Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

CHARLEROI, Belgium--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The Belgian Biotech
Company Delphi
Genetics SA is proud to announce the launch of a
newly-funded project. Together with academic and Biotech
key-players, the company will participate in the development
of DNA vaccines using the Staby® technology (antibiotic-free)
during the next 3 years. The objective of the project funded
by the Walloon region (BioWin project, 2.3 M €) is to develop
and produce antibiotic-free DNA vaccines targeting some
veterinary
diseases.

The project also involves Eurogentec SA, another Belgian
Biotech company (part of Kaneka) in charge of large scale DNA
production and purification, and two universities: the
Catholic University of Louvain in charge of the
pharmaceutical and toxicity aspects of the project and the
University of Liège in charge of the vaccinology and
veterinary issues. “All partners complement one another
perfectly” said Cédric Szpirer, CEO and Head of R&D of
Delphi Genetics SA and explained:

“Today vaccination is an uncontested way of fighting disease.
DNA vaccination seems to be a particularly promising method
at this time, especially in the case of veterinary diseases.
However, antibiotic-resistance genes are conventionally used
during the construction of DNA vaccines but the resistance is
increasingly less tolerated by regulatory agencies (FDA, USDA
and EMA). In the context of this project, we propose to
replace the antibiotic-resistance gene by the Staby®
technology developed by Delphi Genetics and already used for
production of recombinant proteins (higher yields and no
antibiotics). In order to show the efficiency of our
technology, we will develop new veterinary vaccines, we will
validate that the method is usable for high scale DNA
production and we will show its innocuousness.”

About Delphi Genetics

Founded at the end of 2001, Delphi Genetics SA develops
technologies for genetic engineering and protein expression
by using unique expertise in the domain of plasmid
stabilisation systems.

Since 2004, Delphi Genetics has been marketing innovative
kits for researchers. Some of these kits contain technologies
that have since been licensed for industrial applications; in
2009 Delphi Genetics announced a non-exclusive licence
agreement with Sanofi-Pasteur, the human vaccine division of
Sanofi and a non-exclusive agreement with GSK in 2010. These
agreements allow Sanofi-Pasteur and GSK to apply the
StabyExpress® technology in the production of recombinant
proteins, thus enabling them to produce a high yield without
using antibiotics.

For more information, visit our website:
http://www.delphigenetics.com

Link:
Delphi Genetics: The New DNAVAC Research Project Targets the Removal of Antibiotics in Veterinary DNA-Vaccine ...

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

It’s the 21st century. We’ve got robots. Genetic engineering.
Artificial intelligence. Hypersonic transportation.
Nanotechnology. Human cloning. Hydrogen-powered cars. We’re
even working on antigravity machines.

So where are the candidates of the Grand Old Party? They’re
busy trying to be a movie actor born more than 100 years ago,
in 1911. And a mediocre one, at that (he really didn’t make a
smooth transition from radio to those newfangled “talkies”).

Sure, that “Bedtime For Bonzo” guy turned out to be Ronald Reagan, and sure, THAT
Ronald Reagan (not the
Democrat he was in the 1950s) turned out to be a pretty darned
good president. But that, people, was 30-some years ago. Back
then, a Macintosh was an apple, not an Apple. Those on the
cutting edge of technology were using that dynamic new
communication device — the pager. And the Internet was the mesh
inside your swim trucks.

But, for some reason, the Republicans want to go back to the
idyllic 1980s — acid-washed jeans, the Cold War, Milli Vanilli,
“Dallas,” yuppies, the 10-year war in Afghanistan (that time it was the
Soviets), political correctness, the Commodore 64, Swatch.

President Reagan was not a
genius; he was a very smart man, but no genius. Still, he had
lived through heyday of the ‘20s, the depression of the ‘30s,
the Great War of the ‘40s, the Baby Boom of the ‘50s, the
social turmoil of the ‘60s, the excess and explosion of the
‘70s. It doesn’t take a genius to learn the lessons of a
half-century of just paying attention to the world. Reagan was smart enough to keep
his pores open and absorb all that knowledge through a life
filled with simple experience.

He was simply a man for his times, just as Margaret Thatcher was a woman
(and every bit a man) for her times. America had just gone
through the drama of a president resigning in shame, and along
came this man, this virile, striking man, who saw America —
still, despite its dramatic fall — as a shining city on a hill.

