Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Building earth-friendly people ... altering humans may be a safer option than trying to alter the planet.

Human-induced climate change is one of the biggest problems that we face today. Millions could suffer hunger, water shortages, diseases and coastal flooding because of climate change. The latest science suggests that we may be near or even beyond the point of no return.

Some scientists and policy makers are therefore proposing that we take seriously the idea of geoengineering - that is, large-scale manipulations of the earth, such as spraying sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to alter the reflectivity of the planet or fertilising the ocean with iron to spur blooms of carbon-sucking plankton. However, geoengineering seems too risky. Many of the technologies involved have never been employed on such a large scale, which means that we could be endangering ourselves or future generations. Indeed, spraying sulfate aerosols could destroy the ozone layer and iron fertilisation could promote toxic planktons and destroy all forms of marine life.

One might be able to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis to select shorter children.

I propose that we consider another solution to the problem of climate change that has not been considered before and that is potentially less risky than geoengineering. Elsewhere my colleagues and I have called this solution ''human engineering''. It involves the biomedical modification of humans to make us better at mitigating, and adapting to the effects of, climate change.

Illustration: iStock

Before I explain the proposal, let me make clear that human engineering is intended to be a voluntary activity - possibly supported by incentives such as tax breaks or sponsored healthcare - rather than a coerced, mandatory activity. My colleagues and I are positively against any form of coercion of the sort that the Nazis perpetrated in the past (segregation, sterilisation and genocide).

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Also, this proposal is intended for those who believe that climate change is a real problem, and who, as a result, are willing to take seriously geoengineering. Someone who doesn't believe that climate change is a real problem is likely to think that encouraging people to recycle more is an overreaction to climate change.

Finally, the main claim here is a modest one, namely, human engineering should be considered alongside other solutions such as geoengineering. The claim is not that human engineering ought to be adopted as a matter of public policy. This is an attempt to encourage ''outside the box'' thinking vis-a-vis a seemingly intractable problem.

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Hand-made humans may hold the key to saving the world

ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2012) Mayo Clinic researchers and an international team of scientists have developed a highly-efficient means of editing zebrafish genomes for research purposes, eliminating a bottleneck that has stymied biomedical scientists from using the fish as a model for human disease.

The details appear online today in the journal Nature.

For many researchers, zebrafish are becoming the model of choice for genetic studies. However, the inability to efficiently target genetic modifications has delayed their use by some. The Mayo team used an improved variant of artificial transcription activator-like effector nucleases, or TALENs, to provide a new approach.

"By using genetic engineering tools called TALENs and synthetic DNA to make defined changes in the genomes of our fish, we are able to make small changes (just a few nucleotides) as well as add a specific sequence for biological gene switch applications," says Stephen Ekker, Ph.D., senior author and head of Mayo's zebrafish core facility. "This is the first time we've been able to make custom changes to the zebrafish genome."

Dr. Ekker says this toolkit opens the door to a range of new experiments in zebrafish, including modeling of human disease by introducing small point mutations, designing regulated gene alleles, and developing classical structure/function experiments using an animal model system.

This new approach has implications for other model systems, including mice, rats, flies and worms, and possible applications in stem cell research.

"To our knowledge, this TALEN toolkit also is the most active described to date," says Dr. Ekker. "This has important implications for the growing TALEN field, whether used in fish or any other cells. We used this higher activity for genome editing applications. We also used it to conduct a series of somatic gene function assessments, opening the door to an array of non-germline experiments in zebrafish."

Other authors include Victoria Bedell, Jarryd Campbell, Tanya Poshusta, Randall Krug, Sumedha Penheiter, Ph.D., Alvin Ma, Ph.D., and Karl Clark, Ph.D., all of Mayo Clinic; Ying Wang, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Essner, Ph.D., of Iowa State University; Colby Starker, Ph.D., Wenfang Tan, Ph.D., Scott Fahrenkrug, Ph.D., Daniel Carlson, Ph.D., and Daniel Voytas, Ph.D., all of the University of Minnesota; and Anskar Y. H. Leung, M.D., Ph.D., of Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong.

Support for the research came from the State of Minnesota, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Research Grant Council of the University of Hong Kong and the Tang King Yin Research Fund.

