StemCell Therapy

The power of speculative fiction often lies in its ability to make us look at the world around us with fresh eyes. Mundane acts have a way of becoming extraordinarily beautiful when we are faced with the prospect of their vanishing. Here, baseball becomes a site of resistance, an emblem of humanity, an antidote to the automation and artificial intelligence that controls every other aspect of life in AutoAmerica. After all, what would be the point of automating such a thing as nine human players throwing and catching balls to the best of their physical abilities? What significance could there possibly be in a robot pitching a perfect game? We are here, one coach says late in the novel, because we believe anything can happen in a ballgame. You can get a guy and all his stats but give him a stick to swing, and you still dont know what will happen. Its a marvelously refreshing concept in a world that is otherwise dominated by algorithms.

The Resisters is a book that grows directly out of the soil of our current political moment, and much of the books unsettling pleasure lies in Jens ingenious extrapolation (or, in some cases, redescription) of contemporary problems. The book brims with EnforceBots (police robots), ThoughtCommand (next-level voice command), PermaDerms (permanent skin whitening) and SmartGuns. AutoAmerica is a nation shaped by policies like ShipEmBack, a mass deportation of immigrants, and the One Chance Policy, wherein Surplus families are permitted only one pregnancy, no matter the outcome.

Jen has such a gifted ear for the manipulative languages of tech, marketing and government that at times the sheer abundance of clever details threatens to overwhelm the stories of her characters. But perhaps this overabundance is part of the novels method, a way of swallowing the characters and the reader into AutoAmericas reality. The Resisters is aimed at many catastrophes at once: surveillance technology, government overreach, authoritarianism, automation, economic inequality, racism, sexual assault and the institutional mishandling of it, geopolitical conflict and climate change.

The central thread of the book, though, or perhaps the most lingering, is its obsession with the threats of artificial intelligence. The Resisters is full of characters who voluntarily hand over their humanity by agreeing to GenetImprovement or by mindlessly following the orders of Aunt Nettie. In one unnerving section, the narrator recounts the incremental steps that led to this all-encompassing control first, he let Aunt Nettie keep his calendar, then respond to emails on his behalf. (The Resisters might make you stop and actually read your user agreements.)

In the most devastating moment of this ultimately quite tender novel, one characters mind is surgically merged against her will with Aunt Nettie, so that the line between human and internet is no longer clear, even to herself. Crucially, it is other human beings who carry out this dreadful procedure, which suggests that even in a dystopian world dominated by artificial intelligence, people are still the ones who carry out the most atrocious acts.

We live in a moment when The Handmaids Tale is a hit television show, and Kellyanne Conways use of the term alternative facts reminded so many readers of the double talk in George Orwells classic 1984 that the novel hit the best-seller list seven decades after its original publication. The public seems to feel that the worst speculative fictions are coming true. Of course, Margaret Atwood would contend that The Handmaids Tale was true even as it was written. Perhaps Gish Jen could make a similar argument about much of The Resisters. The hope she offers, though, lies in the books title, and in the heroism of its family of Bartlebys, who resist both the lure of conveniences and the threats of the powerful, with one phrase: I would prefer not to.

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The Future Is Here, and Uncomfortably Close to Home - The New York Times

Imagine a world where a mosquito bite is just an itchy annoyance. No malaria. No dengue fever.

Last month, scientists announced they had taken one more step toward that vision. A paper in the journal PLOS Pathogens described how they synthetically engineered mosquitoes to stop the spread of dengue fever, a viral tropical disease that sickens as many as 100 million people each year.

Now imagine genetically tweaking an invasive species of mosquito to save native Hawaiian birds from extinction, or transferring genes from one species of endangered chestnut tree to another to help the latter resist blight. Employing the same sort of genetic engineering used to make a plant-based burger bleed, scientists are beginning to explore the ways synthetic biology could help protect biodiversity and conserve species.

Synthetic biology, or synbio, employs the latest and greatest gene-editing tools, such as the cut-and-paste technology known as CRISPR-Cas9. Combined with new techniques to digitize and automate the design and modeling of various genetic elements, scientists can now engineer organisms to produce novel food ingredients or to rewire the switches that express genes that control certain functions.

In the case of those dengue-carrying mosquitoes, scientists genetically tweaked members of the Aedes aegypti species by transferring genes from the human immune system that create an antibody to suppress dengue fever into the blood-sucking insect. The antibody is activated and expressed once the female mosquito draws blood. In effect, the mosquito is cured of dengue fever before it can transmit the disease.

The next step would be to propagate the new genetic element to confer dengue immunity through a population. Thats where a gene drive comes in. Gene drive systems, which can be natural or synthetically engineered, skew inheritance of a certain genetic element so that it will spread more quickly through generations.

The idea is to bypass normal inheritance rulesthat classic Darwinian concept that inheritance is driven by genetic variations that improve an organisms ability to compete in a dog-eat-dog worldso that re-engineered traits become dominant.

In terms of conservation, synbio could potentially address several areas of concern, such as curbing invasive species, reducing pressures from wildlife trade, improving resistance to disease, and even bringing a species back from the brink of extinction.

Biologists at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), who also led the team that wrote the PLOS Pathogens paper on mosquitoes, developed a novel gene drive system for manipulating genetic inheritance in Drosophila suzukii, a fruit fly with the common name spotted-wing drosophila.

This particular pest, native to Japan and first discovered in the US in 2008, injects its eggs into soft ripening fruit like berries. Current practices to defend against spotted-wing drosophila rely on either heavy insecticide use or early harvesting. Its estimated the pest costs the US economy as much as $700 million each year in losses.

The engineered gene drive from UCSD, dubbed Medea after the character in Greek mythology that killed her offspring, uses a synthetic toxin and a corresponding antidote function to achieve 100 percent inheritance bias in less than 20 generations.

This genetic Trojan Horse could then be used to spread elements that confer susceptibility to certain environmental factors, such as triggering the death of the modified fruit flies at a certain temperature.

UC San Diego associate professor Omar Akbari told Singularity Hub that his team is getting close to field testing some of our technologies. The furthest along for our group would be the use of [precision guided sterile insect technique] to control wild populations of D. Suzuki.

A number of companies are turning to synbio to create ingredients where the natural product is expensive, rare, or threatened. Take the well-known example of vanilla. Most products on the market use a synthetic version of vanillas main ingredient, vanillin, made from petrochemicals.

Swiss company Evolva has developed a genetically modified yeast to produce vanillin in a manner similar to brewing beer. Modern Meadow also uses DNA editing tools to engineer specialized collagen-producing yeast cells for making leather products.

In a case more directly related to wildlife conservation, Singaporean scientists engineered a synthetic replacement for horseshoe crab blood cells, which have been used in biomedical applications for decades. All four species of horseshoe crabs are considered imperiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

However, while a replacement product for horseshoe crab blood has been commercially available for more than 15 years, it has yet to be broadly adopted for various reasons. Thats finally changing, as new studies have confirmed that available synthetics are just as reliable as horseshoe crab blood for detecting endotoxins in biomedical manufacturing.

The long-lived American chestnut was once one of the dominant tree species of forests in the eastern US. A blight from Asia introduced in the late 1800s has all but wiped them out. Efforts to breed American chestnuts with disease-resistant chestnut trees in China have had limited success, as its not easy to propagate the desired traits from several genes through succeeding generations.

A project led by the College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York is using synbio to produce a blight-resistant American chestnut without even harming the fungus.

The researchers have copied a single gene from wheat and transferred it into American chestnuts. The gene produces an enzyme called oxalate oxidase that doesnt kill the fungus. Instead, it breaks down the fungus toxin that attacks the trees tissue properties.

The bonus is that the fungus itself is left untouched, so the blight remains dormant and doesnt evolve resistance over time.

While bringing the dead back to life is one trick that will likely elude scientists in our lifetime, synbio researchers have been actively working to resurrect the woolly mammoth and other extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, which disappeared for good more than a century ago.

These projects arent strictly creating pure examples of these long-gone species. Rather, scientists are inserting sections of ancient DNA code into modern relatives. In the case of the woolly mammoth, researchers are attempting to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid using the Asian elephant.

Proponents of this sort of resurrection science say its less about trying to revive extinct species than about saving those that are currently at risk of disappearing. The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

A team led by George Church out of Harvard University hopes that by transferring genes in the mammoth genome to the Asian elephant it will be able to survive in the Arctic; relevant genes might include those that code for extra fat and dense hair. That would extend the animals range into regions that are already changing due to a warming climate.

Like geoengineeringmanipulating the environment to stave off the effects of climate changebioengineering has its critics and detractors. Some react viscerally to the idea of altering natural systems in any way.

One of the main arguments revolves around the concern that introducing a genetically modified species could have unintended consequences. While no one expects a Jurassic Park scenario where genetically enhanced monsters chase Jeff Goldblum through the jungle, there is a chance that genetically tweaked traits could jump species or otherwise go off script.

Kent Redford believes fostering a conversation about the possible advantages and disadvantages of the role of synbio in conservation is important regardless of where one stands on the divide.

My mission is to make sure that the conservation community knows about these technologies and has taken a considered and informed opinion on them, and tried to influence [these] technologies for the good of biodiversityto minimize harm and to increase positive outcomes, he told Singularity Hub during a phone interview.

A conservation expert who has served at the The Nature Conservancy and Wildlife Conservation Society, Redford is the chair of an IUCN task force on synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation. He was the lead editor on an assessment report, Genetic Frontiers for Conservation, which will be presented this summer at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in France.

The opinion of the IUCN matters. Its 1,300 member organizations include governments, non-governmental organizations, business associations, and scientific and academic institutions.

Redford declined to speculate as to what sort of recommendations may come out of the IUCN meeting. He did note that the intersection of synbio and conservation remains on the periphery for many in the conservation community.

Most of my colleagues dont see why they should be paying much attention to this, he said. Some of those who are aware of these emerging technologies consider them to be relevant tools to help solve some of the intractable problems in conservation. Others believe these genetic techniques have the potential to completely ruin the natural world and the lives of poor people.

Akbari agreed that the biggest challenge for synbio in conservation isnt the technology but securing regulatory approvals and public support. I think we need time, he said. As more technologies are developed and tested with positive outcomesI believe the resistance will lessen.

While the scientific community debates the potential and the pitfalls of synbio, biodiversity will continue to decline.

A report last year by the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services issued a number of disturbing statistics. For example, the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent, mainly since 1900. And nearly 10 percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals humans have used for food and agriculture throughout history were extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

I think the natural world is in serious trouble, Redford said. Whether synbio can be part of the answer to that problem remains a big question.

Image Credit: Image by RayNight from Pixabay

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Engineering Bugs, Resurrecting Species: The Wild World of Synthetic Biology for Conservation - Singularity Hub

Manuel Berdoy, University of Oxford

UK (The Conversation) - Such is the extent of our dominion on Earth, that the answer to questions around whether we are still part of nature and whether we even need some of it rely on an understanding of what we want as Homo sapiens. And to know what we want, we need to grasp what we are.

It is a huge question but they are the best. And as a biologist, here is my humble suggestion to address it, and a personal conclusion. You may have a different one, but what matters is that we reflect on it.

Perhaps the best place to start is to consider what makes us human in the first place, which is not as obvious as it may seem.

This article is part of Lifes Big Questions The Conversations new series, co-published with BBC Future, seeks to answer our readers nagging questions about life, love, death and the universe. We work with professional researchers who have dedicated their lives to uncovering new perspectives on the questions that shape our lives.

Many years ago, a novel written by Vercors called Les Animaux dnaturs (Denatured Animals) told the story of a group of primitive hominids, the Tropis, found in an unexplored jungle in New Guinea, who seem to constitute a missing link.

