Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2012) In the not-too-distant future, scientists may be able to use DNA to grow their own specialized materials, thanks to the concept of directed evolution. UC Santa Barbara scientists have, for the first time, used genetic engineering and molecular evolution to develop the enzymatic synthesis of a semiconductor.

"In the realm of human technologies it would be a new method, but it's an ancient approach in nature," said Lukmaan Bawazer, first author of the paper, "Evolutionary selection of enzymatically synthesized semiconductors from biomimetic mineralization vesicles," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bawazer, who was a Ph.D. student at the time, wrote the paper with co-authors at UCSB's Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Biomolecular Science and Engineering; Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies; California NanoSystems Institute and Materials Research Laboratory; and Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. Daniel Morse, UCSB professor emeritus of biochemistry of molecular genetics, directed the research.

Using silicateins, proteins responsible for the formation of silica skeletons in marine sponges, the researchers were able to generate new mineral architectures by directing the evolution of these enzymes. Silicateins, which are genetically encoded, serve as templates for the silica skeletons and control their mineralization, thus participating in similar types of processes by which animal and human bones are formed. Silica, also known as silicon, is the primary material in most commercially manufactured semiconductors.

In this study, polystyrene microbeads coated with specific silicateins were put through a mineralization reaction by incubating the beads in a water-in-oil emulsion that contained chemical precursors for mineralization: metals of either silicon or titanium dissolved in the oil or water phase of the emulsion. As the silicateins reacted with the dissolved metals, they precipitated them, integrating the metals into the resulting structure and forming nanoparticles of silicon dioxide or titanium dioxide.

With the creation of a silicatein gene pool, through what Bawazer only somewhat euphemistically calls "molecular sex" -- the combination and recombination of various silicatein genetic materials -- the scientists were able to create a multitude of silicateins, and then select for the ones with desired properties.

"This genetic population was exposed to two environmental pressures that shaped the selected minerals: The silicateins needed to make (that is, mineralize) materials directly on the surface of the beads, and then the mineral structures needed to be amenable to physical disruption to expose the encoding genes," said Bawazer. The beads that exhibited mineralization were sorted from the ones that didn't, and then fractured to release the genetic information they contained, which could either be studied, or evolved further.

The process yielded forms of silicatein not available in nature, that behaved differently in the formation of mineral structures. For example, some silicateins self-assembled into sheets and made dispersed mineral nanoparticles, as opposed to more typical agglomerated particles formed by natural silicateins. In some cases, crystalline materials were also formed, demonstrating a crystal-forming ability that was acquired through directed evolution, said Bawazer.

Because silicateins are enzymes, said Bawazer, with relatively long amino acid chains that can fold into precise shapes, there is the potential for more functionality than would be possible using shorter biopolymers or more traditional synthetic approaches. In addition, the process could potentially work with a variety of metals, to evolve different types of materials. By changing the laboratory-controlled environments in which directed evolution occurs, it will be possible to evolve materials with specific capacities, like high performance in an evolved solar cell, for example.

"Here we've demonstrated the evolution of material structure; I'd like to take it a step further and evolve material performance in a functional device," said Bawazer.

Research for this paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Link:
Scientists synthesize first genetically evolved semiconductor material

*In computer science, people come up with some metaphysical beach-head like artificial intelligence, and they sort of ooze over toward it all astral and handwave-y, and they they actually start coding. Then all kinds of weird boneless crude amphibian code-forms come gasping out of the surf and die on dry land.

IEA-AIE 2012 Event Full Name: Twenty Fifth International Conference on Industrial, Engineering & Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems Date: Sat, 06/09/2012 (All day) to Tue, 06/12/2012 (All day) Where: Dalian China Deadline: Fri, 11/11/2011 (All day)

Topics (((these are great))):

Adaptive Control Expert Systems Machine Learning Application to Design (((Im never gonna believe in a Designer Artificial Intelligence unless it designed its own interfaces and tidied away all its loose wiring))) Financial Applications (((Gosh thanks a lot))) Meta-heuristics Applications to Manufacturing Genetic Programming Model-based Reasoning Autonomous Agents (((Whats that helicopter rotor sound Im hearing Wait, were those gunshots?))) Heuristic Search Multi-Agent Systems Bio-informatics (((Ive got your Turing Machine right here in this Petri dish))) Human Robot Interaction (((Hey look, my new land-mine has Siri built in))) Natural Language Processing Case-based Reasoning (((In case someone mentions Teilhard de Chardin, you can GO TO the next paper))) Integration Systems for Real Life Applications (((Gimme $0.99))) Neural Networks Chance Discovery Intelligence (((Screw-Around Hermeneutics in Websurfing Class))) Intelligent Interfaces Reasoning under Uncertainty (((Am I in the right seminar?))) Computer Vision Intelligent Systems Social Networks Applications Constraint Satisfaction (((A big hit among the marriage-therapist user community))) Intelligent Systems in Education Soft Computing Conversational Informatics Internet Applications Spatial Reasoning Data Mining Interaction Planning and Scheduling Speech Recognition System Decision Support Systems KBS Methodology Temporal Reasoning Distributed Problem Solving Knowledge Management Evolutionary Algorithms Knowledge Processing

http://ssdut.dlut.edu.cn/iea-aie/webpages/index.htm

The 25th International Conference on Industrial, Engineering &

Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems

2012 Dalian, China

Sponsor:International Society of Applied Intelligence (ISAI)

Organized in cooperation with:

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The 25th International Conference on Industrial, Engineering & Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems

YOKOHAMA, Japan, June 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

ReproCELL, Inc. (CEO:Chikafumi Yokoyama PhD) announces today that the company will start commercializing human iPS-derived neurons in which an Alzheimer's disease related gene has been incorporated.

