Lifeboat Foundation

DNA writing is an aspect of our industry that I’ve been closely watching for several years because it is a critical component of so many groundbreaking capabilities, from cell and gene therapies to DNA data storage. At the SynBioBeta Conference in 2018, the co-founder of a new startup that was barely more than an idea gave a lightning talk on enzymatic DNA synthesis — and I was so struck by the technology the company was aiming to develop that I listed them as one of four synthetic biology startups to watch in 2019. I watched them, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Ansa Biotechnologies, Inc. — the Emeryville, California-based DNA synthesis startup using enzymes instead of chemicals to write DNA — announced in March the successful de novo synthesis of a 1005-mer, the world’s longest synthetic oligonucleotide, encoding a key part of the AAV vector used for developing gene therapies. And that’s just the beginning. Co-founder Dan Lin-Arlow will be giving another lightning talk at this year’s SynBioBeta Conference in just a few weeks. I caught up with him in the lead up and was truly impressed by what Ansa Biotechnologies has accomplished in just 5 years.

Synthetic DNA is a key enabling technology for engineering biology. For nearly 40 years, synthetic DNA has been produced using phosphoramidite chemistry, which facilitates the sequential addition of new bases to a DNA chain in a simple cyclic reaction. While this process is incredibly efficient and has supported countless innovative breakthroughs (a visit to Twist Bioscience’s website will quickly educate you on exciting advances in drug discovery, infectious disease research, cancer therapeutics, and even agriculture enabled by synthetic DNA) it suffers from two main drawbacks: its reliance on harsh chemicals and its inability to produce long (read: complex) DNA fragments.

Incapable of replicating on their own, viruses must hijack other organisms, like bacteria, to continue their existence. Little wonder, then, that bacteria had to develop ways to fight back.

Among them is CRISPR, a kind of an immune system that keeps DNA records of previous infections and then uses a protein called Cas to attack viruses that show up again. When Cas reaches a targeted virus, it cleaves the viral DNA, protecting the bacteria from infection.

Researchers have harnessed that targeted, DNA-snipping ability as a gene editing tool for all kinds of organisms. CRISPR can now be found in a variety of fields doing a variety of jobs, from helping to fight sickle cell and high cholesterol in humans to gene editing animals and crops. It’s proven to be an amazingly versatile tool.

Researchers have engineered a robotic lionfish with synthetic arteries, similar to those found in a human’s circulatory system. The fish “blood” that runs through it serves as both the robot’s power source and controls its movement. The findings, published Wednesday in Nature, may propel the new wave of soft robots, in which inventors seek to improve lifelike automated machines for human connection.

Synthetic blood vessels in a new robotic fish could improve the technology needed to make lifelike robots run longer.

Human lifespan is intricately connected to the aging process of individual cells, and this means that scientists have spent decades trying to unravel the mysteries of cellular aging and exploring methods to slow down the ticking of the aging clock.

Longevity. Technology: In 2020, a group of researchers from the University of California San Diego identified two distinct mechanisms of cellular aging and genetically manipulated them to extend cell lifespan [1]. Now, their research has progressed to employ synthetic biology and gene circuits to delay the deterioration associated with cellular aging [2]. The team’s innovative approach could revolutionize scientific methods of aging prevention and contribute to reprogramming aging pathways in various human cell types.

Publishing in Science, the researchers describe how cells in yeast, plants, animals and humans all contain gene regulatory circuits responsible for several physiological functions, including aging. These gene circuits, akin to electric circuits controlling household devices, can operate in different ways, and the UC San Diego team discovered that cells don’t necessarily age the same way – it all depends on their genetic material and environment. The researchers found that cells can age either through DNA stability decline or mitochondrial decline.

Engineering organs to replace damaged hearts or kidneys in the human body may seem like something out of a sci-fi movie, but the building blocks for this technology are already in place. In the burgeoning field of tissue engineering, live cells grow in artificial scaffolds to form biological tissue. But to evaluate how successfully the cells develop into tissue, researchers need a reliable method to monitor the cells as they move and multiply.

Now, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a noninvasive method to count the live cells in a three-dimensional (3D) scaffold. The real-time technique images millimeter-scale regions to assess the viability of the cells and how the cells are distributed within the scaffold—an important capability for researchers who manufacture complex biological tissues from simple materials such as living cells.

Their findings have been published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A.

The WHO says covid is no longer an emergency, yet does not say where covid originated from. No one knows. What I know is that covid is a cute name for SARS/Coronavirus. Something made in a lab at UNC Chapel Hill with Ralph Baric and his collegue from Wuhan China which he shared his gain of function research with. However the Nature article published in 2015 has this disclaimer, yet there is no animal origin after more than 3 years. So what do we believe?

“30 March 2020 Editors’ note, March 2020: We are aware that this article is being used as the basis for unverified theories that the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19 was engineered. There is no evidence that this is true; scientists believe that an animal is the most likely source of the coronavirus.”

The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV. ACE2 🤔

Continue reading “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence Medicine” »

Neurotech will bring many amazing positive changes to the world, such as treating ailments like blindness, depression, and epilepsy, giving us superhuman sensory capabilities that allow us to understand the world in new ways, accelerating our ability to cognitively process information, and more. But in an increasingly connected society, neuroprivacy will represent a crucial concern of the future. We must carefully devise legal protections against misuse of “mind reading” technology as well as heavily invest in “neurocybersecurity” R&D to prevent violation of people’s inner thoughts and feelings by authorities and malignant hackers. We can capitalize on the advantages, but we must do establish safety mechanisms as these technologies mature. #neurotechnology #neuroscience #neurotech #computationalbiology #future #brain

Determining how the brain creates meaning from language is enormously difficult, says Francisco Pereira, a neuroscientist at the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “It’s impressive to see someone pull it off.”‘

‘Wake-up call’

Continue reading “Mind-reading machines are here: is it time to worry?” »

A solar-powered motorhome, shaped like a huge elongated teardrop, silently rolled into Madrid on Friday as part of a month-long journey from the Netherlands to southern Spain to highlight more sustainable modes of transport.

Engineering students at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands created the blue and white vehicle, named Stella Vita – Latin for “star” and “life” – to inspire car makers and politicians to accelerate the transition toward green energy.

Continue reading “This solar-powered motorhome was designed by students” »

In a recent study published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, researchers hypothesized that pacemaker-like activity of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) resulted in engraftment arrhythmias (EAs), which hampers the clinical use of cell-based therapy using hPSC-CMs for treatment of myocardial infarction (MI).

Study: Gene editing to prevent ventricular arrhythmias associated with cardiomyocyte cell therapy. Image Credit: FrentaN / Shutterstock.