Category Archives: BioEngineering

Five Berkeley faculty members have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an honor bestowed upon the societys members by their peers.

The five are among 443 members awarded the honor because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. Founded in 1848, the AAAS is the worlds largest general scientific society and publisher of Science and five other journals.

The new fellows are:

Rebecca Abergel, assistant professor of nuclear engineering and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), for distinguished contributions to heavy element chemistry, particularly applied to the development of new chelation therapies, separation processes, and radionuclide targeted delivery strategies. At Berkeley Lab, she leads the BioActinide Chemistry Group, the Heavy Element Chemistry Program and the Heavy Element Research Laboratory, and she is director of the Glenn T. Seaborg Center.

Roland Brgmann, professor of earth and planetary science, for outstanding contributions to research, teaching, innovation, service to societies and to the public in geodynamics, tectonics, rheology, seismology, geodesy and volcanology. Brgmann is a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab.

Richard Ivry, professor of psychology, for foundational research on the cognitive processes underlying movement selection, planning, and execution, and the implementation of action in neural structures. He is director of the The Cognition and Action Lab and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

Michael Manga, professor of earth and planetary science, for many outstanding contributions to geological processes involving fluids in physical volcanology, geodynamics, hydrogeology, and geomorphology, and for service to academe, government, and societies. Manga is the Garniss H. Curtis Endowed Department Chair, a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and a member of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

David Schaffer, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of bioengineering, for pioneering contributions to biomolecular engineering, with particular attention to directed evolution to create viruses for the efficient, targeted and safe delivery of gene medicines. He is director of the Berkeley Stem Cell Center, a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and a member of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

The new fellows will be presented with an official certificate and a rosette pin in gold and blue representing science and engineering, respectively on Saturday, Feb. 15, during the 2020 AAAS annual meeting in Seattle, Washington.

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Five Berkeley faculty members elected fellows of the AAAS - UC Berkeley

Obesity, which affects more than one-third of American adults, is more than just an uncomfortable excess of weight - it is a driver of several, often fatal diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, stroke, and congestive health failure, making it one of the most significant public health threats. The cost of treating and managing obesity-related diseases is expected to double every decade, ballooning to account for about 16 percent of all US healthcare costs by 2030.

While genetics plays a role, eating high-calorie foods rich in carbohydrates and fats is a major cause of this epidemic, and though doctors and nutritionists recommend a healthy, balanced diet as a prevention strategy, many people simply lack affordable access to fresh foods. Several weight-loss drugs that reduce weight by about 10 percent have been approved by the FDA over the last few decades, but they come with significant side effects including headaches, diarrhea, severe liver injury, birth defects, sleep apnea, pancreatitis, and suicidal thoughts.

Now, a new study from the Harvard John A. Paulson School for Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Harvards Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering has found that an orally administered liquid salt called Choline and Geranate (CAGE) can physically reduce the absorption of fats from food with no discernible side effects in rats, and reduces total body weight by about 12 percent. The research is reported in PNAS.

A reduction in body weight of 12 percent is like getting a human from 200 pounds down to 176, which is a significant change, said first author Md Nurunnabi, a former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Wyss Institute and SEAS who is now an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at The University of Texas at El Paso. Our goal is to translate this work into a product that can help people maintain a healthier weight, and this study marks the very beginning of that journey.

Turning a bug into a feature

CAGE, which is a salt in its liquid state, was created a few years ago by Samir Mitragotri, the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Hansjrg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering, as part of an effort to improve the bodys absorption of medicines. Last year, his lab published a paper describing CAGEs ability to enhance the uptake of insulin when given orally. However, in their study of CAGEs properties, they found that there was one molecule that was not helped by the liquid: a small hydrophobic molecule. Mitragotris team had a hunch that CAGE was somehow binding to this molecule and preventing it from being absorbed.

That observation led us to wonder if there were any contexts in which we would want to prevent the uptake of this type of molecule. We realized that fats are small and hydrophobic, and that CAGE could potentially be of interest as a medical treatment for obesity, said Mitragotri, who is also a Wyss Core Faculty member.

The researchers got to work evaluating CAGEs interactions with fats by mixing the liquid with an omega-3 fat called DHA and water. They saw that the DHA formed large particles about 3 to 4 microns in length, about the size of a cells nucleus. DHA molecules mixed with water alone formed much smaller particles in the range of 50 to 400 nanometers, suggesting that there is some interaction between the CAGE and DHA molecules that causes them to aggregate into larger particles.

The team then added the DHA-CAGE mixture to healthy rat intestines ex vivo. Compared to intestines that were only injected with DHA, the inclusion of CAGE significantly reduced the permeation of DHA into the intestinal tissue over the course of six hours.

