Archive for the ‘bioengineering’ category: Page 135
Jul 19, 2019
Scientists Print Magnetic Liquid Droplets
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, robotics/AI
Scientists at Berkeley Lab have made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic, opening the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter. Their findings could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings. (Video credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab; footage of droplets courtesy of Xubo Liu and Tom Russell/Berkeley Lab)
Jul 18, 2019
Viewpoint: Why CRISPR-edited crops should be allowed in organic agriculture
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, food, genetics, health
A University of California, Berkeley professor stands at the front of the room, delivering her invited talk about the potential of genetic engineering. Her audience, full of organic farming advocates, listens uneasily. She notices a man get up from his seat and move toward the front of the room. Confused, the speaker pauses mid-sentence as she watches him bend over, reach for the power cord, and unplug the projector. The room darkens and silence falls. So much for listening to the ideas of others.
Many organic advocates claim that genetically engineered crops are harmful to human health, the environment, and the farmers who work with them. Biotechnology advocates fire back that genetically engineered crops are safe, reduce insecticide use, and allow farmers in developing countries to produce enough food to feed themselves and their families.
Now, sides are being chosen about whether the new gene editing technology, CRISPR, is really just “GMO 2.0” or a helpful new tool to speed up the plant breeding process. In July, the European Union’s Court of Justice ruled that crops made with CRISPR will be classified as genetically engineered. In the United States, meanwhile, the regulatory system is drawing distinctions between genetic engineering and specific uses of genome editing.
Jul 15, 2019
Bolonkin Explores Ultimate Uploading and Technology
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, nanotechnology, nuclear energy
One of the main speculations about future technology is uploading. This is where our minds are copied in exact detail from our biological physical bodies and then created in artificial bodies. Alexander Bolonkin has posited many kinds of technology over the decades. He has a recent work which is summarized here where he considers that future uploading will mean that we can then use super-technology (nanotechnology, nuclear fusion etc…) to make people into literal gods and supermen. We can use control of matter, energy and information to make what he calls the E-man. Bolonkin then indicates that uploading and creation of minds could be used for the resurrection of long-dead people. This would be where we create the very close approximation of dead people. This would be like using gene editing to turn an African Elephant into a Whooly Mammoth. The vast technological capability would let us actualize what would be a simulation into living entities.
Bolonkin’s Case for E-Man and Resurrection
Alexander Bolonkin looks at methods and possibilities for electronic resurrection of long-dead outstanding personalities. He also considers the principles and organization of the new E-society, its goals and conditions of existence.
Jul 15, 2019
Lipid Nanoparticles Deliver CRISPR/Cas9 into Organs with High Efficiency
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, nanotechnology
Researchers at Tufts University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new lipid nanoparticle which can deliver CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tools into organs with high efficiency, suggesting that the system is promising for clinical applications.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system is currently being investigated as a way to treat a variety of diseases with a genetic basis, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s, and sickle cell disease. While the system has significant promise, there are some issues that need to be resolved before it can be used clinically. CRISPR/Cas9 is a large complex, and it is difficult to get it inside cell nuclei where it is needed for gene editing.
Scientists have tried a variety of delivery vehicles for CRISPR/Cas, which are intended to carry the gene editing tools to their location and help them enter the cell and nucleus. These have included viruses and various types of nanoparticle. However, to date, these have suffered from low efficiency, whereby very little of the delivered agent reaches the cells or organs where it is needed.
Jul 11, 2019
Bioengineered Organs: Could Change be the horizon?
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical
The science of tissue engineering has been constructed on a foundation of a very simple concept; take out the patient’s own cells, grow them in a sterile environment similar to that of a human body and infuse them on a scaffolding material to provide 3-dimensional support. With this recipe, you may have your own laboratory-grown organ ready! It is interesting to note that quite a few patients have experienced the benefits of this fastest growing technology. Could change be on the horizon?
Introduction
Various scientific investigations have been frequently hailed as putting forth a novel yet a breakthrough treatment to change the meaning of lives of many patients, who have been suffering from degenerative diseases since long. However, it should be noted that researchers have to travel a really long road to turn a laboratory invention into viable clinical modalities. In this regard, current medical issues associated with gastrointestinal functioning are marred with various challenges; new solutions to take over the control are sorely needed.
Jul 11, 2019
ideaXme — Eugene Borukhovich, Global Head, Digital Health Incubation (G4A) at Bayer — Ira Pastor
Posted by Ira S. Pastor in categories: aging, big data, bioengineering, biotech/medical, business, computing, drones, electronics, finance, health
Jul 10, 2019
Self-destructing mosquitoes and sterilized rodents: the promise of gene drives
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics
The technical challenges are not as daunting as the social and diplomatic ones, says bioengineer Kevin Esvelt at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge, who was among the first to build a CRISPR-based gene drive. “Technologies like this have real-world consequences for people’s lives that can be nearly immediate.”
Altering the genomes of entire animal populations could help to defeat disease and control pests, but researchers worry about the consequences of unleashing this new technology.
Jul 9, 2019
Neuroscience and artificial intelligence can help improve each other
Posted by Paul Battista in categories: bioengineering, biological, information science, neuroscience, robotics/AI
Despite their names, artificial intelligence technologies and their component systems, such as artificial neural networks, don’t have much to do with real brain science. I’m a professor of bioengineering and neurosciences interested in understanding how the brain works as a system – and how we can use that knowledge to design and engineer new machine learning models.
In recent decades, brain researchers have learned a huge amount about the physical connections in the brain and about how the nervous system routes information and processes it. But there is still a vast amount yet to be discovered.
At the same time, computer algorithms, software and hardware advances have brought machine learning to previously unimagined levels of achievement. I and other researchers in the field, including a number of its leaders, have a growing sense that finding out more about how the brain processes information could help programmers translate the concepts of thinking from the wet and squishy world of biology into all-new forms of machine learning in the digital world.
Jul 8, 2019
This design exchange consortium could accelerate the synthetic biology industry
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: bioengineering, biological, finance
Introducing the SBOL Industrial Consortium
To this end, a group of companies are now launching a pre-competitive consortium to support the industrial application of these technologies. The SBOL Industrial Consortium is a non-profit organization supporting innovation, dissemination, and integration of SBOL standards, tools and practices for practical applications in an industrial environment. The six founding companies of the consortium are Raytheon BBN Technologies, Amyris, Doulix, IDT, Shipyard Toolchains, TeselaGen, and Zymergen, representing a diverse set of interests and business models across the synthetic biology community.
The SBOL Industrial Consortium will facilitate industry-focused development of representational technologies in several ways. The consortium will help coordinate development of standards and tools, both with the academic community and from member to member, in order to ensure that the SBOL standards are well-tuned to support the specific industrial needs of the members of the consortium. Financial support will also be provided by the consortium for selected projects and activities, and for key pieces of community infrastructure.