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Researchers develop editing toolkit for customizing zebrafish genomes

NEW YORK, July 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

Global DNA Probes-Based Diagnostics Industry

http://www.reportlinker.com/p098404/Global-DNA-Probes-Based-Diagnostics-Industry.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Diagnosti

This report analyzes the worldwide markets for DNA Probes-based Diagnostics in US$ Million by the following Application Areas: Infectious Diseases, Cancer Testing, Genetic Predisposition, Identity/Forensics, Molecular HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) Typing, and Others. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Canada, Japan, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Annual estimates and forecasts are provided for the period 2009 through 2017. Also, a six-year historic analysis is provided for these markets. The report profiles 63 companies including many key and niche players such as Abbott Laboratories, Affymetrix, Inc., Becton, Dickinson & Company, Beckman Coulter, Inc., bioMerieux, Celera Group, Gen-Probe Incorporated, Genzyme Corporation, Luminex Molecular Diagnostics, QIAGEN, Roche Diagnostics, and Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Inc. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are primarily based upon search engine sources in the public domain.

I. INTRODUCTION, METHODOLOGY & PRODUCT DEFINITIONSStudy Reliability and Reporting Limitations I-1Disclaimers I-2Data Interpretation & Reporting Level I-3Quantitative Techniques & Analytics I-3Product Definitions and Scope of Study I-3Infectious Diseases I-4Cancer I-4Genetic Predisposition I-4Identity/Forensics I-4Molecular HLA Testing I-4Other Diagnostic Applications I-4II. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1. MARKET DYNAMICS II-1

Industry Overview II-1

DNA Probes: Robust Growth Ahead II-1

Decoding the Genetic Puzzle II-1

Advantages of DNA-Probe Tests II-2

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Global DNA Probes-Based Diagnostics Industry

Food security and sustainable agriculture was one of the most important topics at the recent Rio+20 Summit, for the simple reason that all of us have to eat to survive, and agriculture has to be ecologically sustainable for production to continue into the future.

While the negotiators were busily hammering out a quite satisfactory text on this topic in a small room, a more interesting discussion was taking place on Food and Nutrition Security in the huge plenary hall sitting 2,000 people.

I was one of the 10 panellists in this debate, part of the seven Sustainable Development Dialogues that were organised by the Brazilian government as part of the official summit programme.

Other topics in the dialogue series included the global financial crisis, unemployment, energy, oceans, cities, forests and, production and consumption patterns.

In the food dialogue, the panellists included former prime minister of Mozambique Luisa Dias Diogo, former UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, Indian ecologist Vandana Shiva, Slow Food Movement founder Carlo Petrini, World Economic Forum vice-president Josette Sheeran, Brazilian academic Renato Maluf and several representatives of farmers organisations.

Before the dialogue, there was a months-long Internet-based interactive discussion open to all, and the thousands that took part proposed solutions to the food problem.

The panel was to discuss which proposals were most important, and forward them to the heads of states meeting a few days later.

There was significant agreement among the panellists that small farmers in developing countries, and especially women, were the key to both the present and the future of agriculture.

Empowering small farmers through access to land, credit, subsidies, storage facilities and transport were thus essential.

The expansion of national budgets and aid allocation to small-scale agriculture is thus a priority, as is the strengthening of farmers organisations that can fight for their interests.

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Food issues in the spotlight

Photographs by Mark Ostow

George Church is an imposing figureover six feet tall, with a large, rectangular face bordered by a brown and silver nest of beard and topped by a thick mop of hair. Since the mid-1980s Church has played a pioneering role in the development of DNA sequencing, helpingamong his other achievementsto organize the Human Genome Project. To reach his office at Harvard Medical School, one enters a laboratory humming with many of the more than 50 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows over whom Church rules as director of the school's Center for Computational Genetics. Passing through an anteroom of assistants, I find Church at his desk, his back to me, hunched over a notebook computer that makes him look even larger than he is.

Church looms especially large these days because of his role as one of the most influential figures in synthetic biology, an ambitious and radical approach to genetic engineering that attempts to create novel biological entitieseverything from enzymes to cells and microbesby combining the expertise of biology and engineering. He and his lab are credited with many of the advances in harnessing and synthesizing DNA that now help other researchers modify microrganisms to create new fuels and medical treatments. When I ask Church to describe what tangible impact synthetic biology will have on everyday life, he leans back in his chair, clasps his hands behind his head, and says, "It will change everything. People are going to live healthier a lot longer because of synthetic biology. You can count on it."

Such grandiosity is not uncommon among the practitioners of synthetic biology. Ever since Church and a few other researchers began to combine biology and engineering a dozen years ago, they have promised it would "change everything." And no wonder. The very idea of synthetic biology is to purposefully engineer the DNA of living things so that they can accomplish tasks they don't carry out in nature. Although genetic engineering has been going on since the 1970s, a rapid drop in the cost of decoding and synthesizing DNA, combined with a vast increase in computer power and an influx into biology labs of engineers and computer scientists, has led to a fundamental change in how thoroughly and swiftly an organism's genetics can be modified. Church says the technology will eventually lead to all manner of breakthroughs: we will be able to replace diseased tissues and organs by reprogramming cells to make new ones, create novel microbes that efficiently secrete fuels and other chemicals, and fashion DNA switches that turn on the right genes inside a patient's cells to prevent arteries from getting clogged.

