Lifeboat Foundation

The Pentagon is also looking at living camouflage, self-healing paint, and a variety of other applications of engineered organisms, but the basic science remains a challenge.

How do you detect submarines in an expanse as large as the ocean? The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers.

It’s one of many potential military applications for so-called engineered organisms, a field that promises living camouflage that reacts to its surroundings to better avoid detection, new drugs and medicines to help deployed forces survive in harsh conditions, and more. But the research is in its very early stages, military officials said.

Continue reading “The US Military Is Genetically Engineering New Life Forms To Detect Enemy Subs” »

Last week Chinese researchers rocked the world with reports that twin babies whose genes the scientists’ edited prior to birth had been born, the product of secret experiments that are being widely decried as unethical. Even as that story plays out, it is true that CRISPR gene editing is already being used in humans, in ways that illustrate just how unethical this recent use was.

“Patients’ parents have been emailing me a lot,” says Hye Young Lee, a researcher at the University of Texas San Antonio whose work looks at alternative delivery methods for CRISPR. Lee says she normally gets a few emails a month from the parents of the patients she works with, but that the number of emails went up recently—in relation, she suspects, to the news of the CRISPR babies, which is creating the illusion that CRISPR and other gene editing techniques are ready for extensive use in humans.

The scientific community’s current consensus is that they’re far from being at that stage—and it’s impossible to know now when or if they will be. But gene editing is being used in adult humans, to early trials to treat genetic diseases. In terms of gene editing for adults, “I know that there are things going on,” Lee says, but it’s nothing like this week’s news. Although her own work is at least a few years away from being ready for human testing, there are some cautiously progressing trials at drug companies using CRISPR in adult humans who have diseases that are the result on mutations in a single gene.

I just love it when the reductionists are wrong…again. I can not help myself. bigsmile

University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers have found revolutionary evidence that an evolutionary phenomenon at work in complex organisms is at play in their single-celled counterparts, too.

Species most often evolve through DNA mutations inherited by successive generations. A few decades ago, researchers began discovering that multicellular species can also evolve through epigenetics: traits originating from the inheritance of cellular proteins that control access to an organism’s DNA, rather than genetic changes.

Continue reading “Evolution sans mutation discovered in single-celled archaea” »

NANJING — Chinese researchers have developed a new evaluating model using medical imaging to help painlessly evaluate tumor progression in patients.

Doctors usually use the biological characteristics of tumors to observe the progress and response to treatment, such as if there are gene mutations or malignant features. Previous studies have shown that identifying the biological characteristics may contribute to better treatment and may increase survival rates.

Traditional methods to get tumor tissue include surgery and puncture, which are invasive, painful and costly.

Continue reading “Researchers develop painless method to evaluate tumor progression” »

Biotechnology
Genome editing through CRISPR-Cas systems has the potential to correct genetic mutations that occur in diseased cells, such as cancer cells. However, the ability to selectively activate CRISPR-Cas systems in diseased cells is important to ensure that gene editing only occurs where it is wanted. Zhu et al. developed a system whereby gene editing could be activated by a magnetic field, thus allowing spatial control. The use of nanomagnets in their system also improved transduction into target cells in tumor-bearing mouse models. This approach could potentially allow the translation of CRISPR-Cas systems into therapeutic agents.

Nat. Biomed. Eng. 10.1038/s41551-018‑0318-7 (2018).

Very excited to join IdeaXme (http://radioideaxme.com/) as Longevity Ambassador, utilizing this wonderful media platform to help expand global awareness of the people engineering a future free of aging, disease, degeneration, and suffering.

He Jiankui has now presented his controversial work at a gene editing summit in Hong Kong. CRISPR expert Helen O’Neill of University College London was there.

He Jiankui shocked the world by claiming he had created the world’s first genetically edited children.

The introduction of the gene editing tool CRISPR in 2007 was a revolution in medical science and cell biology. But even though the potential is great, the launch of CRISPR has been followed by debate about ethical issues and the technology’s degree of accuracy and side effects.

However, in a new study published in Cell, researchers from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research have described how Cas12a, one of the CRISPR technologies, works at the molecular level. This makes it possible to fine-tune the gene-editing process to achieve specific desired effects.

“If we compare CRISPR to a car engine, what we have done is make a complete 3D map of the engine and thus gained an understanding of how it works. This knowledge will enable us to fine-tune the CRISPR engine and make it work in various ways—as a Formula 1 racer as well as an off-road truck,” says Professor Guillermo Montoya from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research.