Lifeboat Foundation

A new gene editing technique derived from bacterial “jumping genes” can add, remove, recombine and invert DNA sequences, potentially overcoming some of the limitations of CRISPR.

The approach is made possible by a molecule called bridge RNA, the discovery of which came about through a joint effort led by scientists at the Arc Institute in Palo Alto, California, in collaboration with the University of Tokyo. They described their work in a pair of papers published June 26 in Nature.

Treating cancer can sometimes feel like a game of Whac-A-Mole. The disease can become resistant to treatment, and clinicians never know when, where and what resistance might emerge, leaving them one step behind. But a team led by Penn State researchers has found a way to reprogram disease evolution and design tumors that are easier to treat.

They created a modular genetic circuit that turns cancer cells into a “Trojan horse,” causing them to self-destruct and kill nearby drug-resistant cancer cells. Tested in human cell lines and in mice as proof of concept, the circuit outsmarted a wide range of resistance.

The findings were published today, July 4, in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The researchers also filed a provisional application to patent the technology described in the paper.

Bioengineers demonstrated that an ATP biosensor can be used to reveal microbial energetic dynamics and facilitate bioproduction.

Aussie scientists have developed a new gene-editing technique that could be a major breakthrough. It could allow scientists to make accurate and more significant changes to DNA.

#Science #GeneEditing #genes

Giorgia Marucci of HORIBA explains how Jennifer Doudna, Emmanuelle Charpentier and their research teams revolutionized genetic engineering with their CRISPR-Cas9 discovery. Their groundbreaking approach to DNA editing elevated these two scientists to Nobel Laureate status when they received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020.

Read more about this story at: https://www.horiba.com/int/scientific…

Continue reading “CRISPR/Cas9: Big Discovery in Gene Editing” »

Robots with human skin.

In a breakthrough that isn’t at all creepy, scientists have devised a method of anchoring living human skin to robots’ faces. The technology could actually have some valuable applications, beyond making Westworld-like scenarios a reality.

Two years ago, Prof. Shoji Takeuchi and colleagues at the University of Tokyo successfully covered a motorized robotic finger with a bioengineered skin made from live human cells.

Continue reading “New technique gives robotic faces living human skin” »

More than 3.5 billion years ago, life on Earth emerged from chemical reactions. Nature invented RNA, proteins, and DNA, the core molecules of life, and created the ribosome, a molecular factory that builds proteins from instructions in the genome.

Proteins are wondrous dynamic molecules with incredible functions—from molecular engines that power motion, to photosynthetic machines that capture light and convert it to energy, scaffolding that builds the internal skeletons of cells, complex sensors that interact with the environment, and information processing systems that run the programs and operating system of life. Proteins underlie disease and health, and many life-saving medicines are proteins.

Biology is the most advanced technology that has ever been created, far beyond anything that people have engineered. The ribosome is programmable—it takes the codes of proteins in the form of RNA and builds them up from scratch—fabrication at the atomic scale. Every cell in every organism on earth has thousands to millions of these molecular factories. But even the most sophisticated computational tools created to date barely scratch the surface: biology is written in a language we don’t yet understand.

In molecular biology, few molecules have had as profound an impact as Cas9. Madeleine King, Kayla Perry, Mitchell McAndrew and Audrone Lapinaite discuss how this multifunctional molecular tool of genetic engineering is revolutionizing multiple fields.

Chinese scientists have engineered a solution by which they could bypass natural plant gene inheritance. They aim to deploy a CRISPR-based gene editing system to help the transmission of preferred genes even when they aren’t suitable for a plant.

The scientists devised a system that would use both a toxin and an antidote which would directly affect the male plant germline. Through this process, the researchers could overcome the natural Mendelian transmission rate. This can help increase the gene transmission rates up to 99% over two generations.