However, the prospect that this fictional group may be used as slave labour by an entrepreneurial businessman named Vancruysen forces society to decide whether the Tropis are simply sophisticated animals or whether they should be given human rights. And herein lies the difficulty.

Human status had hitherto seemed so obvious that the book describes how it is soon discovered that there is no definition of what a human actually is. Certainly, the string of experts consulted anthropologists, primatologists, psychologists, lawyers and clergymen could not agree. Perhaps prophetically, it is a layperson who suggested a possible way forward.

She asked whether some of the hominids habits could be described as the early signs of a spiritual or religious mind. In short, were there signs that, like us, the Tropis were no longer at one with nature, but had separated from it, and were now looking at it from the outside with some fear.

It is a telling perspective. Our status as altered or denatured animals creatures who have arguably separated from the natural world is perhaps both the source of our humanity and the cause of many of our troubles. In the words of the books author:

All mans troubles arise from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be.

We will probably never know the timing of our gradual separation from nature although cave paintings perhaps contain some clues. But a key recent event in our relationship with the world around us is as well documented as it was abrupt. It happened on a sunny Monday morning, at 8.15am precisely.

The atomic bomb that rocked Hiroshima on August 6 1945, was a wake-up call so loud that it still resonates in our consciousness many decades later.

The day the sun rose twice was not only a forceful demonstration of the new era that we had entered, it was a reminder of how paradoxically primitive we remained: differential calculus, advanced electronics and almost godlike insights into the laws of the universe helped build, well a very big stick. Modern Homo sapiens seemingly had developed the powers of gods, while keeping the psyche of a stereotypical Stone Age killer.

We were no longer fearful of nature, but of what we would do to it, and ourselves. In short, we still did not know where we came from, but began panicking about where we were going.

We now know a lot more about our origins but we remain unsure about what we want to be in the future or, increasingly, as the climate crisis accelerates, whether we even have one.

Arguably, the greater choices granted by our technological advances make it even more difficult to decide which of the many paths to take. This is the cost of freedom.

I am not arguing against our dominion over nature nor, even as a biologist, do I feel a need to preserve the status quo. Big changes are part of our evolution. After all, oxygen was first a poison which threatened the very existence of early life, yet it is now the fuel vital to our existence.

Similarly, we may have to accept that what we do, even our unprecedented dominion, is a natural consequence of what we have evolved into, and by a process nothing less natural than natural selection itself. If artificial birth control is unnatural, so is reduced infant mortality.

I am also not convinced by the argument against genetic engineering on the basis that it is unnatural. By artificially selecting specific strains of wheat or dogs, we had been tinkering more or less blindly with genomes for centuries before the genetic revolution. Even our choice of romantic partner is a form of genetic engineering. Sex is natures way of producing new genetic combinations quickly.

Even nature, it seems, can be impatient with itself.

Advances in genomics, however, have opened the door to another key turning point. Perhaps we can avoid blowing up the world, and instead change it and ourselves slowly, perhaps beyond recognition.

The development of genetically modified crops in the 1980s quickly moved from early aspirations to improve the taste of food to a more efficient way of destroying undesirable weeds or pests.

In what some saw as the genetic equivalent of the atomic bomb, our early forays into a new technology became once again largely about killing, coupled with worries about contamination. Not that everything was rosy before that. Artificial selection, intensive farming and our exploding population growth were long destroying species quicker than we could record them.

The increasing silent springs of the 1950s and 60s caused by the destruction of farmland birds and, consequently, their song was only the tip of a deeper and more sinister iceberg. There is, in principle, nothing unnatural about extinction, which has been a recurring pattern (of sometimes massive proportions) in the evolution of our planet long before we came on the scene. But is it really what we want?

The arguments for maintaining biodiversity are usually based on survival, economics or ethics. In addition to preserving obvious key environments essential to our ecosystem and global survival, the economic argument highlights the possibility that a hitherto insignificant lichen, bacteria or reptile might hold the key to the cure of a future disease. We simply cannot afford to destroy what we do not know.

But attaching an economic value to life makes it subject to the fluctuation of markets. It is reasonable to expect that, in time, most biological solutions will be able to be synthesised, and as the market worth of many lifeforms falls, we need to scrutinise the significance of the ethical argument. Do we need nature because of its inherent value?

Perhaps the answer may come from peering over the horizon. It is somewhat of an irony that as the third millennium coincided with decrypting the human genome, perhaps the start of the fourth may be about whether it has become redundant.

Just as genetic modification may one day lead to the end of Homo sapiens naturalis (that is, humans untouched by genetic engineering), we may one day wave goodbye to the last specimen of Homo sapiens genetica. That is the last fully genetically based human living in a world increasingly less burdened by our biological form minds in a machine.

If the essence of a human, including our memories, desires and values, is somehow reflected in the pattern of the delicate neuronal connections of our brain (and why should it not?) our minds may also one day be changeable like never before.

And this brings us to the essential question that surely we must ask ourselves now: if, or rather when, we have the power to change anything, what would we not change?

After all, we may be able to transform ourselves into more rational, more efficient and stronger individuals. We may venture out further, have greater dominion over greater areas of space, and inject enough insight to bridge the gap between the issues brought about by our cultural evolution and the abilities of a brain evolved to deal with much simpler problems. We might even decide to move into a bodiless intelligence: in the end, even the pleasures of the body are located in the brain.

And then what? When the secrets of the universe are no longer hidden, what makes it worth being part of it? Where is the fun?

Gossip and sex, of course! some might say. And in effect, I would agree (although I might put it differently), as it conveys to me the fundamental need that we have to reach out and connect with others. I believe that the attributes that define our worth in this vast and changing universe are simple: empathy and love. Not power or technology, which occupy so many of our thoughts but which are merely (almost boringly) related to the age of a civilisation.

Like many a traveller, Homo sapiens may need a goal. But from the strengths that come with attaining it, one realises that ones worth (whether as an individual or a species) ultimately lies elsewhere. So I believe that the extent of our ability for empathy and love will be the yardstick by which our civilisation is judged. It may well be an important benchmark by which we will judge other civilisations that we may encounter, or indeed be judged by them.

There is something of true wonder at the basis of it all. The fact that chemicals can arise from the austere confines of an ancient molecular soup, and through the cold laws of evolution, combine into organisms that care for other lifeforms (that is, other bags of chemicals) is the true miracle.

Some ancients believed that God made us in his image. Perhaps they were right in a sense, as empathy and love are truly godlike features, at least among the benevolent gods.

Cherish those traits and use them now, Poppy, as they hold the solution to our ethical dilemma. It is those very attributes that should compel us to improve the wellbeing of our fellow humans without lowering the condition of what surrounds us.

Anything less will pervert (our) nature.

To get all of lifes big answers, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value evidence-based news by subscribing to our newsletter. You can send us your big questions by email at bigquestions@theconversation.com and well try to get a researcher or expert on the case.

More Lifes Big Questions:

Manuel Berdoy, Biologist, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Have humans evolved beyond nature and do we even need it? - Bywire News

A new type of cancer cell therapy could avoid some of the serious side effects commonly associated with CAR-T treatments, and possibly offer an easier path to developing "off-the-shelf" treatments, suggest findings from a small study led by researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

The results, which were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, are from just 11 patients. Other factors, such as the use of postremission therapy, limit what conclusions can be drawn about the researchers' approach, which relies on "natural killer" cells rather than the T cells used in cellular drugs like Novartis' Kymriah.

Still, the data offer a glimpse into why Japanese drugmaker Takedaagreed last November to license the CAR NK cell therapy from MD Anderson, part of the company's broader push into cell and gene treatments. Some of the data published Wednesday was previously disclosed by the pharma.

The success of cancer immunotherapy, of which CAR-T treatments are a major part, has put T cells at the center of a now decade-long research revival in oncology.

But T cells are only one component of the body's immune system, and scientists in academia and in biotech are exploring whether other cellular defenders could be similarly recruited.

Researchers at MD Anderson have turned to natural killer cells, which by design recognize and attack cancers or other invaders. Such cells have been tested as an anti-cancer treatment before,but using genetic engineering to improve their tumor-killing properties, which the MD Anderson team has done, is a newer innovation.

"To my knowledge, this is the largest body of evidence on the use of CAR NK cells in patients with cancer," said Katayoun Rezvani, the study's corresponding author and a professor of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy at MD Anderson, in an interview.

Using NK cells derived from cord blood, Rezvani and her colleagues engineered the cells to express a receptor for a protein called CD19, commonly found on the surface of B-cell malignancies like leukemia and lymphoma. They also added a gene for interleukin-15 to boost the expansion and persistence of the infused NK cells, which without engineering would typically disappear after about two weeks.

While the CAR-T treatments Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) and Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) also target CD19, they are made from a patient's own T cells, which are extracted and then engineered outside the body. The personalized process is time-consuming and laborious, hampering the commercial uptake of both Kymriahand Yescarta.

By using cord blood, Rezvani and her team are pursuing an allogeneic, or "off-the-shelf," approach to cell treatment something many consider to be the next step for the field.

Initial data look promising. Seven of the 11 treated patients, who had either chronic lymphocytic leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, responded to treatment, with the cancers of three going into remission.Most notably, none experienced cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity, two severe side effects that commonly occur in patients treated with CAR-T therapy.

"The lack of toxicity is very exciting here," wrote Stephan Grupp, an oncologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a leader in the CAR-T field, in comments emailed to BioPharma Dive. He was not involved with the MD Anderson study.

"We really think that this is something inherent to the biology of the natural killer cells, which means their profile of toxicity is different than that of T cells,"Rezvanisaid.

Study participants did have blood toxicities that researchers associated with the chemotherapy given prior to infusion of the CAR NK cells.

While positive, the results are limited by several factors which make drawing broader conclusions about the ultimate potential of the treatment difficult.

Five of the seven responding patients received postremission treatment, including stem cell transplants, Rituxan (rituximab) and Revlimid (lenalidomide), so researchers did not assess the duration of response to CAR NK therapy.

Additionally, a fresh CAR NK cell product was manufactured for each patient in this study, rather than using the cord blood to produce multiple therapies as would be envisioned for a true off-the-shelf product.

"I think the potential for this approach to be 'off-the-shelf' is also a little speculative at this time," wrote Grupp.

"We would need to see multiple patients treated from the same expanded product with no HLAmatching to know if 'off-the-shelf' is going to be part of the story here," he added, referring to the process by which patients are matched to donor cells.

If cord blood-derived CAR NK cells were able to be given without matching to a patient's HLA genotype, any resulting treatment could be used more widely. Nine patients were partially matched in the MD Anderson study, while the last two were treated without consideration of HLA type.

The MD Anderson researchers plan to continue enrolling patients in the study and are working with Takeda to design a larger, multi-center trial.

The drugmaker is planning to advance the treatment, which it licensed and now calls TAK-007, into pivotal studies in two types of lymphoma and CLL by 2021, with a potential filing for approval in 2023.

"Targeting CD19 was a proof of concept and now that we've demonstrated that this CAR NK approach can work and is safe we want to use this platform to target other types of cancers," said Rezvani, indicating interest in multiple myeloma and acute myeloid leukemia.

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In small study, hints of promise for 'natural killer' cell therapy - BioPharma Dive

Company founded by four pioneers of Treg cell biology and cell therapy and financed by a syndicate of leading biotech investors

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. and SEATTLE, Feb. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonoma Biotherapeutics, a privately held company developing regulatory T cell (Treg) therapies for autoimmune and degenerative diseases, launched today in South San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA with $40 million in its Series A financing. Sonoma brings together next-generation research, development and manufacturing capabilities in cell therapy and genetic engineering with an accomplished team of executives, scientists, board members and investors with extensive experience in the fields of cell therapy and drug discovery.

