Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Researchers at KU Leuven have discovered that a defect in the ATP13A2 gene causes cell death by disrupting the cellular transport of polyamines. When this happens in the part of the brain that controls body movement, it can lead to Parkinsons disease.

With more than six million patients around the world, Parkinsons disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders. Around twenty genetic defects have already been linked to the disease, but for several of these genes, we dont know what function they fulfill. The ATP13A2 gene used to be one of these genes, but researchers at KU Leuven have now discovered its function in the cell. The researchers explain how a defect in the gene can cause Parkinsons disease in their article ATP13A2 deficiency disrupts lysosomal polyamine export published in Nature.

We found that ATP13A2 transports polyamines and is crucial for their uptake into the cell, explains senior author Peter Vangheluwe, PhD, from the Laboratory of Cellular Transport Systems. Polyamines are essential molecules that support many cell functions and protect cells in stress conditions. But how polyamines are taken up and transported in human cells was still a mystery. Our study reveals that ATP13A2 plays a vital role in that process. Our experiments showed that polyamines enter the cell via lysosomes and that ATP13A2 transfers polyamines from the lysosome to the cell interior. This transport process is essential for lysosomes to function properly as the waste disposal system of the cell where obsolete cell material is broken down and recycled. However, mutations in the ATP13A2 gene disrupt this transport process, so that polyamines build up in lysosomes. As a result, the lysosomes swell and eventually burst, causing the cells to die. When this happens in the part of the brain that controls body movement, this process may trigger the motion problems and tremors related to Parkinsons disease.

Unraveling the role of ATP13A2 is an important step forward in Parkinsons research and sheds new light on what causes the disease, but a lot of work remains to be done.

Vangheluwe continues: We now have to investigate how deficient polyamine transport is linked to other defects in Parkinsons disease such as the accumulation of plaques in the brain and malfunctioning of the mitochondria, the energy factories of the cell. We need to examine how these mechanisms influence each other, he says. The discovery of the polyamine transport system in animals has implications beyond Parkinsons disease as well, because polyamine transporters also play a role in other age-related conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and several neurological disorders. Now that we have unraveled the role of ATP13A2, we can start searching for molecules that influence its function. Our lab is already collaborating with the Centre for Drug Design and Discoverya tech transfer platform established by KU Leuven and the European Investment Fundand receives support from the Michael J. Fox Foundation.

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Defect in the ATP13A2 Gene Can Lead to Parkinson's - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

How do we define organics? From a legal perspective, the term can only be applied to foods that meet a laundry list of requirements set forth by the US Department of Agriculture or similar agencies around the world. But these rules leave no room for technological advances falling under the umbrella of New Breeding Techniquesthat could help us produce foods more sustainably.

Classic genetic engineering relies on transgenics in which genes from one organism is inserted into another. An example: insect resistant soybeans and corn were engineeredto contain Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly known as Bt, a bacterium that occurs naturally in the soil.For years, bacteriologists have known that some strains of Bt produce proteins kill certain insects with alkaline digestive tracts when they try to digest the bacterium. Organic farmers have used Bt in spray form since early in the 20th century. Although anti-GMO activists embrace the use of Bt spray, they have vigorously opposed Bt engineered crops on the grounds that they were created using foreign geneseven though there is no scientific evidence that GMO Bt crops are harmful in any way, and in fact are more sustainable than organic crops that use the spray form.

In almost all cases, NBTs do not involve transgenics. An illustrative example is thegene-edited mushrooma common white mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) engineered using CRISPR to reduce activity of a group of genes that encode an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase (PPO). By deleting just a few base pairs (letters in the language of DNA), the activity of six PPO genes was suppressed, leading to much lower levels of agents called polyphenols. As a result, the modified mushrooms do not brown when left in the air after being cut.

Thats presented a challenge to government oversight officials as to how they should regulate these techniques. Early in 2016, for example, the USDA decided not to regulate a new mushroom made by Penn State University scientists using CRISPR, the popular gene-editing technique.

In aletter to the CRISPR mushroom developerYinong Yang of PSU, the USDA agreed to the non-transgenic status of the mushrooms:

[The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (AHIS)] has concluded that your CRISPR/Cas9 edited white button mushroomsdo not contain any introduced genetic material..and APHIS has no reason to reason to believe that the anti-browning phenotype of [the] white button mushroom would increase the weediness of white button mushroom.

Other NBT products now being sold or making their way to the market:

Such crops, however, cannot be sold as organic. That status is defined by organic authorities and in most cases is not related to how things are grown, nor to whether the crop is produced sustainably. Indeed, in some cases, crops developed through NBTs can be grown with less potentially harmful inputs than those granted organic status.

This disconnect between sustainability and organic certification is likely to persist in the foreseeable future because the standards that are used to designate which farm products receive an organic seal are based on, or at least influenced strongly, by ideological forces. The main such force in this case, promoted by organic authorities, is a belief that classic organic techniques are more environmentally sensitive than newer techniques, which they claim are untested and potentially dangerous.