Helping rats resist obesity

To evaluate the performance of CAGE in living organisms, the researchers prepared capsules with a mixture of DHA and CAGE and gave them orally to rats. After six hours, the amount of DHA absorbed into their blood from the mixture was about half the amount that was absorbed when they were given DHA alone. Biodistribution studies showed that giving CAGE along with the DHA increased its concentration in the rats stomachs and intestines two-fold and reduced its presence in their livers, suggesting that CAGE prevents DHA from leaving the gastrointestinal tract.

They then studied the effect of CAGE on fat uptake in rats who were fed a high-fat diet, which has 20 percent more fat than a regular diet, for 30 days. A daily, 10-microliter dose of CAGE caused rats to gain 12 percent less weight than rats that received either a 5-microliter dose or no CAGE. The untreated rats usually ate about 10 grams of food every day, whereas the high-dose CAGE cohort ate about eight grams of food, suggesting that CAGE might also have an effect on enzymes that regulate digestion, and/or increase the feeling of fullness after a meal.

Importantly, over the 30-day time period, no side effects were observed in the rats treated with CAGE, and there were no signs of inflammation or differences in the animals organ structure or function. There was also no trace of CAGEs components in the body following treatment.

This is the first proof-of-concept that orally administered ionic liquids can help reduce fat uptake and body mass, and this approach has significant clinical potential given that it is simple, fast, and much less invasive than liposuction or bariatric surgery and, because its mechanism of action is physical rather than chemical, it lacks the side effects observed with other drugs, said Mitragotri.

The team is now pursuing answers to the more mechanistic questions about CAGE, including exactly how CAGE binds to fats, how long its effects last, what its potential interactions with the obesity-associated leptin signaling pathway are, and where the unabsorbed fat goes.

Additional authors of the study are Kelly Ibsen, a former Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mitragotri lab, and Eden Tanner, a current Postdoctoral Fellow.

Read more from the original source:
Locking up fats in CAGEs to treat obesity - Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

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Chapter 10To be Continue

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Filling Equipment Market will Generate Massive Revenue in Future: Valent U.S.A. Corporation,Jiangsu Fengyuan Bioengineering Co Ltd - Trade Examiner

An artist rendering of a new generation of biobots developed by researchers at the University of Illinois--soft robotic devices powered by skeletal muscle tissue stimulated by on-board motor neurons. (Image source: Michael Vincent)

The next-generation of medical treatment and diagnosis likely will include tiny robots that can explore inside the human body and perform appointed tasks.

To drive this technological aim, researchers at the University of Illinois have developed soft, biological robotic devices that are self-driven using light-stimulated neuromuscular tissue and have intelligence, memory, and learning ability. The work brings researchers a step closer toward the development of autonomous biobots.

This is the first milestone towards intelligent biorobots that make themselves through self assembly, project leader Taher Saif, a mechanical science and engineering professor from the University of Illinois, told Design News.

Muscle cells mixed with an extra cellular matrix is dropped on the tail part, where muscle cells form the muscle tissue by self assembly, Saif told Design News. Neurons are placed on the head part of the swimmer from where they spread out and form junctions with the muscle. These neurons then fire and make the muscle contract.

The researchers published a paper on their recent work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The recent work is a continuation of Saifs research on similar technology. In 2014, research teams led by Saif and a colleague, bioengineering professor Rashid Bashir, developed the first self-propelled biohybrid robots that could swim and walk, powered by beating cardiac muscle cells derived from rats.

While those robots could move on their own using biomaterials, they couldnt sense the environment or make decisions, Saif said.

The current work takes this technology a step further with biobots powered by skeletal muscle tissue and stimulated by on-board motor neurons, he said. The neurons have optogenetic properties derived from mouse stem cells; when exposed to light, they fire to actuate the muscle tissue.

Neurons make connections between each other forming a neural network, Saif explained. Some of the neurons form junctions with the muscle. The neurons fire and stimulate the muscle.

Once the muscle is stimulated, it contracts and moves the tails of the swimming biobot, Saif said. This motion of the tails make the swimmer propel forward.

Once the researchers ensured that the neuromuscular tissue used in the biobots was compatible with the synthetic biobot skeletons, they then set about to optimize the abilities of the swimming device. In particular, they aimed for the bot to be able to respond intelligently to environment cues by integrating neural units within biohybrid systems.

Given our understanding of neural control in animals, it may be possible to move forward with biohybrid neuromuscular design by using a hierarchical organization of neural networks, Saif said in a press statement.

Once these smart biobots are optimized, Saif and his team believe they can be used for various applications in bioengineering, medicine, and self-healing materials and technologies.