"With this team and our assembled expertise and technologies, we are in an ideal position to move adoptive cell therapy beyond cancer, to establish safe, effective and long-lasting treatments for a range of conditions where current drugs and biologics are simply not good enough," said founder and CEO Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD. "As the immune system's master regulators of protecting the body against self-destruction, Treg cell therapy is perhaps the ideal means to shut down unwanted immune reactions and provide meaningful treatment for patients."

The financing involves an investor syndicate that includes Lyell Immunopharma, ARCH Venture Partners, Milky Way Ventures and 8VC. "Treg therapies have the potential to transform the treatment of autoimmune and degenerative diseases," said Robert Nelsen, managing partner and co-founder of ARCH Ventures Partners. "Sonoma Biotherapeutics has assembled the team and capabilities required to make this vision a reality for patients and their families."

The goal of Treg therapy is to restore a state of self-tolerance by halting harmful inflammatory responses in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis, along with degenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer's. Over 50 million Americans currently live with an autoimmune disease, and millions more with some form of degenerative diseases. For many, existing therapies are ineffective at controlling their disease.

Tregs have a clear role in many of these conditions. These cells' natural ability to migrate to inflamed tissues and control harmful immune responses make them ideal for treating a range of conditions. In addition, the ability to engineer Treg cells to target specific disease-causing antigens reduces the potential for unwanted systemic effects. The role of Tregs in tissue maintenance and repair offers the potential for effective, durable and restorative treatments.

Sonoma Biotherapeutics is co-founded by four of the foundational scientists in the Treg field:

Collectively, the founding team brings expertise and proprietary methodologies across the Treg drug discovery and development process, including selection, manipulation, editing, regulation and translation for clinical use. Together, Drs. Bluestone and Tang have pioneered adoptive Treg cell therapy in some of its first clinical uses in type 1 diabetes, lupus and organ transplantation. Drs. Rudensky and Ramsdell co-discovered FOXP3, a critical transcription factor for Treg development and function, and in 2017 were awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their landmark studies. They are complemented by an experienced senior management team and seasoned board of directors.

"The Sonoma Biotherapeutics leadership are responsible for a significant portion of our understanding of the nature of Treg cells, their role in disease and their potential for use as a cell therapy," said Dr. Rick Klausner, CEO of Lyell Immunopharma and newly appointed Chair of the Sonoma Biotherapeutics Board of Directors. "Perhaps more importantly, they understand the requirements of a successful cell therapeutic and the corresponding challenges in defining the pathway to market. We look forward to a strong partnership between Lyell and Sonoma Biotherapeutics."

In this regard, Sonoma Biotherapeutics has entered into a strategic partnership with Lyell that provides both parties with access to technologies and know-how to enhance the durability, stability and specificity of cell therapies in their respective indications of focus. This partnership will further enable Sonoma's rapid translation of Treg therapies from target identification and discovery, through preclinical and clinical development.

Senior Management Team

Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, Founder, CEO & PresidentFred Ramsdell, PhD, Founder & CSOPeter DiLaura, Chief Business & Strategy OfficerJoshua Beilke, MBA, PhD, VP Translational Development

Board of Directors

Rick Klausner, MD (Chair) Founder & CEO, Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.Maggie Wilderotter CEO, Grand Reserve Inn; former board member, Juno TherapeuticsToni Hoover, PhD Director, Strategy, Planning and Management for Global Health, Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationTerry Rosen, PhD CEO, Arcus BiosciencesDavid Moskowitz, PhD Principal, 8VC (observer)Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, CEO & President, Sonoma Biotherapeutics

About Sonoma Biotherapeutics

Sonoma Biotherapeutics is a privately held, San Francisco and Seattle-based company leading the development of adoptive Treg therapies cell for autoimmune and degenerative diseases. Using next generation genome editing and target-specific cell therapy, Sonoma is focused on developing its best-in-class platform across the entire spectrum of Treg cell therapeutic capabilities. Founded by pioneers in Treg biology and cell therapy, the company brings together leading expertise and proprietary methodologies for the discovery and development of disease modifying and curative therapies.

Contact: media@sonomabio.com

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Sonoma Biotherapeutics launches with $40 million in Series A funding to advance regulatory T cell therapy in autoimmune and degenerative diseases -...

Following the spread of the coronavirus in China and other countries, several writers in the Arab press wrote that this virus and others, such as the SARS and swine flu viruses, were deliberately created and spread by the U.S. in order to make a profit by selling vaccines against these diseases. Others wrote that the virus was part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases.

Coronavirus sparks war between the U.S. and China (source: baladnaelyoum.com, February 2, 2020)

The following are translated excerpts from some of these articles:

Saudi Writer: It's No Coincidence That The Coronavirus Has Skipped Over Israel And The U.S.

In Saudi daily Al-Watan, writer Sa'ud Al-Shehry claimed that the coronavirus was a plot by American and Israeli drug companies aimed at increasing their profits. He wrote: "A 'wonder' virus was discovered yesterday in China; tomorrow it will be discovered in Egypt, but it will not be discovered either today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow in the U.S. or Israel, nor in poor countries such as Burundi or the Comoro Islands

"The corona[virus] is a known virus, and we know that it was discovered in 1960 and that it causes ordinary respiratory diseases. Its symptoms are like those of any other virus: coughing, congestion, and perhaps also diarrhea and fever. [Therefore,] it is strange to hear that the World Health Organization is saying that 'this is a virus first discovered in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, in a camel...'

"And here is something else that's strange: As soon as Egypt announced, a few years ago, that it would rely on poultry [raised in the country], and that it would even export [poultry] abroad that is, that it no longer needed poultry from the U.S., France, and so on [suddenly] there appeared, from underneath the ground, the avian flu virus with the aim of nipping [Egypt's economic] awakening in the bud. Helpless, the world searched for a serum [i.e. vaccine] for this miserable avian [flu] virus. Out of the blue, like a miracle, Merck Sharp appeared like an innocent lamb, with the longed-for medicine in its hand, as if it knew nothing and as if one of its managers, Donald Rumsfeld, knew nothing and thought that the world too knew nothing. And maybe [the world] really did not know that this Donald Rumsfeld had served as [U.S.] secretary of defense for five years, into 2006. This secret member of the army brought the 'hidden' serum in the form of [the antiviral medication] Tamiflu, and thus he and his company raked in tens of billions of dollars from this miserable swine flu. The question is, what is the [U.S.] Department of Defense's connection to medical treatments?!

"Even before this, the same thing was done in China when in 2003 [the country] announced that it had [the [world's] largest dollar reserves [and] they [the Americans] introduced coronavirus' cousin, SARS, into [the country] [along with] the [vaccine] serum, [saying] 'We are the only ones who have this and you'll pay for it.' There was also the anthrax experiment, with the same company, Merck Sharp, and the same fraud and roundabout methods and it happened also with the swine flu, when Novartis and many other companies made $6 billion from this.

"Dear reader, when you read these scenarios, you will surely agree that behind the [outbreak of] corona[virus] there is a plan of deceit aimed at making a profit, and nothing more. The whole thing is a virus industry, a world of tiny creatures viruses and genetic engineering that culminate in the manufacture of a virus that is transferred to wealthy countries that can buy the [vaccine] serum. It is transferred through food, beverages, animals, the air, or perhaps via cosmetics and other means that don't come to mind. At the same time, the appropriate [vaccine] serum is being prepared for this virus, and it is held until the people need it badly because of the severity of the disease [caused by] this virus, which is genetically engineered. Then the patient grasps at any straw and pays all his money to buy this artificial treatment that was created at the same time as the virus [itself].

"And perhaps, dear reader, you will look at the statistics on the rate of contagion with the corona[virus] worldwide, and you will learn that the Gulf states hold the first places [in this list], followed by European countries, and you will never find [in these statistics] [either] the U.S. or Israel. This is a question mark that I leave for you to hypothesize about. You will also not find [the virus] in a poor country. I will solve the riddle [of why this is so], but don't tell a soul it is because [a poor country] cannot pay the price of the serum.

"Finally, rest assured that your country will pay a high price. Rest assured [also] that this is an 'ordinary' disease and not highly contagious only when [people] gather in large crowds. Long live Saudi Arabia and be strong and healthy."[1]

Syrian Writer: The Coronavirus Epidemic Is An Artificial Crisis Intended ToUndermine China's Economy

Hussein Saqer, a columnist for the Syrian daily Al-Thawra, made similar claims in a February 3, 2020 column, saying that the coronavirus was part of a commercial-biological-psychological war waged by the U.S. against China. He wrote: "From Ebola, zika, SARS, avian flu and swine flu, through anthrax and mad cow disease to the corona[virus] [all these] deadly viruses were manufactured by the U.S. and threaten to annihilate the peoples of the world. [The U.S.] has turned biological warfare into a new type of war, by means of which it intends to change the rules of play and shift the conflict with the peoples [of the world] away from the conventional path. What was reportedly said recently by the Finnish Minister of Health and Social Affairs was not fake news of the kind that features in counter-propaganda and in the tabloids. It was an authentic video with sound and image...[2] [The Finnish minister] said that the U.S. was acting to reduce the population of the world by two thirds in a way that would not cause it any losses. In fact, [the U.S.] would earn billions after forcing the World Health Organization to designate these diseases as deadly plagues so that [getting] the vaccine would be obligatory rather than voluntary, especially for the most vulnerable populations that constitute the next generation: pregnant women and children.

"The announcement of the Finnish minister firmly proves that the U.S. has a schedule for manufacturing viruses of this kind, and that the coronavirus is [another] link in the chain of deadly biological [agents] that it means to use, after mad cow disease, avian flu and the other diseases mentioned above. It embarked on this path of war after losing the commercial and financial competition, so as to punish and crush the economies of the countries that surpass it [economically],and after acting to strengthen the pharmaceutical companies owned by [its] Congressmen and ministers and placing [these companies] at the service of the vaccine industry. The World Health Organization, for its part, is willing to market the disease and the treatment together, according to the instructions of the White House, using the so-called 'good news' about new vaccines discovered for these diseases.

"The discourse, then, currently revolves around an artificial crisis of a new sort, which was created by the U.S., just like the many [other] crises it invents for its own benefit. After American economic advisors began to fear [that the U.S. would be unable] to compete with China or even match it, they came up with the virus, so as to preoccupy the Chinese officials on the one hand, and market [American] medicines and increase the panic among the Chinese people, on the other. This is therefore a war that has commercial, biological and psychological [aspects] simultaneously, and it is far removed from the conventional kind of confrontation."[3]

Egyptian Writer: The U.S. Spread The Virus To Harm China's Economy And Reputation

On the Egyptian news website Vetogate.com, Egyptian journalist Ahmad Rif'at explained why the U.S. chose the Chinese city of Wuhan as the epicenter of the disease: "American factories are the first to manufacture every kind of virus and bacteria, from the virulent smallpox virus and the bubonic plague virus to all the viruses we saw in the recent years, such as mad cow disease and swine flu. Wuhan, the city that has now been struck by the corona [disease], is an industrial town, but it is nevertheless the eighth-richest city in China, after Shanghai, Guangzhou

Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin and Hong Kong, which are the country's major cities. Its place at the bottom of the list [of China's major cities] is what makes it a suitable [site] for an American crime... for it is not a focus of attention, and the level of healthcare there is surely lower than in the larger and more important cities.

"All that is needed in order to let a virus spread quickly is to release it from some bag, using an ordinary syringe or in any other way. But the really interesting fact is the large number of Americans who were staying in Wuhan and decided to leave it immediately and quickly, [as was shown] on American news channels, among them a CNN reporter, even though none of them contracted [the disease]! We don't know what that [CNN reporter] was doing there. Did he come to report on the events? If so, why did he leave so dramatically? Did he come there before [the outbreak of the epidemic]? [If so,] what caused him to go there before the coronavirus crisis began?...