This belief is not substantiated and scientists who work on food biotechnology have published studies in recent years making the point that cutting edge biotechnology is in many cases more organic (for lack of a better term) than techniques utilized on organic farms. Consequently, they maintain, farmers should be allowed to embrace NBTs, not only for the sake of earning better profits and producing higher quality food, but to improve sustainability mostly by reducing carbon footprints and the toll on the land. It is ironic that farmers who might embrace NBTs would be more true to agro-ecological principals and practices than those whove been granted the use of organic labels for following techniques that are, in some cases, more than a century old and based on outdated ideas of what is sustainable.

Its really quite simple. Practices are more sustainable if they cause less harm to the environment in order to produce a given amount and quality of food compared with alternative practices. Thus, if an NBT version of a particular plant crop is resistant to a certain plant pathogen that ruins that crop, or if the NBT can be grown with less water or less fertilizer, or if it uses less land than the comparable non-NBT, then the NBT is more sustainable. Similarly, if an NBT reduces a crops carbon footprint, this too translates into improved sustainability. Since the current framework excludes from organic certification crops whose genes, or their expression, have been tweaked via any kind of genetic engineering, including NBTs, we are left with the hard reality that organic certification does not equate with sustainability.

The idea that NBTs could improve the sustainability profile of organic farming is the subject of a paper by two agricultural plant scientists in Italy Luca Lombardo and Samanta Zelasco of the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection, Italian National Research Council and the Olive Growing and Olive Oil Industry Research Centre, Agricultural Research Council.

The authors supply a definition of sustainability at the beginning of the paper, published in the journal Sustainability: Organic farming (OF) systems are conceived to produce food through the integration of cultural, biological, and mechanical practices aimed at preserving natural resources, biodiversity animal welfare, and eventually human health.

After outlining the basis of transgenic techniques, the authors move into areas that fall within the NBT realm, the first one being Genome Editing with Engineered Nucleases (GEEN).GEENS include older technologiesdeveloped in the early 2000s or slightly earlier, such as hybrid meganucleases, zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), and transcription activator like effectors nucleases (TALENs). They include what has become the most widely-used genome editing technology, CRISPR.

In recent years, CRISPR and other new technologies have jump-started a revolution in numerous life sciences, with biomedical research a particular spotlight. Along the way, the technology has raised concerns about whether there should be limits on its use,particularly when it comes to germline editing of humans, and making changes that in some cases could possible be passed along to future generations.

In 2017, researchers at Oregon Health Sciences University, in Portland, demonstrated that they could use CRISPR on human embryos to correct a genetic abnormality underlying hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a serious inherited heart condition. Soon after, researchers in China described success with a similar approach on human embryos to correct beta thalassemia, a genetic blood disease.

But while much of the public attention and controversy have focused on the use of CRISPR to modify humans to prevent diseases, CRISPR is at center stage in a revolution in the application of genetic engineering to agriculture, including plant and fungal crops and farm animals.The benefits of CRISPR over the other NBT technologies is that it is programmableit can be used to modify, delete, or insert any genetic sequence with by swopping cheaply made strands of whats called RNA, while ZFNs and TALENs must be custom-made for any genome editing job. But each technology has particular pluses and minuses, depending on the job need.

Conventional plant breeding techniques can generate desirable traits, but the outcomes are difficult to predict. Depending on the species, development of a plant with novel characteristics can take 7 to 13 years to produce stable, uniform plant varieties. NBTs, CRISPR in particular, allow production of new varieties of plants fungi and animals but with increased precision and much shorter time periods than in conventional breeding. Other benefits include improved nutritional properties, new tastes, reduced levels of allergens, disease resistance and increased shelf-life.

A study in the journal Plant Breedingsuggests that the new techniques may lend themselves well to exclusion from regulation by agencies that have tightly controlled transgenic technologies. This could encourage food manufacturers. However the bottom line is typically consumers. In this regard, there is a major hole in the argument, advanced by some, that if farmers embrace advanced engineering techniques and produce more sustainable crops, health-conscious consumers will embrace these new crops. Farmers taking this route without buy-in from consumers and food companies do so at the expense of the organic seal, at least in the current regulatory milieu. Regardless of whether that organic seal really means anything from a sustainability perspective, or for that matter from a nutritional perspective, it means something from a branding and financial perspective. At least in part, farmers desire the organic seal, because consumers are willing to pay premium prices.

Lombardo and Zelasco also considered polling data published in Europe and in the US which make a case that cisgenic crops (made using NBTs) are more likely than transgenic crops to gain acceptance by consumers who traditionally have sought out organic food. Furthermore, unlike transgenic crops that non-governmental organizations can detect with easy-to-use testing kits, cisgenic crops are not distinguishable. This does not mean, however, that regulatory agencies in Europe or in the US will regulate cisgenic crops based on their content with no regard for the methods used to create them.

A version of this story originally ran on the GLP on May 29, 2018.

David Warmflash is an astrobiologist, physician and science writer. Follow him on Twitter @CosmicEvolution

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The real sustainability revolution in farming rests with CRISPR and other New Breeding Techniques. Why are organic farmers blocked from using them? -...

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The flu virus, shown here as an illustration, evolves quickly, helping it escape our vaccines and immune systems.

Credit: Bethany Halford/C&EN

Although the Wuhan coronavirus is dominating headlines across the globe, influenza kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year. In the US, millions of people roll up their sleeves annually for a flu shot. But this ritual is confusing for many. Why is it that most vaccines are effective for a lifetime while the flu vaccine is only effective for a year? And why do we sometimes get the flu even when weve gotten the vaccine? The answer is evolution: the flu is constantly evolving to evade our immune systems. In this episode of Stereo Chemistry, scientists who study flu evolution and pandemics explain what makes fighting the flu so difficult.

