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Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Engineering the Human Body to Combat Climate Change – Video

12-03-2012 21:39 The threat of global climate change has prompted us to redesign many of our technologies to be more energy-efficient. From lightweight hybrid cars to long-lasting LED's, engineers have made well-known products smaller and less wasteful. But tinkering with our tools will only get us so far, because however smart our technologies become, the human body has its own ecological footprint, and there are more of them than ever before. So, some scholars are asking, what if we could engineer human beings to be more energy efficient? A new paper to be published in Ethics, Policy & Environment proposes a series of biomedical modifications that could help humans, themselves, consume less. Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating. Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children. The lead author of the paper, S. Matthew Liao, is a professor of philosophy and bioethics at New York University. Liao is keen to point out that the paper is not meant to advocate for any particular human modifications, or even human ...

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Mayo Clinic researchers building melanoma vaccine to combat skin cancer

Public release date: 19-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Robert Nellis newsbureau@mayo.edu 507-284-5005 Mayo Clinic

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have trained mouse immune systems to eradicate skin cancer from within, using a genetic combination of human DNA from melanoma cells and a cousin of the rabies virus. The strategy, called cancer immunotherapy, uses a genetically engineered version of the vesicular stomatitis virus to deliver a broad spectrum of genes derived from melanoma cancer cells directly into tumors. In early studies, 60 percent of tumor-burdened mice were cured in fewer than three months and with minimal side effects. Results of the latest study appear this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

"We believe that this new technique will help us to identify a whole new set of genes that encode antigens that are important in stimulating the immune system to reject cancer. In particular, we have seen that several proteins need to be expressed together to generate the most effective rejection of the tumors in mice," says Richard Vile, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic researcher in the Department of Molecular Medicine and a coauthor of the study, along with Jose Pulido, M.D., a Mayo Clinic ophthalmologist and ocular oncologist.

Dr. Vile's success with melanoma adds to Mayo Clinic's growing portfolio of experimental cancer vaccines, which includes an active clinical trial of vesicular stomatitis vaccines for liver cancers. Future studies could include similar vaccines for more aggressive cancers, such as lung, brain and pancreatic.

"I do believe we can create vaccines that will knock them off one by one," Dr. Vile says. "By vaccinating against multiple proteins at once, we hope that we will be able to treat both the primary tumor and also protect against recurrence."

The immune system functions on a seek-and-destroy platform and has fine-tuned its capacity to identify viral invaders such as vesicular stomatitis virus. Part of the appeal of building cancer vaccines from the whole spectrum of tumor DNA is that tumors can adapt to the repeated attacks of a healthy immune system and display fewer antigens (or signposts) that the immune system can identify.

Cancers can learn to hide from a normal immune system, but appear unable to escape an immune system trained by the vesicular stomatitis virus with the wide range of DNA used in the library approach.

"Nobody knows how many antigens the immune system can really see on tumor cells," says Dr. Vile. "By expressing all of these proteins in highly immunogenic viruses, we increased their visibility to the immune system. The immune system now thinks it is being invaded by the viruses, which are expressing cancer-related antigens that should be eliminated."

Much immunotherapy research has slowed because of researchers' inability to isolate a sufficiently diverse collection of antigens in tumor cells. Tumors in these scenarios are able to mutate and reestablish themselves in spite of the body's immune system.

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Mayo Clinic researchers building melanoma vaccine to combat skin cancer

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This Week in PLoS

In PLoS One this week, researchers at Thailand's National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology present microPIR, a database of "microRNA-promoter target interactions for experimental microRNA researchers and computational biologists to study the microRNA regulation through gene promoter." The database "integrates various annotated genomic sequence databases repetitive elements, transcription factor binding sites, CpG islands, and SNPs offering users the facility to extensively explore relationships among target sites and other genomic features," the authors write. "The built-in genome browser of microPIR provides a comprehensive view of multidimensional genomic data." The resource also includes a PCR primer design module to facilitate experimental validation, and functional data from the OMIM and other resources, the team adds.

Elsewhere in the journal, a Japanese team led by investigators at Kitasato University presents the carbonic anhydrase XII, or CAXII, antibody as a sero-diagnostic marker for lung cancer, based on immunoprecipitation and MADLI TOF/TOF-mass spectrometry analysis.

Over in PLoS Genetics, the University of California, Davis' Daniele Filiault and Julin Maloof report on a GWAS for variants associated with increased hypocotyl elongation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Filiault and Maloof describe variants that underlie the shade-avoidance response in the plant.

A team led by investigators at Princeton University this week describes the "genetic architecture of highly complex chemical resistance traits across four yeast strains," through an extreme QTL mapping approach. The team says its results "improve our understanding of complex traits in yeast and have implications for study design in other organisms."

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This Week in PLoS

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Genetic Engineering (excerpt) – Video

26-10-2011 07:18 Genetic engineering may be one of the greatest breakthroughs in recent history, however, with scientific advancements new ethical issues are raised, forcing us to ask not how, but if we should push genetic research to its absolute limit. This programme looks at the possible benefits of genetic engineering, such as the curing of hereditary diseases and the creation of better, more efficient crops. It also explores the potential issues that arise with this new technology - the questionable morality of cloning, and the controversy that surrounds stem-cell research are two topics which are also investigated. Students will hear both a secular and religious perspectives on the morality of intervening in nature at the most fundamental level. To find out more about this film, follow this link: http://www.classroomvideo.co.uk

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The Next Big Frontier?

At the Huffington Post's Science blog, Singularity University's Andrew Hessel says it's high time for a second Human Genome Project. "Today, in 2012, reading a human genome is no big deal," Hessel says. The next big frontier? "Genetic engineering," he adds.

Hessel proposes a challenge to the international research community:

I want to be absolutely clear that I'm talking only about the task of writing a complete 3 billion basepair human genome, correctly organized into 23 chromosomes, and packaged into a nucleus. A technical challenge, validated by showing the synthetic genome is functional if microinjected into a cultured cell. What I'm definitely not suggesting is growing a baby from a synthetic genome. Before we can fly, we need to be able to walk.

Hessel goes on to detail the reasons why writing a human genome is the next logical step in genomics, and suggests that "a coordinated effort to write a human genome would likely be completed in less than a decade, cost significantly less than the first HGP, and result in countless new biotech applications."

"It seems a no-brainer," he adds.

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The Next Big Frontier?

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Genetically engineered human cosplay hair – Video

14-03-2012 22:24 I am actually here to get everybody to live much longer. Japanese yogurt LKM512 lkm512.com doubles lab mammal life. I have not tried it, Do not know what it tastes like yet there is a yogurt from Japan published at the peer reviwed journal PLoS one that more than doubles the lifespan of mice. Its possible the yogurt scientist made a drawn manga comic at youtube http://www.youtube.com that perhaps people here would appreciate. I strongly support longevity to immortality research sometimes writing at imminst.org longecity.com as treonsverdery http://www.longecity.org all the kawaii made me super sympathetic to cosplayers Any humans or humanoids that dress up as creatures might have fun at conventions carrying around the yogurt that makes mice live twice as long. New hair colors Genetically engineering peoples hair to be different colors might be cosplay. anyway there is a medical journal article at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov called Nonviral in situ green fluorescent protein labeling and culture of primary, adult human hair follicle epithelial progenitor cells. Im not linked to the author or anything, I just thought that people here might like being genetically modified organisms. phycobilins are ocean colors that can also be made a part of genetic engineering actual cosplayer is verykindwhitecat visit her video at http://www.youtube.com

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Genetically engineered human cosplay hair - Video

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