ReproCELL's scientists have successfully incorporated a gene related to Alzheimer's disease using homologous recombinant genetic engineering technology into undifferentiated human iPS cells and then differentiated them into neurons. In these cells, it has been confirmed that amyloid beta 42 is accumulated at higher levels compared to normal neurons. This phenomena is similar to what is observed in neurons of Alzheimer's patients. Accordingly, ReproCELL's scientists believe the newly developed iPS cells can be useful for drug screening to identify new therapeutic molecules to treat Alzheimer's disease patients.

The company will start marketing the cells on June 13th, 2012.

Details of data of the cells will be announced at the 10th annual meeting of ISSCR (International Society for Stem Cell Research) at Yokohama, Japan (June 13th-16th, 2012).

ReproCELL is a world-leading pioneer in commercializing human pluripotent stem cells as an effective tool for drug discovery and development. The company has successfully launched iPS-derived cardiomyocytes for cardiac toxicity testing, followed by the launch of iPS-derived dopaminergic neurons and hepatocytes for efficacy and toxicity screening of drug candidates.

This is the fourth product of the company using iPS technology and the first cellular disease model incorporating a disease-related gene.

Contact: info_en@reprocell.com Tel: 81-(0)45-475-3887 KDX Shin-Yokohama 381 bldg. 8F, 3-8-11 Shin-Yokohama, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 222-0033, Japan

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ReproCELL Launches Alzheimer's Disease Model Based on iPS-derived Human Neuronal Cells

MADISON, Wis., June 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Cellular Dynamics International, Inc. (CDI), the world's largest commercial producer of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell lines and tissue cells, today announced the launch of its MyCell Services. These services include novel iPS cell line reprogramming, genetic engineering and differentiation of iPS cells into commercially available iCell terminal tissue cells (for example, heart or nerve cells).

"CDI's mission is to be the top developer and manufacturer of standardized human cells in high quantity, quality and purity and to make these cells widely available to the research community. Our MyCell Services provide researchers with unprecedented access to the full diversity of human cellular biology," said Bob Palay, CDI Chief Executive Officer. "The launch of MyCell Services furthers CDI founder and stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson's vision to enable scientists worldwide to easily access the power of iPSC technology, thus driving breakthroughs in human health."

Over the past 2 years, CDI has launched iCell Cardiomyocytes, iCell Neurons and iCell Endothelial Cells for human biology and drug discovery research. MyCell Services leverage CDI's prior investment in building an industrial manufacturing platform that can handle the parallel production of multiple iPSC lines and tissue cells, manufacturing billions of cells daily.

Chris Parker, CDI Chief Commercial Officer, commented, "Not all studies requiring human cells can be accomplished by using cells from a limited set of normal, healthy donors. Researchers may need iPS cells or tissue cells derived from specific ethnic or disease populations, and MyCell Services enable them to take advantage of our deep stem cell expertise and robust industrial manufacturing pipeline to do so. Previously, scientists had to create and differentiate iPS cells themselves. Such activities consume significant laboratory time and resources, both of which could be better applied to conducting experiments that help us better understand human biology. CDI's MyCell Services enable scientists to re-direct those resources back to their experiments."

CDI pioneered the technique to create iPS cells from small amounts of peripheral blood, although iPS cells can be created from other tissue types as well. Additionally, CDI's episomal reprogramming method is "footprint-free," meaning no foreign DNA is integrated into the genome of the reprogrammed cells, alleviating safety concerns over the possible use of iPS cells in therapeutic settings. These techniques have been optimized for manufacture of over 2 billion human iPS cells a day, and differentiated cells at commercial scale with high quality and purity to match the research needs.

Modeling Genetic Diversity

CDI has several projects already underway using MyCell Services to model genetic diversity of human biology. The Medical College of Wisconsin and CDI received a $6.3M research grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), announced July 2011, for which CDI's MyCell Services will reprogram an unprecedented 250 iPS cell lines from blood samples collected from Caucasian and African-American families in the Hypertension Genetic Epidemiology Network (HyperGEN) study. In addition, MyCell Services will differentiate these iPS cells into heart cells to investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying Left Ventricular Hypertrophy, an increase of the size and weight of the heart that is a major risk factor for heart disease and heart failure.