Subscribe to Stereo Chemistry now on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify.

The following is the script for the podcast. We have edited the interviews within for length and clarity.

StefanieOlsen: This is the info sheet from the CDC on the flu vaccine. Kind of who should get it, why you should get it, who shouldnt get it, what to expect, whats normal, whats not normal. All that sort of stuff. So Ill give you that for your perusal.

Matt Davenport: Thats Stephanie Olsen. Shes a nurse practitioner at a MinuteClinic in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Thats where C&EN senior correspondent Bethany Halford and her son went to get the flu vaccine back in the fall.

Stefanie Olsen: Are you a righty or a lefty?

Bethanys son: Im a righty.

Stefanie Olsen: OK. Cool. Well use your left arm. Find this big muscle. Here we go: clean, clean, clean. OK. One, two, three. Good job. Done. There you are.

Bethanys son: One tiny sting.

Stephanie Olsen: One tiny sting and done. Good job.

Matt: That didnt seem so bad.

Bethany Halford: It really wasnt bad at all.

Matt: Well hello there, Bethany.

Matt: Thanks so much for bringing your recorder along with you for the flu shot.

Bethany: No problem. Im actually glad I made this recording because I plan to replay it for my son every year just before we go to get our shots. Its a process thats met with no small amount of dread. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that most people get the flu vaccine every year.

Matt: So you and your son went in September. Its now almost February. Lets pretend youre a podcast cohost who has not gotten their flu shot. Is it too late?

Bethany: Well, CDC does recommend getting the flu vaccine by the end of October because it takes a few weeks for your body to create the antibodies that fight the virus. And this year the flu seems to be ramping up early. But doctors say that even now, its not too late to get the vaccine.

And were right in the thick of flu season. During the last flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, from October 2018 to May 2019, as many as 42.9 million people in the US got sick with the flu; 647,000 of those people were hospitalized, and 61,200 died.

Matt: Those numbers are from CDC, and theyre pretty typical for a flu season. So influenza is this huge problem, and its been that way for a long time. And its not going away, right? Unlike other vaccines, the flu shot is something you should get every year. And sometimes that flu shot isnt going to work.

Bethany: And this episode is all about how the flu outfoxes our vaccines and immune systems: through evolution. The flu virus is constantly changing itself to evade our immune systems response. And the virus changes enough each yearsometimes even enough within a single flu seasonthat the vaccine weve created is simply no longer effective.

Matt: So Beth, at the risk of sounding like a chemist right after the Nobel Prize announcement, isnt that a little more biology than chemistry?

Beth: Well, yes. But the evolutionary changes to influenza are really chemical changes. Theyre mutations in the viruss RNA that lead to amino acid changes in the viruss proteins. So there is plenty of chemistry to dig into. Were going to talk to three experts to learn how those changes happen and how studying them could help protect us better in the future. Well also look at what happens at the molecular level when a certain strain of flu becomes a pandemic that spreads quickly across the globe.

And were going to start by talking to a chemist.

Jesse Bloom: Hi, my name is Jesse Bloom.

Bethany: Jesse studies protein evolution at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Hes also affiliated with the University of Washington and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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Jesse Bloom: I actually did my PhD in chemistry, working with Frances Arnold, who studied the directed evolution of proteins.

Matt: Wait. The Frances Arnold?

Bethany: Yes, the Frances Arnold from Caltech who won a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Jesse Bloom: After working with Frances, I remained really interested in protein evolution, but I wanted to study the evolution of proteins in a context with biomedical significance. So my lab now focuses on viral evolution, particularly the evolution of influenza virus. And the reason for that is these viruses evolve their proteins very rapidly.

Bethany: Jesse says there are really two main forms of flu evolution. One is called antigenic drift, and the other is called antigenic shift.

Matt: I like the rhyme scheme.

Bethany: Catchy, right? So lets start with the drift.

Jesse Bloom: Antigenic drift is the much more common form of flu evolution, and that essentially can be thought of as last years strain or a couple years ago strain of human flu evolving to be a little bit different, each year. Our immune systems are actually great at mounting antibody responses that protect us against flu, and theres pretty good evidence that if youre infected with a particular strain of flu, your body will provide very good, long-lasting immunity to that particular strain of flu.

Bethany: So, if our bodies provide long-lasting immunity, Im sure youre wondering why we still have to get a flu shot every year.

Bethany: Heres how Jesse explains it.

Jesse Bloom: The challenge with flu is the virus evolves very rapidly. In particular, the positions on the viral proteins that are recognized by our immune system, primarily by our antibodies, change, and they change enough that after about 5 years, many of those antibodies sort of dont work anymore. So antigenic drift and what typically is responsible for the seasonal influenza outbreaks is the virus that was present last year or the year before changing a little bit so that after about 5 years, its mostly evaded your immune systems memory.