In the future, it is possible that such intelligent micro biorobots may swim towards a target tissue inside the body and deliver drugs on an on-demand basis, Saif told Design News.

The team plans to continue its work by exploring the use of multiple types of neurons in the biobot as well as to test the robots ability to sense and fire when a threshold signal such as a chemical gradient is exceeded.

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer who has written about technology and culture for more than 20 years. She has lived and worked as a professional journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco and New York City. In her free time she enjoys surfing, traveling, music, yoga and cooking. She currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal.

January 28-30:North America's largest chip, board, and systems event,DesignCon, returns to Silicon Valleyfor its 25th year!The premier educational conference and technology exhibition, this three-day event brings together the brightest minds across the high-speed communications and semiconductor industries, who are looking to engineer the technology of tomorrow. DesignCon is your rocket to the future. Ready to come aboard?Register to attend!

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Biobots are hybrid machines that have muscles and nerves - DesignNews

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Eight faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list, a global listing of scientists who produced the past decades most influential papers, compiled by the Web of Science group, a Clarivate Analytics company.

The list recognizes researchers who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers, according to Web of Science. It selected 6,216 researchers for their performance in 21 fields and for cross-field influence in scholarly publications from 2008 to 2018.

The Illinois faculty include crop sciencesandplant biologyprofessorElizabeth Lisa Ainsworth(highly cited for cross-field impact), materials science and engineering professor Axel Hoffmann (cross-field), electrical and computer engineering professor Thomas Huang (engineering), geography and geographic information professor Mei-Po Kwan (cross-field), crop sciencesandplant biologyprofessorStephen P. Long(cross-field), bioengineering professor Shuming Nie (cross-field), plant biology professorDonald Ort(plant and animal science), and mechanical science and engineering professor Arend van der Zande (cross-field).

Lisa Ainsworth, crop sciences and plant biology

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Ainsworth leads the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Services Global Change and Photosynthesis Research Unit. Her research examines genetic variation in crop responses to air pollution and climate change. She received the 2019 Prize in Food and Agricultural Research from the National Academy of Sciences and is an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

Axel Hoffmann, materials science and engineering

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Hoffmann is a Founder Professor in materials science and engineering and a member of the Materials Research Laboratory. His research focuses on topics related to magnetism, such as spin transport, magnetization dynamics and biomedical applications. His work on spin Hall effects has contributed to the development of spintronics, electronic devices that harness electron spin for faster and more efficient computing. Hoffmann is a Fellow of the American Vacuum Society, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Thomas Huang, electrical and computer engineering

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Huang is the Maybelle Leland Swanlund Endowed Chair Emeritus in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He studies many fields related to computer engineering and artificial intelligence, including human-computer interaction, multimedia signal processing, computer vision, big data and machine learning. He retired from teaching in 2014, but remains active as a researcher. He also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.

Mei-Po Kwan, geography and geographic information

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Kwan investigates health, transportation and urban issues using innovative geographic information system methods. Her work encompasses environmental health, human mobility, access to health care, neighborhood effects, sustainable travel and cities, and the application of GIS methods in geographic research. Kwan is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.K. Academy of Social Sciences. Among other honors, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016 and Distinguished Scholarship Honors from the American Association of Geographers in 2011.

Stephen Long, crop sciences and plant biology

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Long is the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology. He uses computational and experimental approaches to improve photosynthetic efficiency, and works to address the effects of climate change on crop yield. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2013, and has been recognized as a highly cited researcher in the field of plant and animal science every year since 2005. He directs Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, a multinational project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research, and the U.K. Department for International Development. He is a member of the IGB.

Shuming Nie, bioengineering

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Nie is the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering and a professor of chemistry, materials science and engineering, and electrical and computer engineering. He studies nanomedicine, molecular engineering and image-guided minimally invasive robotic surgery. He is as Fellow of the AAAS, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Donald Ort, crop sciences and plant biology

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Ort is the Robert Emerson Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences. His research focuses on improving photosynthesis and addresses crop responses to global change factors including increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature. He leads the Genomic Ecology of Global Change theme in the IGB and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.

Arend van der Zande, mechanical science and engineering

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Van der Zande specializes in multidisciplinary nanoscience; specifically, his group uses two-dimensional materials, such as membranes and thin films, as molecular building blocks to construct new devices with applications in electronics, sensing, energy and more. He has affiliations with the Materials Research Laboratory, the Holonyak Micro and Nano Technology Laboratory, the Beckman Institute and the department of electrical and computer engineering.

