Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

April 10, 2014

Image Caption: Independent genetic circuits are linked within single cells, illustrated under the magnifying glass, then coupled via quorum sensing at the colony level. Credit: Arthur Prindle, UC San Diego

By Kim McDonald, UC San Diego

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as genetic programs. One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this weeks advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of biopixel sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The teams breakthrough involves a form of frequency multiplexing inspired by FM radio.

This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series, said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel.

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. Its not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal, said Prindle. When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods.

Link:
Researchers Develop Bacterial FM Radio

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

10-Apr-2014

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, April 10, 2014In early fetal development, skin wounds undergo regeneration and healing without scar formation. This mechanism of wound healing later disappears, but by studying the fetal stem cells capable of this scarless wound healing, researchers may be able to apply these mechanisms to develop cell-based approaches able to minimize scarring in adult wounds, as described in a Critical Review article published in Advances in Wound Care, a monthly publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers and an Official Journal of the Wound Healing Society. The article is available free on the Advances in Wound Care website.

Michael Longaker, Peter Lorenz, and co-authors from Stanford University School of Medicine and John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, describe a new stem cell that has been identified in fetal skin and blood that may have a role in scarless wound healing. In the article "The Role of Stem Cells During Scarless Skin Wound Healing", the authors propose future directions for research to characterize the differences in wound healing mechanisms between fetal and adult skin-specific stem cells.

"This work comes from the pioneers in the field and delineates the opportunities towards scarless healing in adults," says Editor-in-Chief Chandan K. Sen, PhD, Professor of Surgery and Director of the Comprehensive Wound Center and the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Cell-Based Therapies at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, OH.

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About the Journal

Advances in Wound Care is a monthly journal published online and in print that reports the latest scientific discoveries, translational research, and clinical developments in acute and chronic wound care. Each issue provides a digest of the latest research findings, innovative wound care strategies, industry product pipeline, and developments in biomaterials and skin and tissue regeneration to optimize patient outcomes. The broad scope of applications covered includes limb salvage, chronic ulcers, burns, trauma, blast injuries, surgical repair, skin bioengineering, dressings, anti-scar strategies, diabetic ulcers, ostomy, bedsores, biofilms, and military wound care. Complete tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on the Advances in Wound Care website.

About the Publisher

Original post:
Scarless wound healing -- applying lessons learned from fetal stem cells

4.3c - Genetic Engineering
via YouTube Capture.

By: Joanna Schimizzi

Link:
4.3c - Genetic Engineering - Video

Genetic Engineering for Dummies
3 MS boys come together to make a project beyond all others. As a community outreach for our Issues Analysis project, we strive to inform the populous of our...

By: ProjectPartners

Originally posted here:
Genetic Engineering for Dummies - Video

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as genetic programs. One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this weeks advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of biopixel sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The teams breakthrough involves a form of frequency multiplexing inspired by FM radio.

This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series, said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel.

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. Its not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal, said Prindle. When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods.

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing metaphorization of engineering biology.

We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models, explained Prindle. Its important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you arent being too reliant on your engineering metaphors.

See the original post here:
Scientists develop bacterial FM Radio

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

Contact: Kim McDonald kmcdonald@ucsd.edu 858-534-7572 University of California - San Diego

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded, and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

See the original post:
UC San Diego researchers develop bacterial 'FM radio'

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators.

But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small number of available wires.

A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego has taken a large step toward overcoming this obstacle. Their advance, detailed in a paper which appears in this week's advance online publication of the journal Nature, describes their development of a rapid and tunable post-translational coupling for genetic circuits. This advance builds on their development of "biopixel" sensor arrays reported in Nature by the same group of scientists two years ago.

The problem the researchers solved arises from the noisy cellular environment that tends to lead to highly variable circuit performance. The components of a cell are intermixed, crowded and constantly bumping into each other. This makes it difficult to reuse parts in different parts of a program, limiting the total number of available parts and wires. These difficulties hindered the creation of genetic programs that can read the cellular environment and react with the execution of a sequence of instructions.

The team's breakthrough involves a form of "frequency multiplexing" inspired by FM radio.

"This circuit lets us encode multiple independent environmental inputs into a single time series," said Arthur Prindle, a bioengineering graduate student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study. "Multiple pieces of information are transferred using the same part. It works by using distinct frequencies to transmit different signals on a common channel."