Bethany: Now, I told you this was a chemistry story, so before we go any further, let me give you a picture of what Jesse is talking about. There are two proteins that scientists think are most important with respect to immunitywe create antibodies that bind to these two proteins in order to mount a defense against influenza. The first protein is hemagglutinin, which helps the influenza virus latch on to cells and infect them. The second is neuraminidase, which helps cleave new virus particles away from infected cells so the virus can continue to attack healthy cells. If you think of the flu virus as a sort of blob, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase stick out of that blob like pins in a pin cushion. Scientists name different strains of flu based on which types of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase they have.

Matt: Are those the proteins were referring to when we talk about like H1N1 influenza or H3N2 influenza ?

Bethany: Thats right. Right now, there are three types of flu circulating in humans: H1N1, H3N2, and influenza B.

Jesse Bloom: I mean, they all evolve pretty fast, like, compared to almost anything else we encounter in life. But definitely H3N2 evolves the fastest. H1N1 is sort of in the middle. And influenza B is the slowest, although influenza B is still pretty fast. And this plays outfor instance, influenza B is most known for infecting children because its relatively less good at escaping immunity. Obviously children dont have any immunity at all, if they havent been vaccinated, anyway, to escape. So theyre always going to be susceptible. And then H3N2 is sort of best at infecting older peopleits also good at infecting younger people, but its good at affecting all agesand probably the reason is that H3N2 is evolving the fastest. So it can best get away from that prior immunity.

Matt: So, when he says something is evolving fast, what does that mean on a molecular level?

Bethany: Take H3N2 influenza, for example. The hemagglutinin protein on H3N2 will change three to four of its amino acids every yearan evolution rate that Jesse says is extraordinarily high.

Matt: OK, so I understand why these gradual changesthe antigenic driftmake it so that we have to get the flu vaccine every year. But why dont we need frequent vaccinations for all RNA viruses? Like measles?

Bethany: CDC recommends just two shots for measles as part of whats called the MMR vaccine. It protects you from measles, mumps, and rubella. You get the first shot when youre about a year old, the other when youre about 5 years old. It seems that the parts of the measles virus that the immune system goes afteror makes antibodies forjust dont seem to be changing that much. We know this because before the measles vaccine existed, people who got measles only got it once in their lifetime. And in the 50 or so years since weve had the vaccine, people who get it dont get measles. As Jesse explains, theres no reason measles cant drift like the flu, thats just not what we see. So the thinking is that measles is mutating, but not in a way that helps the virus. Its not as wily as influenza.

Matt: That is super interesting. But . . .

Bethany: How does knowing this help fight the flu?

Bethany (in interview): Can you talk a little bit about how studying flus evolution can help us fight the virus?

Jesse Bloom: So first, the way the flu vaccines are made currently, theres sort of this forecasting problem. We know that the vaccine works better when the vaccine is more similar to the virus that is infecting people. But it takes a while, maybe about 9 months, to really produce enough vaccine to be given to everybody. And because the virus is changing a little bit every year, you have to predict what virus is going to be circulating 9 months in the future. So you basically have to say, How do we think the virus is going to be evolving? And so by understanding the viruss evolution, we can make better decisions about which flu strain should go in the flu vaccine. And when those decisions are better, the vaccine will work better.

Bethany (in studio): Jesse also says that studying evolution helps scientists understand which parts of the flu virus change the least or mutate less frequently. It could be that some of these less-dynamic parts of the flu could become targets for longer-lasting vaccines.

Matt: I can dig it. So whats driving the evolution? Whats making the proteins change?

Bethany: Good question. Lets get another influenza evolution expert to chime in.

Adam Lauring: So Im Adam Lauring. Im an associate professor here at the University of Michigan. I am a physician-scientist, which means I spend part of my time actually doing clinical work in infectious diseases. But most of my time I spend actually running a research lab, in which we study virus evolution, including influenza virus. Evolution is really for me kind of the be all, end all in the problem of influenza. Evolution has immediate and real-world impacts.

Bethany (in interview): When we say flu is evolving, what is actually going on?

Adam Lauring: At its simplest, the flu will mutate, and that means that its making changes in its genome which will lead to changes in its proteins, and those protein changes will make the virus different. And then theres selection. And so viruses that are better at doing what viruses do will take over, and the viruses that are less fit will die away. And so its kind of like you learned when you first learned biology: its survival of the fittest, or the best one wins. And so the virus is mutating all the time, and the ones who are best able to make copies of themselves and spread from person to person are going to become the new viruses and replace the old ones.

Bethany (in studio): Now, flu evolution is a complex process thats influenced by many things. But one thing that helps flu evolve especially fast is that its an RNA virus. That means its genes are stored in ribonucleic acid, or RNA. RNA viruses, in general, evolve faster than viruses that store their genetic information in DNA. Both DNA and RNA viruses have proteins called polymerases, and the job of these proteins is to make copies of the viruss genetic code. DNA polymerases, however, have a built-in proofreading function. They can check their work for mistakes and correct them. RNA polymerases dont do that.

Adam Lauring: Because of this, most RNA viruses have mutation rates or error rates that are about a thousandfold higher than for DNA viruses. That means that an RNA virus can generate mutants way more quickly, and then some of those mutants will confer an advantage to the virus, and that will lead to faster evolution.

Bethany: Adam says that all of the flu viruss proteins can and are evolving but that mutations to the hemagglutinin and neuraminidase proteinsthe Hs and Nsare the ones that matter most.