The image struck Americans in the heart; they saw it too,
always. But Reagan didn’t
say he was like anyone else, trying to be someone. Like few
others before him, he was simply himself.

Some say this year’s GOP nomination battle is just a rerun of
Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, running against
arch-conservative Barry
Goldwater. Of course, Rockefeller — that era’s Mitt Romney — lost the nomination to
Goldwater — that era’s
Ronald Reagan. Goldwater went on to lose in one
the biggest landslides in history, but never mind that.
Ideologues will fight that fight, damn the consequences to the
party.

But the bigger issue is the soul of the Republican Party.
George Bush the First got
crushed in 1992 by a superliberal who proclaimed “I feel your
pain.” When it came time for the GOP to post up a candidate
against Bill Clinton, they came up with — Bob Dole? Beholden to
the Christian coalition, he got crushed. George Bush the Second won as a
“compassionate conservative,” but only because America was sick
of Mr. Clinton — and especially his veep, Al Gore.

Mr. Bush turned out to be
(surprise) a big-government Republican, spending every bit as
wildly as any Democrat. Then, in 2008, the GOP, as in 1996,
went with the next in line, posting up another liberal
Republican (albeit a self-described “maverick”). The
Establishment Republicans and the Socially Conservative
Republicans and the Fiscally Conservative Republicans beat each
other down until all that was left was the LCD Candidate (the
least common denominator). Again, crushed.

Mr. Romney is that LCD
Candidate, many argue. Despite the emergence of a powerful new
conservative faction (the tea party), Republicans are about to
embark on a trip they’ve taken several times in the past
half-century. The party is more splintered than ever, thanks in
part to Newt Gingrich’s scorched-earth campaign.

Should Mr. Romney lose, all
segments of the Republican Party and conservative movement will
have to step back to reassess. They may simply decide then that
the party is broken beyond repair, say goodbye to Mr. Reagan’s “big tent” and
shatter into a hundred factions.

All over who really is the next Ronald Reagan. In 2012. You can’t
make this stuff up.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a
decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at
jcurl@washingtontimes.com.

© Copyright 2012 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint
permission.

Read more here:
CURL: The end of the GOP as we knew it

The Genetics and
Microbiology Sciences are two of the key categories
covered by the
Sciences Social network ScienceIndex.com. The users of
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(PRWEB) January 26, 2012

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embryonic stem
cells (hESCs) are pluripotent cell types derived from
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with two active X chromosomes (class I), the authors developed
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results of this study demonstrate that Yersinia ruckeri may
undergo a dormant state under certain starvation conditions.
Such dormant cells were easily resuscitated by addition of
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levels of metabolic activity and plate counts similar to those
seen prior the start of the experiment. The authors also
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) — MIT
researchers have discovered that certain photosynthetic ocean
bacteria need to beware of viruses bearing gifts: These viruses
are really con artists carrying genetic material taken from
their previous bacterial hosts that tricks the new host into
using its own machinery to activate the genes, a process never
before documented in any virus-bacteria relationship.

The con occurs when a grifter virus injects its DNA into a
bacterium living in a phosphorus-starved region of the ocean.
Such bacteria, stressed by the lack of phosphorus (which they
use as a nutrient), have their phosphorus-gathering machinery
in high gear. The virus senses the host's stress and offers
what seems like a helping hand: bacterial genes nearly
identical to the host's own that enable the host to gather more
phosphorus. The host uses those genes, -- but the additional
phosphorus goes primarily toward supporting the virus'
replication of its own DNA.

Once that process is complete (about 10 hours after infection),
the virus explodes its host, releasing progeny viruses back
into the ocean where they can invade other bacteria and repeat
this process. The additional phosphorus-gathering genes
provided by the virus keep its reproduction cycle on schedule.

In essence, the virus (or phage) is co-opting a very
sophisticated component of the host's regulatory machinery to
enhance its own reproduction -- something never before
documented in a virus-bacteria relationship.

"This is the first demonstration of a virus of any kind -- even
those heavily studied in biomedical research -- exploiting this
kind of regulatory machinery in a host cell, and it has evolved
in response to the extreme selection pressures of phosphorus
limitation in many parts of the global oceans," says Sallie
(Penny) W. Chisholm, a professor of civil and environmental
engineering (CEE) and biology at MIT, who is principal
investigator of the research and co-author of a paper published
in the Jan. 24 issue of Current Biology. "The phage
have evolved the capability to sense the degree of phosphorus
stress in the host they're infecting and have captured, over
evolutionary time, some components of the bacteria's machinery
to overcome the limitation."