"This war is not only intended to worry China, trouble it and cause it to spend billions of dollars on emergency measures and medicines which, by the way, will be manufactured by an Israeli company... The U.S. wants to inform the world, and especially China itself, as part of a propaganda war targeting [China's] prestige and status, that [China] is still a backward country whose citizens eat bat soup and which exports diseases and epidemics to the rest of the world!"[4]

[1] Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), February 2, 2020.

[2] The reference is apparently to Finnish physician and conspiracy theorist Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, who claimed that the swine flu epidemic was a hoax created by Big Pharma in order to market the vaccine, which is actually poisonous and threatens to depopulate the world.

[3] Al-Thawra (Syria), February 3, 2020.

[4] Vetogate.com, January 27, 2020.

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Arab Writers: The Coronavirus Is Part Of Biological Warfare Waged By The U.S. Against China - Middle East Media Research Institute

Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the "DNA Synthesis Market: Global Industry Analysis 2012 - 2016 and Opportunity Assessment; 2017 - 2027" report to their offering

This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire

Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/06/2020 -- DNA synthesis is the natural creation of nucleic acid strands through the process of DNA replication. Artificially, they are synthesized using genetic engineering and enzyme chemistry in the laboratory to be used for various applications such as therapeutic, diagnostics as well as academic and industrial research. DNA synthesis services provided by different companies varies greatly by the cost of per base pair, error rates, lengths, throughput, etc. DNA synthesis market further includes the oligonucleotide synthesis and gene synthesis which has various end users such as agricultural science, food science, antibody discovery, immunology, cancer research, infectious disease, synthetic biology. Market for the therapeutic applications is mostly distributed only among the biopharmaceutical industries which is driven by their continuous research in the respective domain.

The market for DNA synthesis got the surge form Human Genome Project leading to several advancements in the technological processes for production and reduces the time of production which made possible the synthesis of high throughput custom nucleotides. Nowadays, it is possible to do the customizations and get the required sequence online and at required time. The commercial availability of DNA synthesis machines has also a great impact in the synthesis services market.

Download Sample Copy@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-5900

DNA Synthesis Market: Drivers & Restraints

Growing number of research & developments in the field of genomics and next generation sequencing supports the market growth of DNA synthesis services over the globe. The growing numbers of mergers and collaborations by the market players also strengthening the market growth. Along with this, the developments in the synthetic biology segment promotes the market progression of DNA synthesis services. A robust growth in the oligonucleotide therapeutic segment as antisense oligos, siRNAs, miRNA inhibitors and mimics also supports the market growth of DNA synthesis for the commercial end. However, cuts in the federal fundings for the research purpose, stringent regulatory requirements in the therapeutic applications for DNA also limits the market to expand across the globe.

DNA Synthesis Market: Segmentation -

Segmentation by Service Type:

-Oligonucleotide Synthesis -Gene Synthesis

Segmentation by Application:

-Research and Development -Diagnosis-Therapeutics

Segmentation by End User

-Biopharmaceutical Companies-Academic and Research Institutes-Contract Research Organizations

Download Table of Contents@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-5900

DNA Synthesis Market: Overview

Companies involved in the DNA synthesis services market are involved in continuous updation of their manufacturing technologies for high throughput synthesis with cost control. Recently, Twist biosciences also gathered $82 million investment from Illumina for developing a new technology platform for synthesizing DNA on silicon. These market players are also focusing on their brand improvement and market penetration by focusing on their sales force, geographical expansion as well as expansion of manufacturing facilities.

Moreover, synthetic DNA costs are anticipated to decrease owing to the introduction of advanced technology. Intensifying competition in the synthetic biology services also leads to price reduction per base pair. However, the multi-billion dollar PCR industry constantly supports the market growth of DNA synthesis services. With the increasing outsourcing services for the life science research activities, the market has huge potential of growth opportunities. The availability of research funds also had a great impact in the DNA synthesis market size and growth rate in different regions over the globe.

DNA Synthesis Market: Region-wise Outlook

Geographically, North America leads the market for DNA synthesis services owing to the high requirement in the academic research as well as biopharmaceutical industries for research and therapeutic production. This is followed by the Western Europe region supported by the high availability of research fundings in universities and commercial availability of therapeutic drugs made of DNA active pharmaceutical ingredients. Eastern Europe region shares a low market share and slow growth rate comparatively to other regions over the forecast period. Asia Pacific region represents the significant growth rate in the DNA synthesis market with highest market growth in research applications. Recent trends shows China to be leading the market in the region in terms of market size as well as growth rate. Latin America and Middle East & Africa has been observed the least market share over the forecast period.

Download Segment-wise Analysis@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/5900

DNA Synthesis Market Treatment Market: Key Players

Some of the players in the DNA Synthesis market includes -

-Bioneer Corporation-IBA GmbH-Eurofins Scientific-Integrated DNA Technologies Inc.-LGC Biosearch Technologies-Eton Bioscience Inc.-GenScript Biotech Corporation-Eurogentec-Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.-Quintara Biosciences

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/dna-synthesis-market-report-with-executive-summary-introduction-sizing-analysis-and-forecast-to-2027-1274866.htm

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DNA Synthesis Market Report with Executive Summary, Introduction, Sizing, Analysis and Forecast to 2027 - Press Release - Digital Journal

The market is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 17. 2% from 2018-2025. The growth of the genome editing market is primarily attributed to the rise in the production of genetically modified crops and rising prevalence of the genetic diseases.

New York, Jan. 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "North America Genome Editing Market to 2025 - Regional Analysis and Forecasts by Technology, Application End User, and Country" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05774528/?utm_source=GNW However, the stringent regulatory framework and limitations in genome editing are likely to pose a negative impact on the market growth.

On the other hand, emerging markets for precision and regenerative medicines is likely to have a positive impact on the growth of the North America genome editing market in the coming years.The genome editing has proved itself to be the most promising way of feeding the fast growing population across the world.The changes in the climatic conditions due to the global warming and others conditions such as droughts floods are witnessed more across the world.

Therefore, the feeding the rising population is question among the people across the world.Due to the genome editing the concerns are being reduced to a great level, the two types of the genetically modified crops are widely grown.

Firstly, these crops are altered in a ways that they are not affected by the herbicide glyphosate.Secondly, crops are produced to protect themselves from the insecticides.

The advantages of the genetically modified crops includes diseases resistance, improvement of the photosynthesis, improvement of the nutrition, and more. The genetic modification helps to enhance the productivity without hampering the health of the crops. In addition, for the genetically modified crops the limited resources are required and it require less or no pesticides for its growth. The time required for the growth of the genetically modified crops is less, therefore these are highly preferred crops in the western world. The demand for the genetically modified crops is rising in the eastern region due to the benefits offered by these crops.According to the International Service For The Acquisition Of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), 2017 statistics, 19 developing countries have planted 53% which is approximately to 100.6 million hectares of the global biotech hectares, whereas the 5 industrial countries have took the 47% which is near about 89.2 million hectares share. The trend of growing genetically modified crop is expected to grow in the coming future.In 2017, the CRISPR segment segment held a largest market share of 53.6% of the genome editing market, by technology. This segment is also expected to dominate the market in 2025 owing to the simple, fast and accurate property of the CRISPR. Moreover, the TALENs segment is anticipated to witness the significant growth rate of 17.1% during the forecast period, 2018 to 2025 owing to the properties provided by the TALENs the market for it is expected to rise in the coming near future.North America genome editing market, based on application was segmented into genetic engineering, cell line engineering and others. The cell line engineering segment is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 18.0% during the forecast period. Moreover, the genetic engineering segment is expected to grow at the significant rate during the coming years owing to its sub segments such as animal genetic engineering and plant genetic engineering that are being carried out extensively. In 2017, the biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies segment held a largest market share of 61.2% of the genome editing market, by end user. This segment is also expected to dominate the market in 2025 owing to the advantages of the CRISPR, the companies have enhanced their research and development for the drug discoveries that can treat various diseases. Hence, the market is likely to propel in the coming years.Some of the major primary and secondary sources for genome editing included in the report are, Contract Research Organizations (CRO), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), Ministry of Science and Technology (MST), International Service For The Acquisition Of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and others.Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05774528/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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The North America genome editing market is expected to reach US$ 4,148.1 Mn in 2025 from US$ 1,234.5 Mn in 2017 - Yahoo Finance

On a daily basis, we interact with hundreds or thousands of materials that range in complexity from the water we drink to the OLED screens on our smartphones. The development of new materials can be linked to nearly every major advance in human history, and breakthroughs made by material scientists have profoundly affected our society and daily lives from transportation to how we receive information.

Some of the most expensive materials on this list are naturally occurring, while others, such as two-dimensional materials, have been developed in laboratories and are on the cutting edge of scientific progress.

Human epochs are defined by the materials that enabled advancement, First the Stone Age, then bronze, then iron, then steel, then plastics, and now were firmly in the semiconductor age, said Alex Kozen, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. I expect the next great advance in materials to be biological materials, where genetic engineering could be used to create organisms that provide better nutrition, grow structural materials and much more.

The following is a list of some of the most expensive materials used today in manufacturing, tech products, research, and other applications. They include precious metals, compounds, rare earth elements, and ultra-thin two-dimensional materials.

Click here to see the most expensive materials on Earth

The cost of different materials is determined by several factors, including supply and demand, mining costs, raw materials costs, how rare or abundant a material is, purity of the material, engineering costs whether it is a complex material to produce among many other factors. The materials on this list are not meant to represent a complete list of every expensive material. The materials on our list were selected in part because they are used commonly in industry and research.

To compile our list, we used various scientific journals, the Defense Logistics Agencys list of Strategic Materials, the USGSs Mineral Commodities Summary 2019, and prices were estimated from various suppliers websites.

Go here to read the rest:
The Most Expensive Materials on Earth - 24/7 Wall St.

The impending need to feed almost 10 billion people by 2050 is fuelling innovation in the agri-food sector.

Vertical farming is one such example. Tipped to play an increasingly important role in global agriculture, plant factories as they are otherwise termed are vertically-stacked, fully controlled environments used to produce food.

The technology has been praised for its potential to help societies meet elevated demand for food, without the need for additional farmland.

Analysts appear similarly persuaded. According to Global Market Insights, the vertical farming market is expected to expand by 25% by 2024, to reach a value of 11.4bn.

However, feeding growing populations with vertical farms, and using the same seeds and plants used in conventional agriculture today to do so, demonstrates a lag in innovation, suggests Aberystwyth Universitys Professor Huw Jones.

Vertical farming technologies are advancing, and fast. Today, it is possible to automate a number of processes in urban agriculture, including the sowing of seeds, and monitoring of LED lighting.

Climate including temperature, humidity, and CO levels can also be controlled externally, and machine learning can be leveraged to help save electricity and water use.

In order to get the most out of urban agriculture innovations, plant technology will have to similarly advance, said the professor of translational genomics for plant breeding at the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum last week in London. The kinds of plants that we are going to ultimately have in [plant factories] are not going to be the same kind of plants that we have in soil.

We have huge innovation in hydroponic vertical farming, the professor continued, but we are still using the old seeds. What we are lacking, therefore, is the plant architecture itself, he stressed.

Professor Jones does predict this will change, but it will require gene editing to do so.

Greater understanding of DNA sequencing and genome editing, alongside reduced costs in gene sequencing, has helped to encourage interest in plant technology, he explained.

Plant-specific transcription factors, for example, have garnered much attention in food science. Transcription factors are genes that control the transcription of other genes in fruit and vegetable colour, texture, and aroma, we were told.