Adam Lauring: Mutations in those proteins tend to make a bigger difference in terms of whether the virus succeeds or fails, and a major reason is those proteins, theyre on the surface of the virus, and so theyre targeted by the immune system. And so you have antibodies targeting those proteins. So if a virus figures out a way to escape those antibodies, it will do better than its brothers and sisters.

Bethany: So weve been talking a lot about mutation, but Adam also points out that theres a lot more to evolving quickly than just how fast a virus mutates. For instance, the number of people infected could play a role. The example he gave me is the more people infected, the more opportunities the virus has to evolve. Thats because a greater diversity of people would mean a wider variety of immune systems, and the virus would need to generate new or different versions of itself to survive.

Adam Lauring: Broad strokes, flu does evolve quickly but maybe not for the reasons we typically think. And there are probably subtleties yet to be uncovered.

Bethany: To try to uncover some of those subtleties, Adams lab has been collaborating with Arnold Monto and Emily Martin, who are epidemiologists at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. For about 8 years, they have been following 300 or so Michigan families to see what viruses are circulating among them and how their immunity changes over time. The flu virus is part of this sampling. As part of the work, they collect nose and throat swabs anytime someone from one of those families gets sick.

Matt: Oh, wait. Everyone gets swabbed when anyone gets sick?

Bethany: Right. Heres why.

Adam Lauring: Its really kind of a slice of what flu is doing locally, and youre not really biased by only getting sick people or people who tend to go to the doctor.

Bethany: Adams group realized that the collection of samples the epidemiologists had accumulated gave them a great opportunity to see how flu viruses were evolving outside of a laboratory. So they raided the freezer and then did in-depth genetic sequencing of all the influenza viruses they found.

Adam Lauring: The virus makes a lot of mutations. Everybodys flu viruses, their population is actually a little bit different. So I could have the flu and you could have the flu and wed be in the same room, but our flu viruses might be a little bit different if you really looked hard enough. And so what were able to do with our sequencing is really understand those subtle differences in kind of the overall flu mixture that each person has in them.

Bethany: And then they compare, see which versions are actually being transmitted from person to person.

Adam Lauring: And that is really important in understanding evolution, right, because you may generate all sorts of cool viruses inside you. But if they dont make it onto the next person, its kind of a dead end. And that virus could be the most awesome virus there is, but if it doesnt get transmitted, its gone forever. And so what we tried to do is understand exactly how many viruses kind of go across from one person to the next. And we found that its actually a really small number. Its hard for a new virus to kind of make it both within a host and to get on to the next host.

Matt: Thats wild. So, if its hard for a new flu virus to survive within a host and also hard for that virus to make it to the next host, how is that much evolution happening? Why do we still need to get the flu vaccine every year?

Bethany: Adam says its really just a numbers game. Hundreds of millions of people are infected with the flu each year, which gives the virus lots of opportunities to make a successful mutant.

Adam Lauring: One analogy I give is flu viruses are sort of like people playing the slot machines. And so most of the time the virus is losing when you talk about kind of on an individual host or in a household. But if you have a hundred million people playing the slot machines, youre going to hit the jackpot with some frequency.

Matt: I like that analogy. Its kind of empowering. Like humanitys the house and the flus a rube giving us their money.

Bethany: Sure. Just remember, the flus currency isnt money. Its trying to survive, and when it thrives, it makes you sick. So its not like a casino catches fire whenever someone hits the jackpot. And the analogy really works best for antigenic drift. Weve got a whole other type of evolution to talk aboutremember how I said there were two? This second kind leads to pandemics, and well talk about it . . . after the break.

Matt: Hey. Sorry to leave you hanging like that, but dont worry. Theres going to be a silver lining. Were not just going to be like. The flu. Yeah, its brutal. Welp, see you later.

Thats the great thing about covering chemistry. Its that were not just talking about problems, were talking to the people solving them.

In fact, earlier this month, Leigh Krietsch Boerner wrote a phenomenal piece for C&EN about how researchers are examining the effectiveness of flu shots, especially vaccines made using eggs.

Weve got a link to Leighs story in the description, but if you want to inoculate yourself against the possibility of missing more of our great coverage, sign up for our newsletter. Well send a weekly dose of chemistrys biggest goings-on right to your inbox. Head to cenm.ag/newsletter to subscribe.

Matt: So, Bethany, you said there were two main forms of influenza evolution: antigenic drift, which weve been talking about. But there was also, what was that rhyme again?

Bethany: Antigenic shift.

Matt: Right, antigenic shift. Whats that?

Bethany: When the influenza virus undergoes antigenic shift, it experiences a much larger change. It changes so much, in fact, that we usually dont have much of an antibody arsenal built up to fight it.

Matt: And how does it make such a dramatic shift?

Bethany: So, antigenic shift can happen a few different ways. Another way flu is different from measles is that flu doesnt just circulate in people. It also circulates in many other animal species, like pigs and whales and birds.

Bethany: Yeah. But it turns out, the vast majority of influenza strains that exist in the world actually are circulating in wild waterfowl. And sometimes those viruses will jump from birds to people or from birds to pigs to people, for example.

A single animal can also get infected by two different strains of flu from two other animals. Those viruses then swap some of their genetic material to make a new, third strain.

