Tomorrow is Today

MIT Engineers Use Bacteria to Compute Logarithms

MIT engineers have transformed bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts.

Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing genetic “parts,” or engineered genes, in novel ways.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/cells-can-be-living-calculators

(via laboratoryequipment, ht cyborgorgy)

Bioengineered Nano-Jellyfish Captures Cancer Cells in the Bloodstream

[The device is] actually a microfluidic chip that’s been coated with long strands of DNA, which dangle down into the bloodstream and bind to any cancerous proteins floating past — directly imitating the way a jellyfish scoops up grub in the ocean.

If required, the chip can release these cells unharmed for later inspection. According to the chip’s designers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the catch-and-release mechanism can be put to both diagnostic and therapeutic use in the fight against Big C, and can also be used to isolate good things, like fetal cells. The next step will be to test the device on humans…

(via Jellyfish-mimicking device could snatch cancer cells right out of the bloodstream - Engadget)

Researchers Developing 3D Printer for DNA, Will Print Viruses For Use In Vaccines

What could possibly go wrong?

Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted.

“It’s a 3-D printer for DNA, a 3-D printer for life,” Venter said at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York City, Wired Science reports. The geneticist and his team of scientists are already testing out a version of his digital biological converter, or “teleporter.”

(via Craig Venter imagines a world with printable life forms | KurzweilAI)

Researchers Create Both Egg and Sperm Cells from Stem Cells in Mice

Both egg and sperm cells start life as primordial germ cells (PGCs). Last year, Katsuhiko Hayashi and his colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan found they could generate PGC-like cells from either mouse embryonic stem cells or body cells that can turn into stem cells – known as induced pluripotent stem cells or iPSCs.

What’s more, the team managed to coax these PGC-like cells into becoming sperm.

Now Hayashi and his colleagues have created eggs from the PGC-like cells.

They started with embryonic stem cells and iPSCs taken from a female mouse embryo. In separate experiments, the team coaxed each type of stem cell to form PGC-like cells. When these cells were surrounded by ovary cells, also taken from a mouse embryo, they formed immature egg cells. The team implanted these young egg cells into the ovaries of adult mice.

Four weeks later, when Hayashi’s team removed the ovaries, they found the cells had developed into mature eggs. When these eggs were fertilised with sperm and implanted into other mice, they were able to form embryos that developed into healthy mouse pups.

…Once the wrinkles have been ironed out, it would be possible, in theory, to fertilise stem-cell-derived eggs with stem-cell-derived sperm, Telfer says. “If you took the stem cells from the same individual you could avoid sexual reproduction.”

(via Mouse eggs created from stem cells for the first time - life - 04 October 2012 - New Scientist)

BioEngineering Microbes to Manufacture Raw Materials for Space Settlement

Pioneering settlers on a distant world will require food, fuel and shelter if they are to survive, but bringing bulky supplies from Earth is far too costly.

Synthetic biology offers another option. Microbes weigh precious little, and would take up next to no space on a spacecraft, but once the mission lands - on Mars, say - they could multiply by feeding on the materials available there.

The products of their labour could provide the building blocks essential for a human settlement…

A team from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Stanford University in California showed how inserting genetic machinery from E. coli makes Anabaena [an ancient Cyanobacterium] excrete more of its energy as sugar. The team even showed that they could support colonies of other bacteria on the sugar. In theory, such microbial colonies could make oil, plastics or fuel for the astronauts.

The team…has also come up with a way to supply human settlers on Mars with bricks and mortar. They began with a bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii, which, unusually, breaks down urea - the principle waste product in urine - and excretes ammonium. This makes the local environment alkaline enough for calcium carbonate cements to form.

The idea is that the waste produced by astronauts could feed the microbes. The microbes, in turn, would help cement together fine rocky material on a planet’s surface to create bricks.

(via Build a Mars base with a box of engineered bugs - space - 04 October 2012 - New Scientist)

Viral Therapy Converts Brain’s Structural Cells into Neurons

Researchers have discovered a way to generate new human neurons from pericyte cells, providing a possible new approach to cell-based therapy of neurodegenerative diseases, said Benedikt Berninger of the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

“The ultimate goal is to induce such conversion within the brain itself to provide a novel strategy for repairing the injured or diseased brain.”

Pericytes keep the blood-brain barrier intact and participate in wound healing in other parts of the body. They are cultured in vitro and reprogrammed into neuronal cells by retrovirus-mediated co-expression of the gene transcription factors Sox2 and Mash1.

The newly converted neurons can produce electrical signals and reach out to other neurons, providing evidence that the converted cells could integrate into neural networks.

(via Neurons created from other brain cells to treat neurodegenerative diseases | KurzweilAI)

Viral Gene Therapy Repairs Damaged Neurons in Mice, Restores Sense of Smell

To re-engineer the mice, scientists led by Jeffrey Martens programmed a cold virus with normal IFT88 genes and infected the animals with it. The virus did what viruses do, invading the mouse’s cells and replicating. This inserted the new DNA sequence into the mice, which in turn caused the cilia to re-grow from the ends of the olfactory neuron. This had a notable effect on the appetites of the mice — after just two weeks, the mice increased their body weight by 60 percent. The scientists put some smelly substances in front of the animals and noticed their neurons were firing as they should. “At the molecular level, function that had been absent was restored,” Martens said in a news release.

(via Viral Gene Therapy Gives Non-Smelling Mice the Ability to Smell | Popular Science)

Analysis: As Observation-Based Biology Evolves Into Actionable Biotechnology, It Enters The Realm Of Politics

Biology is an especially volatile source of sensitivities. The old biology was mainly observational, but the new biology, or biotechnology - including stem cells, embryo research, synthetic biology and reproductive technology - has unprecedented power to change basic life processes.

Such sensitivities are understandable. People rightly feel that high stakes are involved when science challenges our customary and largely workable moral framework.

[T]here is, of course, hyperbole associated with biotech. But even if only some of the predictions bear fruit, the new biology will challenge everything in its path, including our understanding of ourselves, our relationship with the world, our social arrangements and values and our political systems.

The new biology is thus becoming part of political life. Candidates for national political office need to have staked out positions on these issues.

While I disagreed vehemently with President Bush’s policies on embryonic stem cells at the time they were enacted, I have to wonder if some of the progress that has been made in creating stem cells from skin and blood would have been made if embryonic stem cells were plentiful…

(via Biotech is thrusting us into new political territory - opinion - 28 August 2012 - New Scientist)

Starbucks Tests Biorefinery That Uses Fungus and Bacteria to Turn Coffee Grounds and Stale Pastry Into Plastic

The material in question is a basic sugar compound called succinic acid, which can be used as a sweetener and also as a feedstock for products like bio-plastics.

The biorefinery would work by blending pastries and other food waste with some fungi, which excrete enzymes to break down the carbohydrates in the food. The mixture then goes into a fermenting vat where bacteria decompose the mixture into succinic acid. This material can then be further refined into a variety of products, according to ACS.

Plenty of other food items, notably corn, are already refined into biodegradable plastics, fuel and other materials. But they’re largely the result of crops grown and harvested for the purpose of not being eaten. This method would use food that was originally intended to be food, and turn it into cleaning products or something else.

(via In Hong Kong, Starbucks Biorefinery Turns Stale Pastry and Coffee Grounds Into Plastic | Popular Science)