Researchers are also using CDI's MyCell Services to generate iPS cells and liver cells from individuals with drug induced liver injury (DILI), toward an eventual goal of identifying genetic factors linked to idiosyncratic liver toxicity. "The most problematic adverse drug event is sudden and severe liver toxicity that may occur in less than one in one thousand patients treated with a new drug, and thus may not become evident until the drug is marketed. This type of liver toxicity is not predicted well by usual preclinical testing, including screening in liver cultures derived from random human donors," said Paul B. Watkins, M.D., director of with The Hamner - University of North Carolina Institute for Drug Safety Sciences. "The ability to use iPS cell technology to prepare liver cultures from patients who have actually experienced drug-induced liver injury, and for whom we have extensive genetic information, represents a potential revolution in understanding and predicting this liability."

Screening Human Disease

While most diseases are multi-systemic, focus typically centers on only one organ system. For example, congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) is a group of rare genetic diseases with a focus on skeletal muscle, yet other systems, including heart, eye, brain, diaphragm and skin, can be involved. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying complex disease phenotypes requires access to multiple tissue types from a single patient. While some systems are readily accessible for taking a biopsy sample, for example skin, other organs are not.

See more here:
Cellular Dynamics Launches MyCell™ Services

7 June 2012

Councils protect their growers from GE

In the vacuum of inaction left by the National Government, local councils are having to lead the way in keeping New Zealand free of genetic engineering, the Green Party said today.

Hastings District Council have given official support to the GE free movement, voting unanimously in support of a proposal to declare the district GE free.

This is an exciting move made by the Hastings District Council but they have been forced to take this action because the National Government is refusing to, said the Green Party GE spokesperson Steffan Browning.

This region by region approach will be able to protect some growers but is not the real solution New Zealand needs.

The growers in the Hawkes Bay have identified that they need to be able to reap the significant branding benefits of being able to market GE free food, said Mr Browning.

These producers are receiving demand for GE free products and we need to be protecting their market for them

There are not sufficient liability protections for non GE growers should their produce get contaminated.

Farmers in Australia are already experiencing loss of income due to contamination by GE crops.

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Councils protect their growers from Genetic Engineering

A few blogs ago I asked, "Where, in fact, do 'the good ones' really come from?" By "good ones" I meant useful genome changes in evolution. This question stimulated some debate about whether it was possible to distinguish good changes from bad changes before they occur.

In the abstract, this may seem an overwhelmingly difficult problem. But if we think a bit about the highly organized state of the genome and non-random natural genetic engineering, biasing changes toward "good ones" becomes more conceivable.

I have already discussed purposeful, targeted changes in the immune system. The immune system illustrates how efficiently cells can target DNA restructuring by recognizing specific sequences and coupling DNA changes to transcription (copying DNA sequence into RNA).

Some evolutionists object that a somatic process like antibody synthesis provides no model for germline changes in evolution. So let's examine natural genetic engineering events in microbial cells. We'll look at mobile genetic elements targeted in ways that increase their evolutionary potential.

Mobile genetic elements come in many forms. Some operate purely as DNA. Others make an RNA copy and reverse transcribe it back into DNA as it inserts at a new location. Elements that move, or transpose, to multiple new locations are called "transposons" or "retrotransposons" (if they use an RNA intermediate).

Other mobile elements only insert in particular locations by a process called "site-specific" recombination. In bacterial evolution, this process is used in specialized structures called "integrons" that capture casettes containing protein coding sequences for antibiotic resistance, pathogenicity, and other functions.

What all mobile elements share are proteins that aid them to cut and splice DNA chains so that they can construct novel sequences, much as human genetic engineers do in their test tubes. These proteins have various names, such as "recombinase," "transposase," and "integrase." It is the specificity of the cutting reactions involving these proteins that determines where a mobile element moves in the genome.

One fascinating case of highly biased integration is the bacterial transposon Tn7. Tn7 has two specialized proteins to target its transposition. The TnsD protein directs Tn7 to insert into a special "attTn7" site in the chromosomes of many bacterial species where it does not disrupt any host functions and so causes no deleterious effects.

Another, more interesting protein, TnsE, directs Tn7 to insert into replicating DNA molecules. The reason this is important is that transmissible plasmids replicate their DNA as they transfer from one cell to another. TnsE targeting to plasmids in transit to new cells thus enhances the spread of Tn7 and the resistances it carries to many different kinds of bacteria.

Tn7 carries its antibiotic resistance determinants in an integron. Integrons and their recombinase proteins are likewise specialized to participate in plasmid spreading through bacterial populations. Plasmids enter new cells as single-stranded DNA. We learned just in 2005 that integron site-specific recombinases are special in operating on single-stranded DNA, not double-stranded molecules like previously studied recombinases. Moreover, integron recombinase synthesis is triggered by the entrance of single-stranded DNA into a cell. So integron activity is intimately linked in more than one way to plasmid transfer.

Continued here:
James A. Shapiro: Can Cells Bias Natural Genetic Engineering Toward Useful Evolutionary Outcomes?