The key that enabled this breakthrough is the use of frequency, rather than amplitude, to convey information. "Combining two biological signals using amplitude is difficult because measurements of amplitude involve fluorescence and are usually relative. It's not easy to separate out the contribution of each signal," said Prindle. "When we use frequency, these relative measurements are made with respect to time, and can be readily extracted by measuring the time between peaks using any one of several analytical methods."

While their application may be inspired by electronics, the UC San Diego scientists caution in their paper against what they see as increasing "metaphorization" of engineering biology.

"We explicitly make the point that since biology is often too intertwined to engineer in the way we are accustomed in electronics, we must deal directly with bidirectional coupling and quantitatively understand its effects using computational models," explained Prindle. "It's important to find the right dose of inspiration from engineering concepts while making sure you aren't being too reliant on your engineering metaphors."

Enabling this breakthrough is the development of an intracellular wiring mechanism that enables rapid transmission of protein signals between the individual modules. The new wiring mechanism was inspired by a previous study in the lab on the bacterial stress response. It reduces the time lags that develop as a consequence of using proteins to activate or repress genes.

Read more here:
Genetic circuits: Bacterial 'FM radio' created

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Apr-2014

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

New Rochelle, NY, April 9, 2014The increased risk of death associated with alcohol intake is not the same for men and women. A study that compared the amount of alcohol consumed and death from all causes among nearly 2.5 million women and men showed that the differences between the sexes became greater as alcohol intake increased, as described in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh.

In the article "Effect of Drinking on All-Cause Mortality in Women Compared with Men: A Meta-Analysis," Chao Wang and coauthors, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical Sciences (Beijing, China), modeled the relationship between the dose of alcohol consumed and the risk of death, comparing the results for drinkers versus non-drinkers and among male and female drinkers. Females had an increased rate of all-cause mortality conferred by drinking compared with males, especially in heavy drinkers.

"While alcoholism is more common in men than women, female drinkers face greater risks to their health compared with male drinkers," says Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Women's Health, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA, and President of the Academy of Women's Health.

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About the Journal

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

About the Academy

Read more:
Is the increased risk of death due to alcohol intake greater for women or men?

Req ID: 6641

Position Summary:

This position will supervise approximately (10-11) employees. This will include Facility Engineers and support Technicians. The successful candidate will interface with Marathon employees, contractor employees and vendors to optimize facility design, maximize production rates, and focus on optimization to meet reliability goals. Effective teamwork is required by the Engineering Staff as information is gathered and communicated between field personnel and other team members. Work being performed by the engineering staff includes performing engineering studies, evaluations, budget preparation, project engineering/management, troubleshooting, and support to production operations. The Bakken program is ongoing and fast paced. Facility Engineering work will need to be completed and commissioned to meet the drilling development program along with maintaining existing production. A demonstrated commitment to HES standards and policies is a must for the candidate filling this position.

Essential Functions:

Prerequisites:

EDUCATION: Bachelors Degree required, Engineering focus

EXPERIENCE: 10+ years in construction, facility design, and maintenance; project planning experience (preferred)

COMPUTER: MS Office Suite; Microsoft Project or Primavera; TOW; COGZ;

PROFICIENCY: ACAD; KMS (management of change); HYSYS (would be a plus)

COMMUNICATION: Excellent oral and written communication, teamwork, and planning & organization skills

Read more from the original source:
Facilities Engineering Supervisor Job

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-Apr-2014

Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, April 8, 2014A new nonsurgical approach to treating chronic pain and stiffness associated with knee osteoarthritis has demonstrated significant, lasting improvement in knee pain, function, and stiffness. This safe, two-solution treatment delivered in a series of injections into and around the knee joint is called prolotherapy, and is described in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website.

David Rabago, MD, and a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and Meriter Health Services, Madison, WI, report substantial improvement among participants in the one-year study who received at least three of the two-solution injections. Symptom improvement ranged from 19.5-42.9% compared to baseline status.

As described in the article "Dextrose and Morrhuate Sodium Injections (Prolotherapy) for Knee Osteoarthritis: A Prospective Open-Label Trial", reported improvement in knee pain, function, and stiffness scores exceeded the minimum for a "clinically important difference" in 50-75% of patients.

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About the Journal

Celebrating 20 years in 2014, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is a monthly peer-reviewed journal publishing observational, clinical, and scientific reports and commentary intended to help healthcare professionals and scientists evaluate and integrate therapies into patient care protocols and research strategies. Tables of content and a sample issue may be viewed on The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine website.

About the Publisher Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Alternative and Complementary Therapies, Medical Acupuncture, and Journal of Medicinal Food. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.

Read the original:
New research may provide effective nonsurgical treatment for knee osteoarthritis