presentations, scientists will report on the latest research on such topics as cell biology and the cytoskeleton, RNA biology, screening of experimental therapeutics in fly models as well as fly models of such human diseases as cancer, epilepsy, heart disease and diabetes.

The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is one of the most commonly studied model organisms. Research presented at the Drosophila conference, like those at other GSA conferences, helps advance our fundamental understanding of living systems and provides crucial insight into human biology, health and disease.

In addition to the platform and poster sessions, the conference will feature 15 presentations by invited speakers, including the internationally renowned researcher and educator Bruce Alberts, Ph.D. His topic will be, "Science, Biology and the World's Future." Dr. Alberts, former editor-in-chief of Science and past president of the National Academy of Sciences, is now at University of California at San Francisco, which honored him with the Chancellor's Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education.

List of invited speakers:http://www.genetics-gsa.org/drosophila/2014/

The conference will also include a preview of the new feature film, "The Fly Room." Written and directed by geneticist Alexis Gambis, Ph.D., the semi-fictional film is set in the now famous Columbia University lab, known as the "Fly Room," in which the studies that built the scientific foundations for modern genetics were conducted. The film provides a portrait of the relationship between Calvin Bridges, Ph.D., one of the researchers who worked in the "Fly Room," and his daughter Betsey, based on interviews with the real Betsey Bridges. Dr. Gambis has described the film as a "dramatic narrative about a girl's quest to understand her father through his research." Link http://www.theflyroom.com/

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'Unparalleled' study discovers new genes connected to bipolar disorder

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A team of international researchers has discovered two new genes connected to bipolar disorder.

A study that will be published in the Nature Communications journal analyzed genetic material from about 24,000 people, revealing five risk regions in human DNA associated with the disease.

Two of those genes ADCY2 on chromosome five and MIR2113-POU3F2 on chromosome six are new discoveries.

Researchers are especially interested in the ADCY2 gene, which codes an enzyme involved in conducting signals to nerve cells. Scientists have previously observed that signal transfers in certain regions of the brain are impaired in people with bipolar disorder.

For the study, researchers obtained new genetic data from 2,266 people with bipolar disorder, and 5,028 people from a control group. When that information was merged with existing data sets from the Institute of Human Genetics, DNA from a total of 9,747 patients was compared to that of 14,278 healthy people.

The investigation of the genetic foundations of bipolar disorder on this scale is unique worldwide to date," one of the researchers, Marcella Rietschel of the Central Institute of Mental Health of Mannheim, Germany, said in a news release.

Researchers said the study is unparalleled because it involved an unprecedented number of patients from around the world.

About one per cent of the global population suffers from bipolar disorder, characterized by intense mood swings. Patients go from experiencing extreme euphoria and hyperactivity or manic phases to extreme depression. Scientists have been trying to understand what role genetics, in addition to a patients environment and other factors, play in the development of the disease.

Markus M. Nthen, director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Bonn Hospital, said that many different genes are evidently involved and these genes work together with environmental factors in a complex way."

Researchers say identifying genes related to bipolar disorder is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Differences between the DNA of people with the disease and healthy individuals can only be statistically confirmed when a large number of samples is involved, as was the case in this study.

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T DNA tagging to study stamen development in rice – Dr Veluthambi-Part II – Video

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T DNA tagging to study stamen development in rice - Dr Veluthambi-Part II
This chanel develops and host various educational videos in the field of agriculture and applied genomics which will help for the students, teachers, scienti...

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T DNA tagging to study stamen development in rice - Dr Veluthambi-Part II - Video

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SPCA dogs to get DNA tests to determine breed – Video

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SPCA dogs to get DNA tests to determine breed
A local SPCA is hoping DNA testing will lower the number of dogs that are adopted and then returned to the shelter.

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