However its happening, when the flu is evolving outside of humans, vaccine makers and our immune systems are largely blind to what these viruses look like. That means if one of these viruses does jump to humans, it could hit us hard. Were talking global pandemic here. Thats because the virus would look very different from anything our immune systems have seen, and we might have little or no ability to recognize the strain or fight it.

Matt: That sounds gnarly. And a little scary.

Bethany: It is. Global flu pandemics occur when a novel influenza virus spreads quickly around the globe.

Matt: Is that why were so concerned when people get infected with flu on chicken farms, for example?

Bethany: Yes. And you may have heard about the recent outbreak that started in Wuhan, China. Thats a coronavirusso, not the flubut its another example of a pathogen that made the jump into people from animals. But theres actually a lot more to becoming a global pandemic than just generating a virus people havent seen before. Lets talk to someone who studies how global influenza pandemics emerge.

Seema Lakdawala: My name is Seema Lakdawala. I am an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh in the School of Medicine and the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Bethany: Seema says there are several hurdles a new virus has to overcome before it can become a pandemic

Seema Lakdawala: And the first hurdle is that they have to be able to infect the human host. And so its hard for some viruses that may be emerging in birds to infect the human hosts unless theres access. And so it doesnt happen as readily, but that does happen in many occasions.

Matt: That makes sense, right? Its kind of like what Adam was talking about earlier. How you can have all these cool bugs being made in humans, but if they cant survive, and if they cant make the leap in humans, they really arent a threat.

Bethany: Right. And Seema says the next hurdle, after a virus has made it into a human, is the virus being able to survive in respiratory systems. In humans, the flu is a respiratory infection, but in birds, its gastrointestinal. Influenza virus can move from birds to people through contact with feces or other secretions, butdont worrynot from eating poultry or eggs.

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Podcast: Why do I have to get a flu shot every year? - Chemical & Engineering News

The young digerati will lead innovation, but theyll need business awareness, an entrepreneurial attitude, bottom-line focus, and ethical intelligence.

This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management.

Image courtesy of Jim Frazier/theispot.com

Throughout history, new technologies have demanded step shifts in the skills that companies need. Like the First Industrial Revolutions steam-powered factories, the Second Industrial Revolutions mass-production tools and techniques, and the Third Industrial Revolutions internet-based technologies, the Fourth Industrial Revolution currently being driven by the convergence of new digital, biological, and physical technologies is changing the nature of work as we know it. Now the challenge is to hire and develop the next generation of workers who will use artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, genetic engineering, 3D printing, virtual reality, and the like in their jobs.

The problem, strangely enough, appears to be two-sided. People at all levels complain bitterly about being either underqualified or overqualified for the jobs that companies advertise. In addition, local and regional imbalances among the kinds of people companies want and the skills available in labor pools are resulting in unfilled vacancies, slowing down the adoption of new technologies.

Before organizations can rethink how to design jobs, organize work, and compete for talent in a digital age, they must systematically identify the capabilities they need now, and over the next decade, to innovate and survive. For more than 10 years, weve been studying the impact of digital design and product development tools on organizations, their people, and their projects.1 Weve found that the competencies companies need most are business-oriented rather than technical. Thats true even for brick-and-mortar companies that are trying to become more digital.

And most companies are beginning to realize that they cant just hire all-new workforces; there arent enough qualified recruits, and the expense would be enormous. Instead, they need to retrain and redeploy existing employees and other members of their communities, in addition to hiring and contracting new ones to fill their needs. However, rapid technological change has rendered skill cycles shorter than ever; key competencies of even a decade ago are pass today, and most of tomorrows jobs remain unknown.

Waiting for the fog to clear isnt an option. Companies must identify and develop the core skills their employees will need going forward. Our interviews, surveys, and case studies have revealed that most companies focus on refining the skills their people already possess, which doesnt prepare existing employees or new hires for the business challenges theyll face when using emerging technologies in their jobs.

Tucker J. Marion (@inuvation) is an associate professor of technological entrepreneurship at Northeastern Universitys DAmore-McKim School of Business in Boston. Sebastian K. Fixson (@sebastianfixson) is associate dean of innovation and the Marla M. Capozzi MBA 96 Term Chair of Design Thinking, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Greg Brown is senior director of Worldwide CAD Business Development at the global software company PTC.

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Four Skills Tomorrows Innovation Workforce Will Need - MIT Sloan

Dr. Reshma Shetty is no stranger within the synthetic biology community. In 2008 she co-foundedGinkgo Bioworksa company youll definitely hear about if you havent alreadyalong with fellow MIT grad students Austin Che, Barry Canton, and Jason Kelly, and their graduate adviser, Professor Tom Knight. They started with a simple but revolutionary goal: help people design and build organisms. A decade later,Ginkgo achieved unicorn statusa private company valued at over $1 billionand it finds itself at the fore of the synthetic biology revolution with customers seeking to build organisms for use in fields as diverse as health, food, agriculture, cosmetics and materials.

Shetty has been through the whole journey and has been a major influence in the synthetic biology community. She had a majorrole in the firstInternational Genetic Engineering Machine (iGEM) Competition with her co-founders. In 2008, she was named one of Eight People Inventing the Future by Forbes and, in 2011, one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company.

Shetty is an upbeat talker. If theres any stress or jadedness from navigating a company from birth to unicorn over a decade, it doesnt show. There is a sincere enthusiasm in her voice, especially when we discuss the science. When I caught up with her a few weeks back, one of things I wanted to know was: what do you do when you realize youre riding a biotech unicorn?