Even though some of these applications are years from reality, Church has a way of tossing off such predictions matter-of-factly. And it's easy to see why he's optimistic. The cost of both decoding DNA and synthesizing new DNA strands, he has calculated, is falling about five times as fast as computing power is increasing under Moore's Law, which has accurately predicted that chip performance will double roughly every two years. Those involved in synthetic biology, who often favor computer analogies, might say it's becoming exponentially easier to read from, and write into, the source code of life. These underlying technology trends, says Church, are leading to an explosion in experimentation of a sort that would have been inconceivable only a few years ago.

Up to now, it's proved stubbornly difficult to turn synthetic biology into a practical technology that can create products like cheap biofuels. Scientists have found that the "code of life" is far more complex and difficult to crack than anyone might have imagined a decade ago. What's more, while rewriting the code is easier than ever, getting it right isn't. Researchers and entrepreneurs have found ways to coax bacteria or yeast to make many useful compounds, but it has been difficult to optimize such processes so that the microbes produce significant quantities efficiently enough to compete with existing commercial products.

Church is characteristically undeterred. At 57, he has survived cancer and a heart attack, and he suffers from both dyslexia and narcolepsy; before I visited him, one of his colleagues warned that I shouldn't be surprised if he fell asleep on me. But he has founded or taken an advisory role in more than 50 startup companiesand he stayed awake throughout our time together, apparently excited to describe how his lab has found ways to take advantage of ultrafast sequencing and other tools to greatly speed up synthetic biology. Among its many projects, Church's lab has invented a technique for rapidly synthesizing multiple novel strings of DNA and introducing them simultaneously into a bacterial genome. In one experiment, researchers created four billion variants of E. coli in a single day. After three days, they found variants of the bacteria in which production of a desired chemical was increased fivefold.

The idea, Church explains, is to sort through the variations to find "an occasional hopeful monster, just as evolution has done for millions of years." By mimicking in lab experiments what takes eons in nature, he says, he is radically improving the odds of finding ways to make microbes not just do new things but do them efficiently.

A DNA Turn-On

In some ways, the difficulties researchers have faced making new, more useful life forms shouldn't come as a surprise. Indeed, a lesson of genome research over the last few decades is that no matter how elegantly compact the DNA code is, the biology it gives rise to is consistently more complex than anyone anticipated. When I began reporting the early days of gene discovery 30 years ago, biologists, as they often do, thought reductively. When they found a gene involved in disease, the discovery made headlines. Scientists said they believed that potent new medicines could soon deactivate malfunctioning versions of genes, or that gene therapy could be used to replace them with healthy versions in the body.

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Biology's Master Programmers

About one thousand dolphins and five thousand pelicans have been found dead lately. The wetlands are disappearing. Deforestation is on the rise to produce food and shelter. The fish stock that feeds a billion mouths is decreasing. What is the cause of this change? Overpopulation? Human activity and human greed: 20% of the world population living in Europe, Japan and North America consume 80% of the worlds resources. The havoc will soon spread to the most pristine and uninhabited region of the Arctic where Oil companies will start drilling. How can we save the world - our world? The first pledge should be that the Earth has rights as the slaves had rights, animals have rights, women have rights, children have rights, the autrement capables have rights. We should focus on a green economy. We are part of the Eco-system just as are the atmosphere, the bio-sphere, the lithosphere and the hydrosphere and we are interdependent. We cannot command nature to work for us unless we obey her, thought Francis Bacon. We should stop regarding nature as a source of our resources. And we should stop being selective in dealing with crimes: why should we qualify individuals as criminals if they take human lives and not those who eradicate whole species of plant or animal lives or contaminate lakes, rivers and the oceans? By trading CO2, we are cheating nature. We are playing God by genetic engineering. Powerful voices backed by celebrities, scientists, explorers, business leaders and environmentalists are saying to world leaders at their Rio Jamboree that enough is enough. We have been continuously conned and 20 years after the first Rio gathering, we should stop generating more rendez-vous but part this time with the hope that reason will light the path of the world. Let not this get-together produce resolutions which resemble blank cheques on accounts with insufficient funds. Let us keep in mind that conferences fail for similar reasons that banks have failed in the recent past. Let us rein in the greed of the capitalists. Let the Heads of states present in Rio represent the people and not the billionaires that have supported their election campaigns. Or Rio will be a billionaires feast.

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OVER AND ABOVE RIO+20: How can we save the world ?