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Category: bioengineering – Page 76

Synthetic biology and artificial intelligence are set to change all aspects of our lives

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.

New method a step toward future 3D printing of human tissues

A team of bioengineers and biomedical scientists from the University of Sydney and the Children’s Medical Research Institute (CMRI) at Westmead have used 3D photolithographic printing to create a complex environment for assembling tissue that mimics the architecture of an organ.

The teams were led by Professor Hala Zreiqat and Dr. Peter Newman at the University of Sydney’s School of Biomedical Engineering and developmental biologist Professor Patrick Tam who leads the CMRI’s Embryology Research Unit. Their paper was published in Advanced Science.

Using bioengineering and cell culture methods, the technique was used to instruct stem cells derived from or to become specialized cells that can assemble into an organ-like structure.

MaxCyte signs strategic platform license with prime medicine to advance next-generation gene editing therapies for 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.

New gene editing tool helps zero in on small cancer-linked mutations

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 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 therapies,” said Dr. Dow, who is also a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Unexpected link between pure mathematics and genetics discovered

An interdisciplinary team of mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and medical scientists have uncovered an unexpected link between pure mathematics and genetics, that reveals key insights into the structure of neutral mutations and the evolution of organisms.

Number theory, the study of the properties of positive integers, is perhaps the purest form of mathematics. At first sight, it may seem far too abstract to apply to the natural world. In fact, the influential American number theorist Leonard Dickson wrote ‘Thank God that number theory is unsullied by any application.’

And yet, again and again, number theory finds unexpected applications in science and engineering, from leaf angles that (almost) universally follow the Fibonacci sequence, to modern encryption techniques based on factoring prime numbers. Now, researchers have demonstrated an unexpected link between number theory and evolutionary genetics.

How muscle cells deteriorate with age, hampering recovery from injury

A team at Nottingham Trent University analyzed the full set of more than 11,000 gene transcripts inside muscle cells, finding that the ‘development pathways’—the different ways in which genes work together to regenerate muscle—become weakened in aged cells.

The study may help to shed some light on why take longer to recover from as we age. The study is published in the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine.

The researchers developed a new approach to examine in vitro in the laboratory to enable them to observe the different molecular mechanisms that drive aging.

Analysis of Over 7,000 Reservoirs Shows Worldwide Water Reserves Are Depleting

Water is a crucial and irreplaceable part of daily human life. As the world’s population expands and global temperatures rise, the demand for water proportionally increases.

In the last twenty years, worldwide water reserves have been depleting, even though the total storage capacity has expanded due to the building of additional reservoirs.

Led by Dr. Huilin Gao, associate professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M University, researchers used a new approach with satellite data to estimate the storage variations of 7,245 global reservoirs from 1999 to 2018.

There Was A NASTY Illegal Lab Situation In California

A makeshift lab in Fresno, California was illegally storing over 1,000 bioengineered mice and disease samples. Ana Kasparian and Wosney Lambre discuss on The Young Turks. https://shoptyt.com/collections/justice-is-coming.

Watch TYT LIVE on weekdays 6–8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/theyoungturks/live.

“An illegal lab in California containing nearly 1,000 bioengineered mice has officials concerned after improperly stored tissue samples were tested and discovered to contain infectious diseases including HIV and Hepatitis.

“This is an unusual situation. I’ve been in government for 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Reedley City Manager Nicole Zieba said, per local news outlet KRON4.”

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Powerful gene editing approach boosts rotifers in pantheon of laboratory animals

Rotifers are excellent research organisms for studying the biology of aging, DNA repair mechanisms, and other fundamental questions. Now, using an innovative application of CRISPrCas9, scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, have devised a method for making precise, heritable changes to the rotifer genome, enabling the larger community of scientists to deploy the rotifer as a genetically tractable lab organism.

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