What was the moment when you realized that Ginkgo was going to be big?

It was when we closed ourSeries B financing. It was a $45 million round or roughly speaking, so that was more dollars dumped into our bank account at one instance than we ever had before.

My thought was, well pretty serious people withserious capital are choosing to take a bet on us.

This was confirmed for her in 2017 whenBayer chose to work with Ginkgoon engineering biologicals for agriculture, proving the intrinsic value of their platform and cementing Ginkgo as a platform company.

It proved three things at the time. One, that engineered microbes in the environment could be a thing, that [they] could be a product category. There are serious people taking serious bets that were going to be able to release engineered microbes in the future. Two, that Ginkgos platform had value even in areas that we hadnt previously been in. Three, it proved to the world that Ginkgo was really a platform company, that we werent simply going after a few products in the industrial biotech market.

It wasnt easy sailing for Gingko from the start though. Right after the company was founded, the global economy took a nosedive.

I think we incorporated in July of 2008 and, like literally, within the next month or two, the fiscal crisis hit,says Shetty.

In many ways this was not the ideal time to be starting a business and looking for investment, leading to creative thinking in getting the company going.

What did you learn in those early days that biotech companies could benefit from?

At the time everybody said that the way to start a biotech start-up is to go raise money immediately because you need some amount of money to be able to start a lab and get going. The thing I had to learn and realize was that no, actually, it is possible. If youre creative enough, savvy enough and patient enough, then you can in fact bootstrap even a biotech start-up.

Shetty stresses the importance of having the space to figure out their technology platform and business model and ask themselves how to take it forward. Having Knight and his wealth of experience on the team certainly helped.

Tom always said Oh, its a good idea to bootstrap in the early years regardless, based on his prior experience starting companies. But circumstances certainly reinforced that and I think that was really helpful that we spent the first few years bootstrapping the company.

Was it natural having your former advisor on the team?

Yeah, very natural. Tom, hes a pretty low-key guy, but hes also been very ahead of his time when it comes to thinking about the technology and technology trends. Early on it was great because Tom has started and run a company before and there were some obvious pitfalls that he could help us avoid and talk a bit about options.

And your other co-founders, what is it about them that makes them special?

I think probably for me the biggest thing is that weve now been working together for almost 20 years, says Shetty, referencing their time at MIT in the years before Ginkgo.

And even now, if Im struggling with something or Im trying to dig through how to solve a problem, I would want to talk to Tom, Barry, Austin, and Jason. I always come away having learned something or clarified my thinking or somehow changed how I was approaching a problem. To me, that is the real hallmark of excellence.

Despite all those shared experiences, they still learn from one another and solve problems together. Shetty considers her colleagues to be mentors too, saying shes benefitted from them as much as from her supervisors through the years.

Anybody can be a mentor, she says.

They are all engineers at heart, so the most exciting things for the Ginkgo team are around potentially world-changing technologies that can jump quickly from dream to reality.

What are the engineering challenges youre most excited about these days?

Bayer and Ginkgo, through our joint venture inJoyn, are going after nitrogen fixation. It has long been a dream of folks. Could we reduce fertilizer usage by using biological nitrogen fixation instead?

This project has been close to Shetty since her academic days, but therapeutics and Ginkgoscollaboration with Synlogic, who develop bacteria as living medicines, has also piqued her interest.

Theres all these areas of metabolism that lead to devastating diseases and the idea that you could engineer microbes to basically treat them is a cool idea!

Is there any particular problem youd like to solve through engineering biology?

How do you think about leveraging biology to make a positive impact on the environment? Thats one I think has been on our wish list for a while.

Enabling the future of synthetic biology is a big part of how Ginkgo operates, even since the early days. The founders were involved in establishing iGEM and their platform is well suited to collaborative efforts.

How do you see Ginkgos role to give back and enable the next generation of synthetic biology?

I think one thing that has been a longstanding ask from folks in the community is how are we going to open up our cell programming platform to more people? Early on, that seemed crazy to even think about, she says, citing the skill set required to use and build it. I think weve come a long way since then so we can say actually maybe we get started thinking about opening up the platform to more folks.

Shetty says initial collaborations like Joyn, (Ginkgo spin-out)Motif, andSynlogicmean they can learn how to open their platform better. Relationships with accelerators likeYCombinatorandPetriare the next steps. They acknowledge that opening their platform will only benefit and accelerate biological engineering.

Our conversation then moves onto a more human element of running a company, a reminder that its never all about the science.

Do you have any mistakes or regrets in how youve done things?

The biggest regret I have is actually not thinking consciously about diversity and inclusion issues earlier in Ginkgos history. We started thinking about them seriously in about 2015 or so, when we were still relatively small, about 30 people. But we could have thought about diversity and inclusion even earlier.

Shetty reveals its easier to change the balance in a company when its just a handful of people.

Can we be doing better on diversity as a whole?

I would say that synthetic biology as a field has always been pretty good in that it thought about issues outside of just the science and engineering itself. I think the field always fosters that broader perspective. So I think its been more natural and more normal to think about diversity and inclusion issues in the synthetic biology community as a result, says Shetty, Were by no means beyond reproach but theres more of a willingness to talk about these issues and really try to take proactive steps.

