Lifeboat Foundation

In October 2020, Argentina approved the world’s first genetically engineered wheat for cultivation and consumption. Production expanded dramatically in 2021, and will continue to expand in 2022, after Argentina received regulatory approval in late 2021 for exports to Brazil, a major consumer of Argentina’s wheat.

The lessons from Argentina’s experience are important as other countries decide whether they want to follow suit. Argentina’s genetically engineered, drought-tolerant wheat — named HB4 — could have large environmental benefits, but other countries’ choices will determine their scale.

Argentina is increasingly struggling with drought and saw an opportunity for HB4 wheat to help stabilize production and revenue. Yields have been steadily decreasing since 2017, partially due to drought, with the 2020/21 season yields the second-lowest in ten years. Yields in the 2021/22 season bounced back thanks to sufficient rainfall at critical times. HB4 wheat, genetically engineered to be drought resistant, can help protect against such variability by maintaining high yields even under drought conditions. HB4’s drought resistance gene comes from sunflowers, so it qualifies as transgenic — containing genes from a different species — and therefore as bioengineered, genetically modified, or a GMO.

While human beings have many living ancestors — bonobos, chimps, gorillas — our absence of fur immediately marks us as something different.

And though our big brains and bipedal posture have taken us to outer space, the reason our species transitioned to a mostly hairless body remains somewhat of a mystery.

Only a few other mammals share our genetic preference for sleek bodies, including rhinos, whales, elephants, and — everyone’s favorite — the naked mole rat.

Researchers led by a team at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified cellular and molecular features of the brain that set modern humans apart from their closest primate relatives and ancient human ancestors. The findings, published in Nature, offer new insights into human brain evolution.

“Most evolutionary studies on the human brain have focused on neurons because this cell type was thought to be responsible for our intelligence and enhanced cognitive abilities. This study gives us a renewed appreciation for other cells involved in brain function and the role they have played both in advancing cognition and our susceptibility to a number of cognitive diseases,” said study leader Genevieve Konopka, Ph.D., Professor of Neuroscience and a member of the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute at UT Southwestern.

Since ancient times, people have been curious about what gives humans abilities that other animals don’t have, such as speech and language, Dr. Konopka explained. A range of previous studies have sought to answer this question by examining brain anatomy or performing genetic or molecular studies on whole brains or sections, experiments that provide a view of thousands of cells at a time.

Talk kindly contributed by Michael Levin in SEMF’s 2022 Spacious Spatiality.

https://semf.org.es/spatiality.

Continue reading “Michael Levin | Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces” »

Though almost every cell in your body contains a copy of each of your genes, only a small fraction of these genes will be expressed, or turned on. These activations are controlled by specialized snippets of DNA called enhancers, which act like skillful on-off switches. This selective activation allows cells to adopt specific functions in the body, determining whether they become—for example—heart cells, muscle cells, or brain cells.

However, these enhancers don’t always turn on the right genes at the right time, contributing to the development of genetic diseases like cancer and diabetes. A team of Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers has developed a machine-learning model that can predict which enhancers play a role in normal development and disease—an innovation that could someday power the development of enhancer-targeted therapies to treat diseases by turning genes on and off at will. The study results appeared in Nature Genetics.

“We’ve known that enhancers control transitions between cell types for a long time, but what is exciting about this work is that mathematical modeling is showing us how they might be controlled,” said study leader Michael Beer, a professor of biomedical engineering and genetic medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Reichman University’s new Innovation Institute, which is set to formally open this spring under the auspices of the new Graziella Drahi Innovation Building, aims to encourage interdisciplinary, innovative and applied research as a cooperation between the different academic schools. The establishment of the Innovation Institute comes along with a new vision for the University, which puts the emphasis on the fields of synthetic biology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Advanced Reality (XR). Prof. Noam Lemelshtrich Latar, the Head of the Institute, identifies these as fields of the future, and the new Innovation Institute will focus on interdisciplinary applied research and the ramifications of these fields on the subjects that are researched and taught at the schools, for example, how law and ethics influence new medical practices and scientific research.

Synthetic biology is a new interdisciplinary field that integrates biology, chemistry, computer science, electrical and genetic engineering, enabling fast manipulation of biological systems to achieve a desired product.

Prof. Lemelshtrich Latar, with Dr. Jonathan Giron, who was the Institute’s Chief Operating Officer, has made a significant revolution at the University, when they raised a meaningful donation to establish the Scojen Institute for Synthetic Biology. The vision of the Scojen Institute is to conduct applied scientific research by employing top global scientists at Reichman University to become the leading synthetic biology research Institute in Israel. The donation will allow recruiting four world-leading scientists in various scopes of synthetic biology in life sciences. The first scientist and Head of the Scojen Institute has already been recruited – Prof. Yosi Shacham Diamand, a leading global scientist in bio-sensors and the integration of electronics and biology. The Scojen Institute labs will be located in the Graziella Drahi Innovation Building and will be one part of the future Dina Recanati School of Medicine, set to open in the academic year 2024–2025.

A team of scientists led by Masaya Hagiwara of RIKEN national science institute in Japan has developed an ingenious device, using layers of hydrogels in a cube-like structure, that allows researchers to construct complex 3D organoids without using elaborate techniques. The group also recently demonstrated the ability to use the device to build organoids that faithfully reproduce the asymmetric genetic expression that characterizes the actual development of organisms. The device has the potential to revolutionize the way we test drugs, and could also provide insights into how tissues develop and lead to better techniques for growing artificial organs.

Scientists have long struggled to create organoids—organ-like tissues grown in the laboratory—to replicate actual biological development. Creating organoids that function similarly to real tissues is vital for developing medicines since it is necessary to understand how drugs move through various tissues. Organoids also help us gain insights into the process of development itself and are a stepping stone on the way to growing whole organs that can help patients.

MaxCyte, Inc., a leading, cell-engineering focused company providing enabling platform technologies to advance the discovery, development and commercialization of next-generation cell-based therapeutics and to support innovative, cell-based research, today announced the signing of a strategic partnership with Prime Medicine, Inc., a biotechnology company committed to delivering a new class of differentiated one-time curative genetic therapies.

A change in just one letter in the code that makes up a cancer-causing gene can significantly affect how aggressive a tumor is or how well a patient with cancer responds to a particular therapy. A new, very precise gene-editing tool created by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators will enable scientists to study the impact of these specific genetic changes in preclinical models rather than being limited to more broadly targeted tactics, such as deleting the entire gene.

The tool was described in a study published Aug. 10 in Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Lukas Dow, an associate professor of biochemistry in medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, and his colleagues genetically engineered mice to carry an enzyme that allows the scientists to change a single base or “letter” in the mouse’s genetic code. The enzyme can be turned on or off by feeding the mice an antibiotic called doxycycline, reducing the prospect of unintended genetic changes occurring over time. The tool can also grow miniature versions of intestine, lung, and pancreas tissue called organoids from the mice, enabling even more molecular and biochemical studies of the impact of these precise genetic changes.

“We are excited about using this technology to try and understand the genetic changes that influence a patient’s response to cancer therapies,” said Dr. Dow, who is also a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.