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Eight Illinois researchers rank among world's most influential - University of Illinois News

President Marc Tessier-Lavigne introduced two women, each renowned in their respective fields, as scientific trailblazers to a packed CEMEX auditorium of 600 people on Monday. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist who invented CRISPR, and Fei-Fei Li, who currently heads the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) endeavor, discussed the twin revolutions of CRISPR and artificial intelligence with moderator Russ Altman, a bioengineering professor.

But beyond just talking about those innovations, Tessier-Lavigne noted the significant urgency present to consider the broader societal impacts of their work: to notice both the promise and peril that accompany innovation.

Innovation alone isnt sufficient, Tessier-Lavigne said. Creating a disruption does not guarantee positive effects for our society or for individuals. Disrupting just for disruptions sake is no honorable activity. Remarkable opportunities for good can also be misused.

Doudna and Lis work has been influential within the fields of gene editing and artificial intelligence, respectively. Doudna and her team developed the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9, which allows for the editing of DNA and genomes as well as for a myriad of control applications within the body and potential development of biotechnology products.

Li was the leading scientist of ImageNet, a database used in visual object recognition software that enables computers to recognize a wide variety of human, everyday objects through machine learning.

Both speakers acknowledged the ethical concerns looming over these innovations. This beginning of a revolution in deep learning is accompanied by the threat of ethical complications such as eugenics, patentability and heritable genome editing.

The recognition ability [of ImageNet] is in the background of Google searches when you use Facebook or when you communicate with your phone; its always present, Altman said, adding that recent developments in AI have caused the field to become a breeding ground of questions surrounding ethics.

When asked if it was obvious that the results were going to lead to such an explosive reaction both inside and out of the scientific community, Li said that she knew they were approaching a holy grail question.

We were granting the computers an ability that took humans 540 million years of evolution to achieve, she said. I would be lying, however, if I said I recognized the societal implications of the work at the time.

Doudna replied similarly, saying that for those of us working in the world of CRISPR, it was a very esoteric area of biology back then. It was surprising to see that our very esoteric area was merging with a very important part of biotechnology.

Could I have predicted the advancements, CRISPR babies? she asked, referring to former Stanford postdoctoral fellow He Jiankui who launched international controversy when he announced he created the worlds first gene-edited babies using CRISPR technology. Definitely not, but it was a very exciting progression.

A significant part of the discussion centered on ethics, with Altman asking the innovators about their engagement with ethics throughout their research. Doudna recalled 2012 as the year that a moral obligation really arose in her life. After reading a published article of CRISPR being applied to human primates, she recalled realizing the potential for genome editing in humans.

I was quite reluctant, but I did feel a real responsibility to engage in the discussion at that point, Dounda said.

Li also described her surprise when her own career in AI came under public scrutiny, with some critics calling genome editing a field summoning a demon.

While major parts of their professional journeys align, their paths diverge in terms of confronting the ethical problems of their work. To combat the potential misuses of CRISPR, Doudna felt like the scientific community really needed to [be] engaged as a whole. She convened meetings to broach the subject of the morality behind CRISPR applications and recalls thinking that that was the beginning of my education in ethics I felt like a student learning how to think about this and how to approach it.

Lis approach was different because CS was a much younger discipline, without an ethics sub-area, and I didnt know who to talk to. She decided to turn her focus to the drivers of AI, the human representation in the field, especially to diversify the field and open it up to more women and minorities.

Li went on to start the program AI4ALL, which began at Stanford and then grew to become nationally recognized 500 alumni of the program and 11 college campuses that host the students, all with the mission of engaging underrepresented students in underserved communities.

The academic pioneers were then asked about the exposure of young scientists to ethical information, with both agreeing that there needed to be more educating done in their fields.

Its a cultural thing in our field, Doudna said. We are in the vein of creating scholars in our specific subject rather than creating a group of holistically knowledgeable people.

Li added that students of mine dont even have the language to talk about these issues.

Altman went on to note that these are unlikely to be the last scientific revolutions. He wondered what advice the two women had for handling these explosive introductions of research.

We definitely havent seen the end of the AI story its just the beginning, Li answered. We need to invest in people. Diversity and inclusion is a way to ensure that we maximize human representation during these times.

As for representation in policy, Doudna said she would like to see more scientists in Congress.

I was really struck when I met with Bill Foster and he pointed out that he was the only Ph.D. in congress, Doudna said. I think we need to see more representation.

As for their hopes for their work moving forward, their visions were the same: an international framework to cooperate and communicate. Li noted that there are issues of warfare, bioterrorism and a myriad of other potential dangers. She noted that every discovery has a dual potential, which is why we need laws, ethical principles, an international framework given how powerful these technologies are.

Contact Hannah Shelby at hshelby at stanford.edu.

Originally posted here:
Renowned scientists address ethics, 'twin scientific revolutions' of AI and CRISPR - The Stanford Daily