Do you have any advice for those starting a company?

The thing I like to tell people is that, if youre going to start a company, dont do it for the money. There are a lot of easier ways to make money in the world. Start a company because you think a company is really the best way to go tackle a problem that youre passionate about.

Any final thoughts?

I think that weve come a long way in terms of our ability to engineer biology, but we still have a long way to go. Fundamentally, biology is still not yet a predictable engineering discipline and its important to remember that. Because its still not yet predictable, we have to iterate through different designs and search for a functional design whenever were trying to engineer a GMO. We have more work to yet do to bring down the cost of doing genetic engineering so that we can explore more and more of design space.

Follow me on twitter at@johncumbersand@synbiobeta. Subscribe to my weekly newsletters insynthetic biologyandspace settlement.

Thank you toDavid KirkandKevin Costafor additional research and reporting in this article. Im the founder ofSynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about includingGinkgo Bioworks are sponsors of theSynBioBeta conferenceandweekly digestheres the full list of SynBioBeta sponsors.

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An Interview with Ginkgo Bioworks' Reshma Shetty On Co-Founding Synthetic Biology's First Unicorn - SynBioBeta

As the labour market rapidly changes, new, nearly real-time data and metrics give us better insight than ever before into what the jobs of the future will look like.

The kinds of jobs emerging in the global economy span a wide range of professions and skills, reflecting the opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels to take advantage of emerging jobs and the new economy. Identifying emerging jobs and the skills that they require provides valuable insights to inform training investments, and paves the way for a Reskilling Revolution, as individuals seek new skills to keep pace with change.

But for all of the opportunities that the new economy will bring, there are stark skills gaps and gender gaps that must be addressed. If we dont, they will continue to widen in the future.

Here are five things we can learn from this new data:

Not every emerging job requires hard tech skills, but every emerging job does require basic tech skills such as digital literacy, web development or graphic design. Three of the jobs in the World Economic ForumsJobs of Tomorrowreport cloud, engineering and data clusters, which are also among the fastest-growing overall require disruptive tech skills like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, or cloud computing. Because technologies like AI are so pervasive, many roles in areas like sales and marketing will require a basic understanding of AI.

These disruptive tech skills are in high demand across the board. Blockchain, cloud computing, analytical reasoning and AI are among themost in-demand tech skillswe see on LinkedIn.

While they arent growing as quickly as tech-dominated jobs, new sales, content production and HR roles are also emerging as a complement to the rapidly growing tech industry. Our research shows talent acquisition specialists, customer success specialists and social media assistants among the fastest growing professions all roles that rely on more diverse skills sets, especially soft skills.

Demand for soft skills is likely to continue to increase as automation becomes more widespread. Our latestGlobal Talent Trends Reportshows that HR professionals are identifying the demand for soft skills as the most important trend globally. Skills like creativity, persuasion, and collaboration which all top our list ofmost in-demand soft skills are all virtually impossible to automate, which means if you have these skills youll be even more valuable to organizations in the future.

While the data reflects a diversity of opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels, further analysis shows a worrying imbalance in those obtaining the latest skills. In our ongoingresearch on gender with the World Economic Forum, we found that the largest gender gaps among emerging jobs are in roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills, with the share of women represented across cloud, engineering and data jobs below 30% (for cloud computing its as low as 12%). Its critical to close this gap because these disruptive tech skills will have an outsized impact on the direction of society and the economy.

While there is certainly room to improve gender parity by embracing greater diversity in hiring and more inclusive managerial practices, our data suggests that those gains, while important, will not be sufficient to achieve parity.

We have to think creatively about ways to fill these emerging skills and roles so that we prevent these gaps from intensifying in the future. Our research to understand these issues has uncovered some very achievable, scalable solutions.

Firstly, taking advantage of existing and adjacent talent can make a massive contribution to the rapid expansion of talent pipelines. Our research reveals thattraining and up-skilling near AI talent could double the pipeline of AI talentin Europe.

Taking a similar approach with the gender gap, weve found that sub-groups of disruptive tech skills where women have higher representation genetic engineering, data science, nanotechnology and human-computer interaction could expand the pipeline of talent for the broader set of tech roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills.

While both of these approaches can help us make meaningful progress, closing the skills and gender gaps depends on a lot more than just making sure talent has the right skills. Its a simple truth that who you know matters, so we also have to close the network gap the advantage some people have over others based purely on who they know.

Ourresearch on the network gapshows that living in a high-income neighbourhood, going to a top school and working at a top company can lead to a 12x advantage in accessing opportunities. This means that two people with the exact same skills, but who were born into different neighbourhoods, may be worlds apart when it comes to the opportunities afforded them.

All of these new metrics and insights can help us pinpoint the skills and jobs of the future, but its going to take more than data to ensure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an equitable one. If we are going to make meaningful change, we need businesses and political leaders to re-evaluate the norms through which we shape policy, make hiring decisions and ultimately level the playing field for those who face barriers to opportunity.

As we convene at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Im asking leaders to join us in making progress towards closing these gaps. It will create better, more innovative businesses, stronger economies and ultimately help create fairer societies.

Allen Blue,Co-Founder and Vice President, Product Management, LinkedIn

This article was originally published in World Economic Forum

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5 things we know about the jobs of the future - Qrius