Chisholm and co-author Qinglu Zeng, a CEE postdoc, performed
this research using the bacterium Prochlorococcus and its close
relative, Synechococcus, which together produce about a sixth
of the oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. Prochlorococcus is about
one micron in diameter and can reach densities of up to 100
million per liter of seawater; Synechococcus is only slightly
larger and a bit less abundant. The viruses that attack both
bacteria, called cyanophages, are even more populous.

The bacterial mechanism in play is called a two-component
regulatory system, which refers to the microbe's ability to
sense and respond to external environmental conditions. This
system prompts the bacteria to produce extra proteins that bind
to phosphorus and bring it into the cell. The gene carried by
the virus encodes this same protein.

"Both the phage and bacterial host have the genes that produce
the phosphorus-binding proteins, and we found they can both be
up-regulated by the host's two-component regulatory system,"
says Zeng. "The positive side of infection for bacteria is that
they will obtain more phosphorus binders from the phage and
maybe more phosphorus, although the bacteria are dying and the
phage is actually using the phosphorus for its own ends."

In 2010, Chisholm and Maureen Coleman, now an assistant
professor at the University of Chicago, demonstrated that the
populations of Prochlorococcus living in the Atlantic Ocean had
adapted to the phosphorus limitations of that environment by
developing more genes specifically related to the scavenging of
phosphorus. This proved to be the sole difference between those
populations and their counterparts living in the Pacific Ocean,
which is richer in phosphorus, indicating that the variation is
the result of evolutionary adaptation to the environment.

The new research indicates that the phage that infect these
bacteria have evolved right along with their hosts.

"These viruses -- the most abundant class of viruses that
infect Prochlorococcus -- have acquired genes for a metabolic
pathway from their host cells," says Professor David Shub a
biologist at the State University of New York at Albany. "These
sorts of genes are usually tightly regulated in bacteria, that
is they are turned into RNA and protein only when needed by the
cell. However, genes of these kinds in viruses tend to be used
in a strictly programmed manner, unresponsive to changes in the
environment. Now Zeng and Chisholm have shown that these
particular viral genes are regulated by the amount of phosphate
in their environment, and also that they use the regulatory
proteins already present in their host cells at the time of
infection. The significance of this paper is the revelation of
a very close evolutionary interrelationship between this
particular bacterium and the viruses that seek to destroy it."

"We've come to think of this whole system as another bit of
evidence for the incredible intimacy of the relationship of
phage and host," says Chisholm, whose next steps are to explore
the functions of all of the genes these marine phage have
acquired from host cells to learn more about the selective
pressures that are unique to the phage-host interactions in the
open oceans. "Most of what we understand about phage and
bacteria has come from model microorganisms used in biomedical
research," says Chisholm. "The environment of the human body is
dramatically different from that of the open oceans, and these
oceanic phage have much to teach us about fundamental
biological processes."

This research was supported in part by the Gordon and Betty
Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation's (NSF) CMORE
program, the NSF Biological Oceanography program and the U.S.
Department of Energy.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering. The original article was
written by Denise Brehm.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For
further information, please contact the source cited
above.

Journal Reference:

Qinglu Zeng, Sallie W. Chisholm. Marine
Viruses Exploit Their Host's Two-Component Regulatory System in
Response to Resource Limitation. Current
Biology, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.055

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited
instead.

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Viruses con bacteria into working for them

28-11-2011 11:49 Last week History Channe's Ancient Aliens aired the last episode of this season, "Aliens and The Creation of Man", which scrutinized the theory that primitive humans were genetically engineered by extraterrestrials, by confronting ancient scriptures with latest achievements of modern science, that seem to corroborate the fact that the quick jump from hominids to homo-sapiens, couldn't have happened by random natural selection.

Read the original post:
Has the modern science found evidence that the homo-sapiens species was jumpstarted by aliens? - Video

29-12-2011 23:06 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of old, men of renown. Gen 6:4 According to legend, the Nephilim descended to earth for gold - the atmosphere of Nibiru was relieved and mythical scientists came up with a golden shield to reflect light and heat back to the planet. The old legend that the human race is a product of genetic engineering, a mix between the Nephilim and terrestrial monkeys, specifically designed to work in the gold mines.

Read this article:
Human Giants