As a result, scientists can alter the colour of tomatoes, or the smell of fruits, he continued. We can make completely new fruits by harnessing these genes that control genes [with] these MYB transcription factors.

In vertical farming, gene sequencing could also help bridge the technology gap between vertical farming and plant architecture.There is a lot of research underpinned by the understanding of the gene sequence. We understand how to change the internode length of these sorts of plants. [We know] how to change the fruiting patterns, so that we can make plants that are much more suitable to those kinds of new agricultures.

In Europe, the scientific community regularly voices its support of genetic technologies. Both conventional genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetic editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas have been praised for their potential to help develop more robust crops in the face of climate change.

Genetic editing using CRISPR/Cas technology involves removing part of the genetic code, as opposed to GMO methods, which uses genetic engineering to insert new code.

However, EU regulation has put Europe out of step with the rest of the world, argued Professor Jones, particularly in countries where very simple genome editing falls outside of their GMO legislation.

Here, the professor is referring to the European Court of Justices (ECJ) July 2018 ruling. According to its decision, crops obtained by mutagenesis are classified as GMOs in Europe, as the techniques and methods of mutagenesis alter the genetic material of a plant in a way that does not occur naturally.

Describing this legislation as too heavily politicised to onboard biotechnology, Professor Jones suggested the UKs impending departure from the EU could present an opportunity for the sector.

This is an area that the UK, post-Brexit, could look at to really rationalise the regulation of mutation breeding, he said. That has always been outside the GMO scope. And to think about simple genome editing where that is synonymous with old mutation breeding techniques and also to exclude that.

In the case that such editing, which in the future may fall outside of GMO legislation, produces a novel food, the professor agreed it should be categorised by novel foods legislation.

In any case, Professor Jones is convinced that over the next ten years, there will be significant innovation in food biotechnology. Some of which, wont fall neatly into novel food or biotechnology regulations. So, I think we have some interesting times ahead to see how these things are going to be regulated.

Continued here:
Vertical farms of the future require genetically edited plants, says scientist - FoodNavigator.com

As the labour market rapidly changes, new, nearly real-time data and metrics give us better insight than ever before into what the jobs of the future will look like.

The kinds of jobs emerging in the global economy span a wide range of professions and skills, reflecting the opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels to take advantage of emerging jobs and the new economy. Identifying emerging jobs and the skills that they require provides valuable insights to inform training investments, and paves the way for a Reskilling Revolution, as individuals seek new skills to keep pace with change.

But for all of the opportunities that the new economy will bring, there are stark skills gaps and gender gaps that must be addressed. If we dont, they will continue to widen in the future.

Here are five things we can learn from this new data:

Not every emerging job requires hard tech skills, but every emerging job does require basic tech skills such as digital literacy, web development or graphic design. Three of the jobs in the World Economic Forum's Jobs of Tomorrow report cloud, engineering and data clusters, which are also among the fastest-growing overall require disruptive tech skills like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, or cloud computing. Because technologies like AI are so pervasive, many roles in areas like sales and marketing will require a basic understanding of AI.

These disruptive tech skills are in high demand across the board. Blockchain, cloud computing, analytical reasoning and AI are among the most in-demand tech skills we see on LinkedIn.

While they arent growing as quickly as tech-dominated jobs, new sales, content production and HR roles are also emerging as a complement to the rapidly growing tech industry. Our research shows talent acquisition specialists, customer success specialists and social media assistants among the fastest growing professions all roles that rely on more diverse skills sets, especially soft skills.

Share of skills clusters by selected professional cluster

Image: World Economic Forum

Demand for soft skills is likely to continue to increase as automation becomes more widespread. Our latest Global Talent Trends Report shows that HR professionals are identifying the demand for soft skills as the most important trend globally. Skills like creativity, persuasion, and collaboration which all top our list of most in-demand soft skills are all virtually impossible to automate, which means if you have these skills youll be even more valuable to organizations in the future.

While the data reflects a diversity of opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels, further analysis shows a worrying imbalance in those obtaining the latest skills. In our ongoing research on gender with the World Economic Forum, we found that the largest gender gaps among emerging jobs are in roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills, with the share of women represented across cloud, engineering and data jobs below 30% (for cloud computing its as low as 12%). Its critical to close this gap because these disruptive tech skills will have an outsized impact on the direction of society and the economy.

While there is certainly room to improve gender parity by embracing greater diversity in hiring and more inclusive managerial practices, our data suggests that those gains, while important, will not be sufficient to achieve parity.

We have to think creatively about ways to fill these emerging skills and roles so that we prevent these gaps from intensifying in the future. Our research to understand these issues has uncovered some very achievable, scalable solutions.

Firstly, taking advantage of existing and adjacent talent can make a massive contribution to the rapid expansion of talent pipelines. Our research reveals that training and up-skilling near AI talent could double the pipeline of AI talent in Europe.

Opportunities by selected professional cluster and occupation, 2014-2019

Image: World Economic Forum

Taking a similar approach with the gender gap, weve found that sub-groups of disruptive tech skills where women have higher representation genetic engineering, data science, nanotechnology and human-computer interaction could expand the pipeline of talent for the broader set of tech roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills.

While both of these approaches can help us make meaningful progress, closing the skills and gender gaps depends on a lot more than just making sure talent has the right skills. Its a simple truth that who you know matters, so we also have to close the network gap the advantage some people have over others based purely on who they know.

Our research on the network gap shows that living in a high-income neighbourhood, going to a top school and working at a top company can lead to a 12x advantage in accessing opportunities. This means that two people with the exact same skills, but who were born into different neighbourhoods, may be worlds apart when it comes to the opportunities afforded them.

All of these new metrics and insights can help us pinpoint the skills and jobs of the future, but its going to take more than data to ensure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an equitable one. If we are going to make meaningful change, we need businesses and political leaders to re-evaluate the norms through which we shape policy, make hiring decisions and ultimately level the playing field for those who face barriers to opportunity.

As we convene at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Im asking leaders to join us in making progress towards closing these gaps. It will create better, more innovative businesses, stronger economies and ultimately help create fairer societies.

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World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Allen Blue, Co-Founder and Vice President, Product Management, LinkedIn

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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5 things we know about the jobs of the future - World Economic Forum

In co-founding Ginkgo Bioworks, Reshma Shetty has helped enable the entire synthetic biology ... [+] industry while inspiring a generation of new biological engineers. Heres what she told me about starting a biotech company.

Dr. Reshma Shetty is no stranger within the synthetic biology community. In 2008 she co-founded Ginkgo Bioworksa company youll definitely hear about if you havent alreadyalong with fellow MIT grad students Austin Che, Barry Canton, and Jason Kelly, and their graduate adviser, Professor Tom Knight. They started with a simple but revolutionary goal: help people design and build organisms. A decade later, Ginkgo achieved unicorn statusa private company valued at over $1 billionand it finds itself at the fore of the synthetic biology revolution with customers seeking to build organisms for use in fields as diverse as health, food, agriculture, cosmetics and materials.

Shetty has been through the whole journey and has been a major influence in the synthetic biology community. She had a major role in the first International Genetic Engineering Machine (iGEM) Competition with her co-founders. In 2008, she was named one of Eight People Inventing the Future by Forbes and, in 2011, one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company.

Shetty is an upbeat talker. If theres any stress or jadedness from navigating a company from birth to unicorn over a decade, it doesnt show. There is a sincere enthusiasm in her voice, especially when we discuss the science. When I caught up with her a few weeks back, one of things I wanted to know was: what do you do when you realize youre riding a biotech unicorn?

What was the moment when you realized that Ginkgo was going to be big?

It was when we closed our Series B financing. It was a $45 million round or roughly speaking, so that was more dollars dumped into our bank account at one instance than we ever had before.

My thought was, well pretty serious people withserious capital are choosing to take a bet on us.

This was confirmed for her in 2017 when Bayer chose to work with Ginkgo on engineering biologicals for agriculture, proving the intrinsic value of their platform and cementing Ginkgo as a platform company.

It proved three things at the time. One, that engineered microbes in the environment could be a thing, that [they] could be a product category. There are serious people taking serious bets that we're going to be able to release engineered microbes in the future. Two, that Ginkgos platform had value even in areas that we hadn't previously been in. Three, it proved to the world that Ginkgo was really a platform company, that we weren't simply going after a few products in the industrial biotech market.

It wasnt easy sailing for Gingko from the start though. Right after the company was founded, the global economy took a nosedive.

I think we incorporated in July of 2008 and, like literally, within the next month or two, the fiscal crisis hit, says Shetty.

In many ways this was not the ideal time to be starting a business and looking for investment, leading to creative thinking in getting the company going.

What did you learn in those early days that biotech companies could benefit from?

At the time everybody said that the way to start a biotech start-up is to go raise money immediately because you need some amount of money to be able to start a lab and get going. The thing I had to learn and realize was that no, actually, it is possible. If you're creative enough, savvy enough and patient enough, then you can in fact bootstrap even a biotech start-up.

Shetty stresses the importance of having the space to figure out their technology platform and business model and ask themselves how to take it forward. Having Knight and his wealth of experience on the team certainly helped.

Tom always said Oh, its a good idea to bootstrap in the early years regardless, based on his prior experience starting companies. But circumstances certainly reinforced that and I think that was really helpful that we spent the first few years bootstrapping the company.

Was it natural having your former advisor on the team?

Yeah, very natural. Tom, hes a pretty low-key guy, but he's also been very ahead of his time when it comes to thinking about the technology and technology trends. Early on it was great because Tom has started and run a company before and there were some obvious pitfalls that he could help us avoid and talk a bit about options.

And your other co-founders, what is it about them that makes them special?

I think probably for me the biggest thing is that we've now been working together for almost 20 years, says Shetty, referencing their time at MIT in the years before Ginkgo.

And even now, if I'm struggling with something or I'm trying to dig through how to solve a problem, I would want to talk to Tom, Barry, Austin, and Jason. I always come away having learned something or clarified my thinking or somehow changed how I was approaching a problem. To me, that is the real hallmark of excellence.

Despite all those shared experiences, they still learn from one another and solve problems together. Shetty considers her colleagues to be mentors too, saying shes benefitted from them as much as from her supervisors through the years.

Anybody can be a mentor, she says.

They are all engineers at heart, so the most exciting things for the Ginkgo team are around potentially world-changing technologies that can jump quickly from dream to reality.

What are the engineering challenges youre most excited about these days?

Bayer and Ginkgo, through our joint venture in Joyn, are going after nitrogen fixation. It has long been a dream of folks. Could we reduce fertilizer usage by using biological nitrogen fixation instead?

This project has been close to Shetty since her academic days, but therapeutics and Ginkgos collaboration with Synlogic, who develop bacteria as living medicines, has also piqued her interest.

There's all these areas of metabolism that lead to devastating diseases and the idea that you could engineer microbes to basically treat them is a cool idea!

Is there any particular problem youd like to solve through engineering biology?

How do you think about leveraging biology to make a positive impact on the environment? That's one I think has been on our wish list for a while.

Enabling the future of synthetic biology is a big part of how Ginkgo operates, even since the early days. The founders were involved in establishing iGEM and their platform is well suited to collaborative efforts.

How do you see Ginkgos role to give back and enable the next generation of synthetic biology?

I think one thing that has been a longstanding ask from folks in the community is how are we going to open up our cell programming platform to more people? Early on, that seemed crazy to even think about, she says, citing the skill set required to use and build it. I think we've come a long way since then so we can say actually maybe we get started thinking about opening up the platform to more folks.

Shetty says initial collaborations like Joyn, (Ginkgo spin-out) Motif, and Synlogic mean they can learn how to open their platform better. Relationships with accelerators like YCombinator and Petri are the next steps. They acknowledge that opening their platform will only benefit and accelerate biological engineering.

