Lifeboat Foundation

A Yale research team has designed a system to modify multiple genes in the genome simultaneously, while also minimizing unintended effects. The gene-editing “toolbox” provides a user-friendly solution that scientists can apply to research on cancer and other disciplines, according to a news release from Yale.

The study was published on July 26 in Nucleic Acids Research.

The news release states that, with modern genetic engineering techniques, researchers can edit genes in experiments. This allows researchers to study important disease-related genes and may ultimately allow them to treat genetic diseases by making edits in specific sites of the human genome. However, progress has been hampered by several challenges, including the editing of unintended sites — referred to as off-target effects.

Continue reading “Yale team designs gene modification system” »

Many folks are not aware that one of the early detections of GBM is through a person’s weakened eyesight as well as Ophthalmologist examinations.

The retina is essentially part of the brain. Studying them led researchers one step closer to understanding how the brain processes stimuli.

There is a genetically transmitted disease that causes the eyeballs to twitch back and forth, and it’s called Nystagmus. It impacts 1 in 1,500 men. Notably, it has been recently discovered that the twitching is caused by the miscalculations done by the retinal neurons in converting visual stimuli into electrical signals.

Continue reading “We’re Understanding How The Brain Functions By Linking Retinas To Chips” »

Studies are showing that anatomical patterning found in the brain’s cortex may be controlled by genetic factors.

The highly consistent anatomical patterning found in the brain’s cortex is controlled by genetic factors, reports a new study by an international research consortium led by Chi-Hua Chen of the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Schork of the J. Craig Venter Institute, published on July 26 in PLOS Genetics.

The human brain’s wrinkled cerebral cortex, which is responsible for consciousness, memory, language and thought, has a highly similar organizational pattern in all individuals. The similarity suggests that genetic factors may create this pattern, but currently the extent of the role of these factors is unknown. To determine whether a consistent and biologically meaningful pattern in the cortex could be identified, the scientists assessed brain images and genetic information from 2,364 unrelated individuals, brain images from 466 twin pairs, and transcriptome data from six postmortem brains.

They identified very consistent patterns, with close genetic relationships between different regions within the same brain lobe. The frontal lobe, which has the most complexity and has experienced the greatest expansion throughout the brain’s evolution, is the most genetically distinct from the other lobes. Their results also suggest potential functional relationships among different cortical brain regions.

Awesome! Just imagine all the benefits that we will see through this research. Not only will we figure out more on the root cause of gene mutations, and cures including CRISPR; but also we will be more effective in mimicking the human system in synthetic systems, synthetic cell or gene circuitry, humanoids, synthetic immune systems, combat aging more effectively, etc.

With more data, a pioneer of gene sequencing hopes to unlock the connections between DNA and illness.

A research team at the University of Washington has harnessed complex computational methods to design customized proteins that can self-assemble into 120-subunit “icosahedral” structures inside living cells—the biggest, self-booting, intracellular protein nanocages ever made. The breakthrough offers a potential solution to a pressing scientific challenge: how to safely and efficiently deliver to cells new and emerging biomedical treatments such as DNA vaccines and therapeutic interfering particles.

The work, funded by DARPA in a lead-up to the new INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) program, “opens the door to a new generation of genetically programmable protein-based molecular machines,” the researchers report in this week’s issue of the journal Science. The research paper is available here: http://ow.ly/LW8F302tOp3

Anyone familiar with the role-playing games Dungeons and Dragons and Munchkin need only picture the 20-sided die to understand what an organic, icosahedral cargo container looks like—symmetrical, triangle-shaped panels folded evenly on each side. Unlike a die that can be held in your hand, however, these creations are the size of small viruses and are designed to interact with cells in the same way viruses might—that is, by delivering their caged contents into a cell, albeit in this case with positive, customizable outcomes. Also, whereas dice are produced in molds on a factory assembly line, these nanocages build themselves inside cells, following with atomic precision instructions written in genetic code.

I never get tired of hearing more information on this research.

A synthetic genetic circuit programmed into an attenuated Salmonella enterica subspecies can be used to systemically deliver an anti-tumor toxin into mice with cancer. The circuit allows the bacterial cells inside a tumor to synchronously self-destruct by lysis, releasing the toxin directly in the tumor.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a strategy for using synthetic biology in therapeutics. The approach enables continual production and release of drugs at disease sites in mice while simultaneously limiting the size, over time, of the populations of bacteria engineered to produce the drugs.

Continue reading “Engineered bacteria deliver an anti cancer tumor toxin in mice before self-destructing” »

Hope; or at least I am hoping.

A novel gene-editing technique with potential to revolutionize cancer treatment has scientists in a race to test it on humans.

As the scientific journal Nature announced last week: “Chinese scientists to pioneer first human CRISPR trial.”

Continue reading “CRISPR against cancer” »

AI and Quality Control in Genome data are made for each other.

A new study published in The Plant Journal helps to shed light on the transcriptomic differences between different tissues in Arabidopsis, an important model organism, by creating a standardized “atlas” that can automatically annotate samples to include lost metadata such as tissue type. By combining data from over 7000 samples and 200 labs, this work represents a way to leverage the increasing amounts of publically available ‘omics data while improving quality control, to allow for large scale studies and data reuse.

“As more and more ‘omics data are hosted in the public databases, it become increasingly difficult to leverage those data. One big obstacle is the lack of consistent metadata,” says first author and Brookhaven National Laboratory research associate Fei He. “Our study shows that metadata might be detected based on the data itself, opening the door for automatic metadata re-annotation.”

The study focuses on data from microarray analyses, an early high-throughput genetic analysis technique that remains in common use. Such data are often made publically available through tools such as the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), which over time accumulates vast amounts of information from thousands of studies.

Beautiful.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a strategy for using synthetic biology in therapeutics. The approach enables continual production and release of drugs at disease sites in mice while simultaneously limiting the size, over time, of the populations of bacteria engineered to produce the drugs. The findings are published in the July 20 online issue of Nature.

Continue reading “Synthetic biology used to limit bacterial growth and coordinate drug release” »