Gene editing insects could help reduce reliance on pesticides—and help protect billion-dollar industries.
For many people, when they hear China and genetic engineering in the same sentence, it is often synonymous with scandal, and gene-edited babies may spring to mind.
And, although it is true that nearly five years ago, researcher He Jiankui infamously claimed he had created the first ever gene-edited babies, before going to prison for three years, China has continued to pour a lot of money into genetic engineering research, and aims to become a global leader in the field.
“The accumulative amount of financing in the gene therapy field in China has exceeded $3.3 billion. Also, according to a Frost & Sullivan study, it is estimated that by 2025, gene therapy will reach a scale of nearly $17.89 billion in China,” said Fiona Gao, founding partner of Chinsiders.
Scientists have used CRISPR gene editing to reduce the lignin content in poplar trees by as much as 50%, offering a potentially more sustainable and efficient method of fibre production.
CRISPR-modified poplar trees (left) and wild poplar trees (right), growing in a North Carolina State University greenhouse. Credit: Chenmin Yang, NCSU
Lignin is a complex organic polymer that is integral to the structure of cell walls in many types of plants, especially in wood and bark. It acts as a type of binder in these walls, giving wood its hardness and resistance to rot. Lignin is the second most abundant natural polymer in the world, next to cellulose, and makes up between 15% and 25% of the composition of wood.
A recent paper published in Nature Aging by researchers from Integrated Biosciences, a biotechnology company combining synthetic biology and machine learning.
Machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that deals with the development of algorithms and statistical models that enable computers to learn from data and make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machine learning is used to identify patterns in data, classify data into different categories, or make predictions about future events. It can be categorized into three main types of learning: supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning.
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This video explores Super Intelligent AIs and the capabilities they will have. Watch this next video called Super Intelligent AI: 10 Ways It Will Change The World: https://youtu.be/cVjq53TKKUU.
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• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/#:~:text=Th…ion%20(MWI, and%20thus%20from%20all%20physics.
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Connected technology tools can be stepping-stones to a new world in diverse areas such as genetic engineering, augmented reality, robotics, and renewable energies. But they need cyber protection.
Scientists at Leipzig University, in collaboration with colleagues at Vilnius University in Lithuania, have developed a new method to measure the smallest twists and torques of molecules within milliseconds. The method makes it possible to track the gene recognition of CRISPR-Cas protein complexes, also known as “genetic scissors”, in real time and with the highest resolution. With the data obtained, the recognition process can be accurately characterised and modelled to improve the precision of the genetic scissors. The results obtained by the team led by Professor Ralf Seidel and Dominik Kauert from the Faculty of Physics and Earth Sciences have now been published in the prestigious journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.
When bacteria are attacked by a virus, they can defend themselves with a mechanism that fends off the genetic material introduced by the intruder. The key is CRISPR-Cas protein complexes. It is only in the last decade that their function for adaptive immunity in microorganisms has been discovered and elucidated. With the help of an embedded RNA, the CRISPR complexes recognize a short sequence in the attacker’s DNA. The mechanism of sequence recognition by RNA has since been used to selectively switch off and modify genes in any organism. This discovery revolutionized genetic engineering and was already honored in 2020 with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna.
Occasionally, however, CRISPR complexes also react to gene segments that differ slightly from the sequence specified by the RNA. This leads to undesirable side effects in medical applications. “The causes of this are not yet well understood, as the process could not be observed directly until now,” says Dominik Kauert, who worked on the project as a PhD student.
Scientists discovered that a synthetic cell with a reduced genome could evolve as quickly as a normal cell. Despite losing 45% of its original genes, the cell adapted and demonstrated resilience in a laboratory experiment lasting 300 days, effectively showcasing that evolution occurs even under perceived limitations.
“Listen, if there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us is that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but… ife finds a way,” said Ian Malcolm, Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic.
The Jurassic period is a geologic time period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period about 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 million years ago. It constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is divided into three epochs: Early, Middle, and Late. The name “Jurassic” was given to the period by geologists in the early 19th century based on the rock formations found in the Jura Mountains, which were formed during the Jurassic period.
Synthetic cells are a versatile technology with the potential to serve as smart delivery devices or as chassis for creating life from scratch. Despite the development of new tools and improvements in synthetic cell assembly methods, the biological parts used to regulate their activity have limited their reach to highly controlled laboratory environments12. In the field’s preliminary work, well-established arabinose and IPTG-inducible transcription factors and theophylline-responsive riboswitches were used to control in situ gene expression5,6. Still, each performed poorly in vitro and represented a leaky, insensitive route of transcription/translation control. Later, the transition to AHSL-sensitive transcription factors afforded synthetic cells the ability to sense and produce more biologically useful QS molecules, which are central to coordinating collective bacterial behaviors. Although this marked considerable progress toward integrating synthetic cells with living cells, the most frequently adopted QS systems used to date, LuxR/LuxI and EsaR/EsaI, recognize and synthesize the same AHSL (3OC6-HSL), limiting the variety of synthetic cell activators that work orthogonally5,7,10,11.
In this work, we diverged from using naturally derived parts to control gene expression, instead utilizing chemically modified LA-DNA templates to tightly and precisely control the location of synthetic cell activation with UV light. This LA-DNA approach was subsequently implemented to regulate communication with E. coli cells using the BjaI/BjaR QS system, adding this unique branched AHSL into the synthetic cell communication toolbox. We believe this system is ideally suited to synthetic cell communication. It couples an acyl-CoA-dependent synthase, BjaI, which efficiently synthesizes IV-HSL from its commercially available substrates, IV-CoA and SAM, with a highly sensitive IV-HSL-dependent transcription factor, BjaR, that activates gene expression at picomolar concentrations of IV-HSL.
