Lifeboat Foundation

Experts have equipped biotech workhorse bacteria with feedback control mechanism to balance growth with making protein products.

Medicines like insulin and interferon are manufactured using genetically engineered bacteria, such as E. coli. E. coli grow quickly and can be given DNA that instructs them to make proteins used in medicines and other materials.

However, the extra burden of producing new proteins hampers bacterial growth, which slows production. Solving this problem is an area of great interest for biotechnology and synthetic biology.

Continue reading “E. coli rewired to control growth as experts let them make proteins for medicine” »

Bioengineering technology is advancing rapidly. Here’s why it might produce a world of unimaginable inequalities.

Wilmington, DE, April 19, 2018 — Scientists at Christiana Care Health System’s Gene Editing Institute have developed a potentially breakthrough CRISPR gene-editing tool. It could allow researchers to take fragments of DNA extracted from human cells, put them into a test tube, and quickly and precisely engineer multiple changes to the genetic code, according to a new study published today in the CRISPR Journal.

Investigators at the Gene Editing Institute, which is part of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute at Christiana Care, said their new “cell-free” CRISPR technology is the first CRISPR tool capable of making multiple edits to DNA samples “in vitro,” which means in a test tube or petri dish. The advance could have immediate value as a diagnostic tool, replicating the exact genetic mutations found in the tumors of individual cancer patients. Mutations that cause cancer to spread can differ from patient to patient, and being able to quickly identify the correct mutation affecting an individual patient can allow clinicians to implement a more targeted treatment strategy.

“With this new advance, we should be able to work with laboratory cultures and accomplish gene edits in less than a day, significantly reducing the time required for diagnostics compared to other CRISPR tools, and with much greater precision,” said Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., director of the Gene Editing Institute and principal author of the study. “This is particularly important for diagnostics linked to cancer care where time is critical.”

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A young man with a violent past enters a mysterious clinic where the patients wildly transform their bodies and minds using genetic engineering.

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In a big win for the biotech industry, the US Department of Agriculture says once and for all it won’t regulate plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology.

Why it’s a field day: The decision means that we could see a boom in newfangled plants from firms like Monsanto, universities, and startups like Calyxt, whose oil-altered soybeans featured in our cover story late last year.

Here’s the logic: The USDA says gene editing is just a (much) faster form of breeding. So long as a genetic alteration could have been bred into a plant, it won’t be regulated. That includes changes that create immunity to disease or natural resistance to crop chemicals, as well as edits to make seeds bigger and heavier. It doesn’t include transgenic plants (those with a gene from a distant species)—those will still be regulated.

Continue reading “CRISPR plants won’t be regulated” »