Our conversation then moves onto a more human element of running a company, a reminder that its never all about the science.

Do you have any mistakes or regrets in how youve done things?

The biggest regret I have is actually not thinking consciously about diversity and inclusion issues earlier in Ginkgos history. We started thinking about them seriously in about 2015 or so, when we were still relatively small, about 30 people. But we could have thought about diversity and inclusion even earlier.

Shetty reveals its easier to change the balance in a company when its just a handful of people.

Can we be doing better on diversity as a whole?

I would say that synthetic biology as a field has always been pretty good in that it thought about issues outside of just the science and engineering itself. I think the field always fosters that broader perspective. So I think it's been more natural and more normal to think about diversity and inclusion issues in the synthetic biology community as a result, says Shetty, We're by no means beyond reproach but there's more of a willingness to talk about these issues and really try to take proactive steps.

Do you have any advice for those starting a company?

The thing I like to tell people is that, if you're going to start a company, don't do it for the money. There are a lot of easier ways to make money in the world. Start a company because you think a company is really the best way to go tackle a problem that you're passionate about.

Any final thoughts?

I think that we've come a long way in terms of our ability to engineer biology, but we still have a long way to go. Fundamentally, biology is still not yet a predictable engineering discipline and its important to remember that. Because its still not yet predictable, we have to iterate through different designs and search for a functional design whenever we're trying to engineer a GMO. We have more work to yet do to bring down the cost of doing genetic engineering so that we can explore more and more of design space.

Follow me on twitter at @johncumbers and @synbiobeta. Subscribe to my weekly newsletters in synthetic biology and space settlement.

Thank you to David Kirk and Kevin Costa for additional research and reporting in this article. Im the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about including Ginkgo Bioworks are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest heres the full list of SynBioBeta sponsors.

Read more from the original source:
An Interview with Ginkgo Bioworks Reshma Shetty On Co-Founding Synthetic Biologys First Unicorn - Forbes

A little while ago, we covered the idea ofusing photovoltaic materials to drive enzymatic reactionsin order to produce specific chemicals. The concept is being considered mostly because doing the same reaction in a cell is often horribly inefficient, because everything else in the cell is trying to regulate the enzymes, trying to use the products, trying to convert the byproducts into something toxic, or up to something even more annoying. But in many cases, these reactions rely on chemicals that are only made by cells, leaving some researchers to suspect it still might be easier to use living things in the end.

A new paper in Nature Catalysis may support or contradict this argument, depending on your perspective. In the end, the authors of the new paper re-engineer standard brewers yeast to produce molecules that can be used as fuel for internal combustion engines. The full catalog of changes they have to make is a bit mind-numbing, and most achieve a small, incremental increase in production. The end result is a large step forward toward biofuel production, but the effort involved is intimidating.

Read original post

See original here:
Re-engineering yeast to create biofuel appears possible, 'but the effort involved is intimidating' - Genetic Literacy Project

The legendary Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), which tracks issues related to technology and global security, has issued a terrifying warning: We are less than two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday clock. Its very bad news, representing the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced.

What makes this moment so perilous? The scientists statement includes warnings over the cyber-weaponization of information, the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) in making military decisions, the destruction of treaties meant to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, the abandonment of global agreements to limit climate chaos, the spread of genetic engineering and synthetic biology technologies, and more. It does not account for the escalated likelihood of atomic reactor disasters, but based on at least one BAS publication, it should.

Since 1947, this prestigious band of elite scientists and global thinkers has been putting out a clock meant to time the peril of a global apocalypse. First issued at the dawn of the Cold War, it has mostly focused on the dangers of atomic warfare. Its countdown to Armageddon has been set as far away as 17 minutes from midnight, a hypothetical time of human extinction. That relatively optimistic assessment came in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the definitive end of the Cold War.

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.

In 2018, the BAS set it at two minutes, the closest to catastrophe it had ever been. They repeated that estimate in 2019. But this years announcement has taken us inside the two-minute warning with a hair-raising litany of likely lethal catastrophes set to occur within 100 theoretical seconds.

Donald Trump is mentioned only once by name, in conjunction with his decision to trash the Paris Accords on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. The scientists urge whoever wins the 2020 election to reinstate the U.S. commitment limiting carbon and other climate-destroying emissions. The BAS also cites Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro for his decision to allow the destruction of the Amazon, with huge impacts on climate.

The BAS strives to maintain a non-partisan image. But Trumps presence in the White House clearly hangs over any assessment of humankinds survivability. The specter of his finger on the nuclear, ecological and financial buttons for the next four years hangs over humankind like a pall but goes otherwise unmentioned in this Doomsday assessment.

Also unmentioned is the question of more than 450 atomic power reactors worldwide. A small but vocal outlier coterie has argued that nuclear energy combats global warming by emitting less carbon that coal burners. But the Bulletin recently enshrined a major assessment by the esteemed Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, warning that commercial reactors pose a serious threat to human survival on this planet.

Published in August 2019, The false promise of nuclear power in an age of climate change argues that the 450 atomic reactors now deteriorating worldwide pose an existential threat to our survival. Writing with Professor Naomi Oreskes, Lifton warns that atomic energy is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. Citing costs of nuclear juice at $100 per megawatt-hour versus $50 for solar and $30-40 for onshore wind, the authors say that the industry suffers from a negative learning curve, driving nuke costs constantly higher while those for renewables head consistently down.

Citing the unsolved problem of radioactive waste management, the BAS article warns of the ongoing impacts of major disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl (and potentially more to come), whose fallout kills humans and does untold damage to the global ecology. Lipton and Oreskes say we need to free ourselves from the false hope that a technology designed for ultimate destruction can lead to our salvation. They favor making renewable energies integral to the American way of life.

In addition to nuclear and climate issues, the 2020 Doomsday assessment emphasizes some relatively new concerns. In the last year, it says, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet.

By attacking both science and the fabric of international peace accords, some global leaders have created a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later.

That situation includes AI and hypersonic warfare, both escalating at a frenzied pace. Now used in ultra-fast attacks, AI is dangerously vulnerable to hacking and manipulation while making kill decisions without human supervision. In nuclear command and control systems, the BAS warns, research and experience have demonstrated the vulnerability of these systems to hacking and manipulation.

This is an absolutely terrifying brew. The spread of disinformation, the contempt for science and expert opinion, the undermining of global agreements on arms control, and climate change are all deadly. Add in the new world of AI and hyper-sonic warfare, then pile on autocrats like Trump and Bolsonaro, and finish with the certainty of more disasters from 450 crumbling, obsolete atomic reactors.

All in all, its small wonder the Bulletin has taken us past the two-minute warning. It will clearly take every ounce of our activist strength to save our species from the final whistle.

Read more from the original source:
Trump's Presidency Brings Us Closer to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock - Truthout

Even for the most elite of bacteria-killers, these superbugs were a challenge.

Theyd delayed Mallory Smith from getting a lung transplant, and when shed finally had the surgery, the bacteria quickly migrated into her new lungs. They shrugged off cocktail after cocktail of antibiotics. Finally, Smiths father proposed an unusual last resort: finding viruses that parasitize bacteria and injecting them into his daughter. But the experimental treatment came too late. Smith died on Nov. 15, 2017, a little over a month after shed turned 25.

Yet her bacterial infection lived on, passed from scientist to scientist, from freezer to freezer, traveling from Smiths hospital room in Pittsburgh, Pa., to a lab in Ann Arbor, Mich., eventually landing in a Petri dish in Jerusalem, some 6,000 miles away. Now, microbiologists at Israels Hebrew University have described a new virus thats especially good at combating Smiths superbug.

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Its a phage that kills the strain that killed Mallory, said Ronen Hazan, who led the team. This was the best one and we decided to name it after her.

It isnt the first bacteriophage as such bacteria-fighting viruses are known that can work against this sort of intractable infection. After all, there are trillions of phages out there, feasting on the bugs that fill our sewage and hunting for hosts in puddles after rain. Even if theyre extreme specialists, attacking only specific strains of a specific species of bacteria, theres usually more than one that infects a particular superbug. Smiths doctors had tried out a few that may have done the trick if injected earlier.

Yet the mere fact that researchers are looking for phages to try as therapies is a sign of how much has changed since and because of Smiths death. The hope is that next time theres a case like hers, a potentially lifesaving treatment will be ready sooner.

The recent surge of phage therapy enthusiasm is a revival of sorts. In the 1930s, you could get phage concoctions to treat everything from dysentery to urinary tract infections to outbreaks of the skin. But then, in the 1940s, penicillin hit the market, and antibiotics became the rage. Eastern European researchers continued to use phages as treatment, but such Soviet science was viewed with suspicion back in the United States.

It was only with the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that Western interest in these viruses-as-treatments began to brew again. Even so, in 2017, many still considered the idea esoteric at best. That was part of the holdup for Smith. There was no established method for finding, purifying, and delivering the viruses her doctors hoped might save her life. When her father reached out to scientists who had a bit of experience with phage therapy, all they could do was send out a frantic flurry of emails and tweets.

Smiths story helped change that. Shed been born with cystic fibrosis, a genetic illness that fills the lungs with a particularly gluey sort of mucus. Not only does that make it hard to breathe it also acts as a cushy home for bacteria. When two friends whod met through swing dancing one a grad student, the other a tech consultant read about Smiths desperate attempt to find a virus that would beat back the bacteria within her, they created an online phage directory to help speed things up. Then, in 2018, the University of California, San Diego, established the first phage therapy center in the U.S.

Yet for a patient with Burkholderia cepacia the kind of bacterial infection that Smith had finding the right phage in time is hardly a shoo-in. Partially thats because its not the most common superbug infection, even among cystic fibrosis patients, so not all that many researchers are working on treating it with phage therapy. But its also because B. cepacia is an especially tricky type of bacteria to phage-hunt for. Some phages the ones that are easiest to use as therapies enter a superbug, replicate like crazy, and cause the host to explode. Others, though, simply integrate peaceably into the bacterial genome. And the phages discovered for B. cepacia often fall in the peaceful-coexistence camp. Plus, for other kinds of bacteria Pseudomonas, say, or Klebsiella a phage might be active against a large swathe of strains; for Burkholderia, Hazan explained, the viruses are choosier.

Thats where his lab comes in. The teams hope is to build up a library of B. cecpacia-killing phages that can be used in cocktails whenever a case like Smiths pops up. To do that, the scientists have collected all sorts of substances most people would rather not deal with. They take the used saliva, urine, and fecal samples from hospitals. Instead of discarding them, we take them and search for phages, Hazan explained. Were looking in water bodies, small lakes. After the rain, in puddles. Whenever a student goes on vacation we ask him, Bring some samples of soil or water or whatever!

They also regularly take wastewater from West Jerusalems sewage treatment plant, which is where the phage active against Smiths bacteria came from. Everybody complains about the smell, but we are finding gold in that sewage, Hazan added.

Three Hebrew University students Chani Rakov, Ortal Yerushalmy, and Leron Khalifa first isolated the phage in question this past December. When they put it into a Petri dish covered in the kind of bacteria that had been collected from Smiths lungs, it began to create clear spots where the superbug was dying off. The decision was unanimous that it should be named BCMallory1, for the initials of the bacteria its active against, and the name of the person who helped inspire the search.

When she heard the news, Smiths mother began to cry. To her, it meant that other families might not have to live through what she did. Its a very bittersweet feeling, said Diane Shader Smith. You know the suffering, and you dont want anyone to suffer, but also you think, Mallory could have lived.

Because bacteria often develop resistance to phages as well, many researchers think its best to deliver a cocktail of phages alongside antibiotics, and Hazan plans to keep searching. Hes also thinking about the possibility of genetically engineering some of the phages his team finds, to make them safer or more efficient bacteria-killers.

We dont want to have another Mallory Smith, said Steffanie Strathdee, co-director of the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, at University of California, San Diego, and co-author of The Perfect Predator, a book about how she saved her husbands life through a similar phage hunt in 2016. Smiths case still haunts her, she said: I think about her every day. We came so close to saving her life.

See more here:
Superbug treatment named for patient who inspired its discovery - STAT

With Trumps trial in the Senate going on, it feels like a good time to talk about random news items. I want to distract mystelf from President Trumps pending acquittal.

I spelled mystelf correctly. Mystelf is a legitimate word I made up yesterday to mean my stupid self.

The first news item that caught my eye was about scientists discovery that tardigrades arent as indestructible as weve been told. Tardigrades are those little microscopic animals also called water-bears who look kind of cute with pudgy feet and can survive all kinds of cold. They can survive a drought. Theyve even been subjected to the vacuum of space and lived and shown no ill effects.

But nobody until now, apparently, thought of cooking them. Well, they dont look yummy, Ill admit.

Still, youd think in all this time, someone would have wondered how well theyd do in the noonday sun on a Moroccan summer day. It turns out they cant take it.

Good news for me. The research shows that my stupid body temperature is just the right amount of heat to kill off any tardigrades that find their way deep inside me. It would only take a week or two. Excellent. I had wondered if a tardigrade infestation was possible. I can now relax, safe knowing they could only live skin-deep in me.

My favorite government agency is DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency solicits and supports research of all sorts, but usually theyre looking for a defense angle. The reason we can use the internet is because of a project of theirs back when the agency was called ARPA. What was then called the ARPA-net was thought a great system for communication that could function even during a nuclear attack. That was before Russian hackers, malware, denial of service attacks, etc.

Whenever youre bored and fed up with looking at cute cat videos, go to the DARPA website, click the Our Research link and browse all the projects they have going. It gets wild.

You may know some of them. Boston Dynamic Robots came out of one of their projects: robots that walk and run on all fours and can get back up when theyre down. DARPA has pushed a lot of Star Wars-ish projects like that.

Lately theres been a rash of projects involving genetic modification of plants and animals for defense purposes. One of them is called the APT project. APT stands for Advanced Plant Technologies. The goal of the project is to genetically engineer a variety of plants that can be used as sensors to detect chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) threats to protect deployed troops and the homeland. See why I like reading these things? Troops and the homeland. Sheer poetry.

Another one of these is the ELM project (yes, they all get acronyms like that its so precious): Engineered Living Materials. This week there was news about the engineering of a kind of living brick. Its a brick you can use like any brick: You can throw it at someones head or use it as a paperweight, but its ingredients include a kind of genetically modified bacteria. The bricks are alive.When you need more bricks, you can break them up and the pieces will grow new bricks. You do have to feed and water them. They eat sand and a certain kind of gelatin, and guzzle CO2. I want one for a pet. I will call her Cyan.

The final news item that caught my eye skirted dangerously close to the Senate trial. I almost looked away in horror when I saw it concerned John Roberts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who is now presiding over the trial. But it wasnt about that. It was about John Roberts dropping the phrase OK, Boomer in arguments in an age discrimination case before the court.

He was wondering whether saying OK, Boomer to a job applicant in an interview could be evidence for age discrimination later if the applicant gets turned down.

Im glad its getting unpopular to be a Baby Boomer. One of the things Ive hated all my life is there have always been too many of us. Every other generation gets assigned about 10 years. Boomers got 1945 to 1964 20 years. Thats not right. All you people born 1955 to 1964 (that includes John Roberts), I now proclaim you the After-Shock Generation.

Dr. Wes Browning is a one time math professor who has experienced homelessness several times. He supplied the art for the first cover of Real Change in November of 1994 and has been involved with the organization ever since. This is his weekly column,Adventures in Irony, a dry verbal romp of the absurd. He can be reached at drwes (at) realchangenews (dot) org

Read the fullJan. 22-28 issue.

2020Real Change. All rights reserved.Real Change is a non-profit organization advocating for economic, social and racial justice since 1994.Learn moreabout Real Change anddonate nowto support independent, award-winning journalism.

Originally posted here:
You can send your tardigrades to space and back, but don't eat one. Got that, boomer? - Real Change News

(Inside Science) -- Castles made of sand could, with the help of bacteria, grow copies of themselves and become as strong as the cement that commonly holds bricks together, a new study suggests.

Such living materials could one day help people colonize Mars, scientists added.

After water, concrete is the most used material on Earth, at a rate of about 3 metric tons used per year for every person in the world. Cement, the primary component of concrete, is the oldest artificial construction material, dating back to the Roman Empire.

Cement and concrete have changed little as technology for more than a century. Now scientists are seeking inspiration from natural processes, such as the way colonies of coral polyps build reefs.

"We want to blur the boundaries between the natural world and the built environment, between what is nonliving and what is living, and create a material that displays both structural and biological functions," said materials scientist Wil Srubar, who heads the Living Materials Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The researchers started with sand, gelatin and a kind of photosynthetic bacteria known asSynechococcusthat is widespread in ocean surface waters. The gelatin retained moisture and nutrients for the bacteria to proliferate and mineralize calcium carbonate in a way that is similar to how seashells form.

In experiments, the resulting material was roughly as strong as typical cement-based mortars.

"I have a small cube of the material on my desk that is 2 inches across that I can stand on," Srubar said.

The material not only is alive, but can reproduce. When researchers halve one of the bricks, the bacteria can help grow those halves into two complete bricks when supplied with extra sand and gelatin. Instead of manufacturing bricks one by one, the researchers showed they could grow up to eight bricks from one.

"Conventional manufacturing approaches make one widget at a time," Srubar said. "By using one brick to grow two bricks, and then four, and then so on, we can explore the idea of exponential manufacturing of building materials. Given that time is money, I think anyone involved in manufacturing would find speeding up manufacturing time very interesting."

Previous research used bacteria to repair cracks in concrete and oil and gas wells by mineralizing calcium carbonate. However, such work typically used microbes that fare very poorly in typical materials used like cement, which are highly acidic -- only 0.1 percent to 0.4 percent of such bacteria survived after 30 days. In contrast, in this new work, 9% to 14 percent of the bacteria remained viable after 30 days assuming at least 50 percent humidity was maintained.

One challenge the scientists face is that the material needs to get completely dried out to reach its maximum strength, but such drying stresses out the bacteria. To help keep the microbes alive, the researchers currently have to control the humidity surrounding the material.

"We're looking to create a desiccation-tolerant strain of bacteria so that we can get full structural capacity while also enhancing microbial viability in super-dry conditions," Srubar said.

All in all, "we're particularly excited about the possibilities of this material technology in austere environments with limited resources," Srubar said. "If you have microorganisms that can grow structural materials in remote places, that could help build everything from a military installation to human settlements on other planets."

Srubar said the current research acts as a proof of concept for the stronger compounds that could be made with the technique.

Ultimately the scientists envision using microbes that not only help build materials but impart structures with extra biological functions.

"You can imagine bacteria that provide materials with self-healing capabilities, or can sense and respond to toxins in the air, or can interact with the environment in other ways," Srubar said. "The sky's the limit with creativity."

"I find it exciting that this new work develops materials that are truly living, in that the microorganisms incorporated into their materials survived at very high rates over time periods of weeks," said Anne Meyer, a synthetic biologist at the University of Rochester in New York, who did not take part in this research. "Creating a truly living material allows the possibility of using genetic engineering techniques to add additional behaviors to the microbes living within the material. Could you incorporate a microbe that could respond to environmental cues to change the toughness or stiffness of the bacteria?"

She added that it might be possible to combine the new research with work from her lab that uses 3D printers to build shapes from bacteria.

The scientists detailedtheir findingsonline Jan. 15 in the journalMatter.

[This article originally appeared on Inside Science. Read the original here.]

Continue reading here:
This Regenerative Building Material is Made From Sand and Bacteria - Discover Magazine

A Trillion ToxicGallons

Oil and gas wells pump out nearly a trillion gallons of wastewater a year, Rolling Stone reported. That's literally a river of waste enough to replace all the water flowing from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two and a half days.

Much of that wastewater, often referred to by the industry as "brine," carries high levels, not of familiar table salt, but of corrosive salts found deep below the Earth's surface, as well as toxic compounds and carcinogens.

That water can also carry serious amounts of radioactive materials. The Rolling Stone report, labeled "sobering" by the Poynter Institute, described levels of radium as high as 28,500 picocuries per liter in brine from the Marcellus Shale, underlying Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and West Virginia, levels hundreds of times as much as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would allow in industrial discharges from other industries.

The oil and gas industry's waste, however, isn't regulated like most other industry's wastes, slipping instead through loopholes carved out in the nation's cornerstone environmental laws, including exemptions for the industry in federal laws covering hazardous waste.

"If I had a beaker of that on my desk and accidentally dropped it on the floor, they would shut the place down," Yuri Gorby, a microbiologist who'd studied radioactive materials at the U.S. Geological Survey and Department of Energy, told the magazine. "And if I dumped it down the sink, I could go to jail."

Excerpt from a 1982 report prepared for the American Petroleum Institute and titled "An Analysis of the Impact of the Regulation of 'Radionuclides' as a Hazardous Air Pollutant on the Petroleum Industry."

API's report focused on the possibility that the federal government might step in and regulate those radioactive materials under the Clean Air Act or under federal Superfund laws.

"Depending on the mode of definition," the report adds, "very small quantities of petroleum products could easily contain reportable quantities of [radioactive materials]." A chart lists amounts as small as a half a barrel of crude oil or 17 cubic feet of natural gas as containing "one reportable quantity of uranium or radon" under the most restrictive definition.

The report labels uranium "a somewhat different dilemma" than radon gas. "We estimated earlier in this paper that significant quantities of uranium potentially enter our refineries via crude oil," the report continues. "Little is known of its fate, however."

"Since the law of conservation of matter must apply, it can only end up in the product, the process waste, remain in the process equipment, or escape into the environment," the report notes, calling for more study, particularly of the industry's refining equipment and waste.

1982 API Analysis of Radionuclides in Oil and Gas Industry (PDF)
1982 API Analysis of Radionuclides in Oil and Gas Industry (Text)

Some of the report's most stark language warned about the possibility of federal regulation of the industry's radioactive wastes.

"It is concluded that the regulation of radionuclides could impose a severe burden on API member companies," the report says, "and it would be prudent to monitor closely both regulatory actions."

API spokesperson Reid Porter provided to DeSmog the group's response to the Rolling Stone investigation.

"We take each report of safety or health issues related to energy development very seriously," Porter said. "Nothing is more important than the health and safety of our workers, the local environment, and the communities where we live, operate, and raise families. Natural gas and oil companies meet or exceed strict federal and state regulations and also undergo regular inspections to ensure that all materials are managed, stored, transported, and disposed of safely. Through regular monitoring, ongoing testing, and strict handling protocols, industry operations are guided by internationally recognized standards and best practices to provide for safe working environments and public safety."

API also pointed to a one-page document titled "NORM [naturally occurring radioactive materials] in the Oil and Natural Gas Industry." As of publication time, API had not responded to questions from DeSmog regarding the 1982 report.

10 Years Later, Hazards 'Widespread'; 20 Years Later, Workers Sue OverCancers

Over a decade later, problems persisted, other documents indicate. "Contamination of oil and gas facilities with naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) is widespread," a 1993 paper published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers warned. "Some contamination may be sufficiently severe that maintenance and other personnel may be exposed to hazardous concentration."

Nonetheless, the paper focused on the potential for "over-regulation."

"Where possible, industry input should be directed to minimize an over-regulation of NORM contamination in the industry," author Peter Gray, an expert on radioactivity who formerly worked for Phillips Petroleum Co., wrote. He added that concentrations of radioactive contamination at the time were "relatively low and do not usually present a health hazard to the public or to most personnel in the industry," but added that some facilities "may be hazardous to maintenance personnel in particular."

Peter Gray NORM Contamination in the Petroleum Industry, 1993 Society of Petroleum Engineers (PDF)
Peter Gray NORM Contamination in the Petroleum Industry, 1993 Society of Petroleum Engineers (Text)

The 1993 paper notes that some oil-producing states had passed or were considering passing laws to protect against the industry's radioactive wastes, noting in particular that Louisiana and Mississippi had regulations in effect, and that Louisiana had required "radiation surveys of every petroleum facility in the state."

But state and federal regulators largely failed to act, Rolling Stone found. "Of 21 significant oil-and-gas-producing states, only five have provisions addressing workers, and just three include protections for the public, according to research by [Elizabeth Ann Glass] Geltman, the public-health expert," the magazine reported. "Much of the legislation that does exist seems hardly sufficient."

In documents dated nearly two decades later, from a 2011 lawsuit brought by more than 30 Louisiana oilfield workers who'd developed cancer, plaintiff's experts described as resulting from their exposure to radioactive materials at work.

The 2013 plaintiff's expert report describes in detail how jobs like roustabout, roughneck, and derrickman can expose workers to radioactive materials, including a sludge where radioactive elements concentrate that collects inside pipes and so-called "pipe scale," or crusty deposits that also attract radioactive materials. The case ended in October 2016, following a long string of settlements on unspecified terms by individual plaintiffs in the case, public court records show.

OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURES to RADIOACTIVE SCALE and SLUDGE Coleman Et Al v H C (PDF)
OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURES to RADIOACTIVE SCALE and SLUDGE Coleman Et Al v H C (Text)

Tracking theTrucks

Nobel's Rolling Stone expos depicts radioactive drilling waste sloshing into a striking array of corners.

For example, to keep dust down, the "brine" can be spread on roads, like a stretch in Pennsylvania where Nobel describes a group of Amish girls strolling barefoot. Nobel adds that contractors pick up waste directly from the wellhead and that in 2016 alone, more than 10.5 million gallons were sprayed on roads in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania.

The waste has also been sold at Lowe's, bottled as "AquaSalina" and marketed as a pet-safe way to fight ice and salt, though an Ohio state lab found it contains radium at more than 40 times the levels the Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows in discharge from industry. And the radium-laced waste is spilled from trucks transporting it, in potential what the article indicates may be a violation of federal law.

One brine truck driver, identified only as a man named Peter from Ohio, started taking his own samples after being told by another worker with a radiation detector that he'd been hauling "one of the 'hottest loads' he'd ever seen," Rolling Stone reports. "A lot of guys are coming up with cancer, or sores and skin lesions that take months to heal," Peter told the magazine. Tests by a university lab found radium levels as high as 8,500 picocuries per liter, the article adds.

One expert, scientist Marvin Reisnikoff, who'd served as one of the plaintiff's experts in the lawsuit brought by the Louisiana oilfield workers and co-authored the 2013 report, told Rolling Stone that a standard brine truck rolling through Pennsylvania might be carrying radioactive wastewater at levels a thousand times higher than those allowed under federal Department of Transportation (DOT) limits. But, a DOT spokesperson told Rolling Stone, federal regulators rely heavily on industry self-reporting, and the rules seem generally unenforced.

Environmental groups immediately called for congressional hearings into the drilling industry's radioactive wastes.

"This alarming report brings into stark relief what we already knew to be true," Food & Water Watch Policy Director Mitch Jones said in a statement calling for a congressional investigation, "that highly toxic and radioactive waste generated by fossil fuel drilling and fracking cannot be stored or disposed of safely, and in fact is often being intentionally dispersed in our communities."

"It is imperative that Congress hold hearings soon to examine and expose the full extent of the threat oil and gas waste poses to families and workers throughout America," he added, "and take urgent action to halt fracking and the legal and illegal dispersal of the waste currently taking place."

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Scientists Combine AI With Biology to Create Xenobots, the World's First 'Living Robots' - EcoWatch

A nearly invisible bite delivered by a tiny mosquito has the capacity to trigger the fear of dengue in a human being who is millions of times larger than the insect. Such is the deadliness of the disease. However, one may not have to be harrowed by the fear of contracting the disease anymore.

In an effort to combat the spread of dengue, and counter the virus causing it, scientists at CSIRO, and the University of California San Diego have created a breed of genetically modified mosquito that is resistant to spreading all the four serotypes of the disease.

Talking about the research that is the first engineered approach towards targeting all the four serotypes, Dr Prasad Paradkar, senior research scientist, said in a statement, "In this study we used recent advances in genetic engineering technologies to successfully genetically modify a mosquito, the Aedes aegypti, with reduced ability to acquire and transmit the dengue virus."

Why genetically engineer a mosquito?

Over 390 million people are infected with dengue every year. It is caused by the Dengue virusDENV. Mosquitoes are the only known vectors carrying the disease, only other exception being transmission from mother to foetus. The virus has four serotypes: DENV1, DENV2, DENV3 and DENV4. Therefore, an individual can contract the disease four times due to the prevalence of four distinct strains.

Over half of the world population is at the risk of infection, and the rate of infection has seen an alarming rise over the years. Globally, nearly be $40 billion are lost as a result of dengue every year. This the primary motivation behind the development of the new mosquito, as a resistant vector will be unable to carry the virus.

"Mosquito-transmitted viruses are expected to climb over the coming years, which is why CSIRO is focussed on developing new ways to help solve this global challenge," said Paradkar.

Unlike previous attempts at synthetically engineering mosquitoes that were limited by the ability to target only one or two of the major serotypes, this breed of mosquito has shown the ability to resist all the four. As the scientists point out, this presents the future potential to fight all forms of mosquito-borne illnesses.

"This breakthrough work also has the potential to have broader impacts on controlling other mosquito-transmitted viruses," said Omar Akbari, co-author of the study.

Akbari also added that the research is in the preliminary stages of testing procedures to simultaneously negate mosquitoes against dengue and an array of mosquito-borne viruses such as chikungunya, Zika, and yellow fever.

The disease is typically characterised by symptoms such as severe fever, muscle aches, and headaches. More severe forms of the disease can cause shock, vomiting, haemorrhage, and sometimes, death.

There is no known treatment for specific neutralisation of the disease. Also, there are no vaccinations available against the disease. Treatment includes prescription of drugs such as acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, to soothe the pain. Hydration through intake of fluids and occasionally intravenously is another remedy.

Stressing on this immediate need for a cure, Paradkar concluded, "There is a pressing global demand for effective strategies to control the mosquitoes that spread the dengue virus, as there are currently no known treatments and the vaccine that is available is only partially effective."

Originally posted here:
Dengue breakthrough: Scientists develop genetically engineered mosquito to combat the disease - International Business Times, Singapore Edition

There are many pressing areas in need of fresh theological thinking in light of a rapidly changing world. The redefinition of family, the nature of sexual identity, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering

and the digital church.

One of the more pressing concerns will be how much tech can and should be used and how in light of an orthodox and robust ecclesiology. Is someone considered attending if its through an internet connection and a virtual reality (VR) headset? Is it appropriate to perform a digital baptism where avatars are immersed in water? What of a completely computer-generated church using VR and augmented reality (AR)? Which, I might add, already exists.

On the most basic of levels, what is to be thought when people participate through an online service but consider themselves a part of a churchthe so-called bedside Baptists and pillow Presbyterians? Or using apps to attend digital events and enter into corporate prayer through emojis and avatars?

There will be a knee-jerk reaction against such innovations, but there can be little doubt that a new way of doing and being church is being forged through technological innovation and an increasingly digital world. In other words, instead of a knee-jerk negative reaction out of distaste or stylistic preference, it demands vigorous theological reflection that takes the digital revolution seriously.

A single blog is grossly insufficient to tackle this task, but perhaps I could suggest one way of thinking about one of the many questions being raised: If someone is involved in an online campus, should they be encouraged to participate in the Lords Supper as they watch?

Again, this is not about a full-blown theology of the online church, much less the only kind of question that can be raised. So lets just treat it as a sample question in need of theological reflection in light of the digital revolution.

My own conclusion? A qualified yes.

When I was in seminary and pastor of a county-seat First Baptist Church, one of the more meaningful ministries of the deacons was taking communion to shut-ins (I dont know whether shut-ins is still the correct term, but that is what we called them.). We offered communion, or the Lords Supper, once a month. We had members of the church who were physically unable to attendthey were in the hospital, in a nursing home, or in their own homes, but not able to physically leave.

So on Sunday afternoons, following the Sunday morning services that we had communion, the deacons of the church fanned out across our little town and brought a communion kit with bread and grape juice to those people so they could also partake.

The deacons spent a few minutes talking with them, read scripture and prayed, reminded them of the churchs love and concern for them, and then shared the bread and the juice with them. It was beautiful and so much the epitome of the church and the sacrament.

And theologically, what could possibly be the problem? They were members/attenders of the church, unable to physically attend and we, as the church, went to them on the days we celebrated communion to include them in the spirit of community and joint celebration of the sacrament.

Fast forward.

Youre celebrating communion as a church in the 2020s, and you have people unable to attend in person who are joining you online. They may be in a hospital, in a nursing home, a shut-in, traveling on business in a hotel room, on vacation and watching as a family, or living in a place where they have no church home and the online service has been their lifelinebecoming the only church home they are able to have.

What do you do?

Could you use the same theological and ecclesiastical reasoning that was applied by my former church?

What if an online campus pastor were to say, For those of you joining us online who cannot be with us physically, go get a bit of bread and some juice or wine, and when we partake as a church, join us as part of that community.

Why is that different from deacons taking it to them?

Today its just the internet taking it to them and they self-serve the elements. Its still done in full honor of the sacrament, under the leadership of pastors, under the authority of the church and in the spirit of community.

So are there limits to online participation in such things as the sacraments? I would argue that there are. Take, for example, baptism. Do we say, For those of you watching online, feel free to fill your bathtub and baptize yourself as we perform the sacrament of baptism as part of this service?

Heavens, no. Why? Because the goal is to think about each and every question being raised by the digital revolution and the online church both biblically and theologically. And the nature of the sacrament of baptism is that it is meant to be a public profession of faith. That means in front of other people. Its for this same reason that you cannot marry yourself. When a couple marries they make public vows, and it is the public nature of the vows that matters.

Such conclusions may not satisfy everyone, nor do they reflect the way to think theologically about all aspects of the online church. Each will bring its own set of unique theological challenges. But perhaps this shows how we are going to have to reflect, and reflect deeply, about the digital world and the churchs operation in that digital world.

These three things I know: We cannot bury our head in the sand as if there are no new questions being posed to the doctrine of the church (there are); we cannot march blindly forward into the digital world as if theology doesnt matter (it does); and we cannot restrain all ecclesiastical innovation as if there hasnt been a digital revolution

(because there has).

James Emery White

Sources

Dalvin Brown, Online Church: Ministries Use VR, Apps to Deliver Digital Services and Virtual Baptisms, USA Today, December 27, 2019, read online.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunct professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president.His newest book,Christianity for People Who Arent Christians: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions, is nowavailable on Amazonor at your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit ChurchAndCulture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world.Follow Dr. White onTwitter,FacebookandInstagram.

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Online Communion? Theology and the Digital Church - Dr. James Emery White Christian Blog - Crosswalk.com