StemCell Therapy

The pristine X-ray crystallography data gathered by Rosalind Franklin played a crucial role in the discovery of DNAs structure. Yet when the discovery was recognized by the Nobel Committee in 1962, the winners of the Nobel Prize did not include Franklin, who had died in 1958. Only recently has Franklin received some of the recognition that she deserves for her essential contribution to one of the biggest discoveries of the past century.

We still have a lot of work to do, unfortunately, notes Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, an immunologist at Yale School of Medicine and a fierce advocate for women in science. Things have definitely gotten better since [Franklins] days she tells GEN. But we still have a huge disparity in women representationespecially at the senior level. Iwasaki adds that we have to address what she thinks is the root cause of the problemthe academic culture and the unconscious (or conscious) bias against women and people of color that prevents these brilliant people from moving up the academic ladder.

To mark the centenary of Franklins birth, GEN sought to highlight scientists at the forefront of COVID-19 researchsome of the most influential research currently being conductedwho are women. In this article, GEN speaks with researchers who are leading efforts to track SARS-CoV-2 genomes, to uncover host factors influencing COVID-19 progression, to develop saliva-based COVID-19 tests, and more.

Working as a pediatrician in China, Qian Zhang, MD, wanted to understand why some children are more susceptible to infections than others. Children are exposed to hundreds of pathogens every day, Zhang tells GEN, but only a very small proportion get really severe infections. Zhang has been researching differences in susceptibility for the past decade. Notably, she performed postdoctoral work at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) with Helen Su, MD, PhD. Afterward, Zhang became a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University, in the laboratory of Jean-Laurent Casanova, MD, PhD.

Working with patient samples, researchers in the Casanova laboratory look for rare, deleterious mutations that might govern susceptibility to infection. In particular, they look for monogenic variants, where a single defect makes an individual far more susceptible to infection. Zhangs hypothesis for COVID-19 is that patients who are susceptible to less virulent respiratory pathogens will also be susceptible to COVID-19. By taking an unbiased approach, Zhang and colleagues may find genetic factors that have never been identified before.

Normally, Zhang analyzes children because it is in childhood that people usually experience infection for the first time. But COVID-19 is different, she notes, because this infection is the first time for everyone.

Zhang previously led the influenza team in the Casanova laboratory. So, taking on COVID-19 is a natural shift. She adds that many commonalities between the two lung infections have been established, and that many tools developed for flu research can be used in COVID-19 work. Besides, there simply arent any more flu patients coming in.

Zhang asserts that her group, like others, has adapted its work to the pandemic. Investigators normally work on well-defined infections. COVID-19, however, isnt so well defined. Too little about it is known. For example, without key pieces of data such as a fatality rate, investigators who look for genetic lesions may be unaware of the lesions prevalence. We have to change our analysis while the data are coming in, Zhang explains.

How much hesitation did Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, have in moving into COVID-19 research? None, she says. I knew the importance of speed and urgency. She notes that she had learned the value of these attributes from her experience jumping into Zika.

Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology and molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the Yale School of Medicine and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has spent the past few months trying to understand the immune response of COVID-19 patients. Iwasakis laboratory is working to develop real-time analyses of immune markers and cytokines that could sharpen patient assessments and even inform treatmentdecisions.

The biggest surprise, so far, has been the role of interferon (IFN) in this disease, asserts Iwasaki. For other viruses, such as influenza and rhinovirus, type 1 IFN has a protective role for the host. But SARS-CoV-2 seems different. Studies in a mouse model have shown that IFN contributes to the inflammatory response without shutting down viral replication. According to Iwasaki, this is unusual. In other viral infections, IFN can shut down the virus. But Iwasaki thinks that the IFN here is being induced a little bit too late or in too small of an amount.

Iwasakis main goal is to understand what type of immune response confers protective immunity versus the types that lead to disease. Because patients have diverse responses to SARS-CoV-2, the researchers are working to build disease trajectories that reflect patient-specific aspects of the immune responsecytokine or antibody production, T-cell response, viral load, etc. By conducting longitudinal sampling and following patients trajectories, the researchers hope to predict how patients will fare when they are admitted to the hospital. Ideally, she envisions a panel that could be ordered by a physician that would allow patients to be treated with a more personalized medicine approach, based on their immune profiles.

This analysis has never been done so extensively for an infectious disease, Iwasaki asserts, because we never had the urgency to do this for other viral pathogens. In 2020, thankfully, the technology exists to do this type of analysis in real time.

Another area Iwasaki has recently explored is sex differences in SARS-CoV-2 infection. By studying male and female immune responses, her group found one clue as to why males are reportedly more susceptible to COVID-19. In a preprint posted in medRxiv, Iwasaki and colleagues described how they investigated sex differences in viral loads, antibody titers, and cytokines in COVID-19 patients, and how they found that T-cell activation was significantly more robust in women than in men. Men who dont develop a good T-cell response have worse disease outcomes.

Emma B. Hodcroft, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel, recalls agreeing to keep her supervisors project going while he traveled. She was to take charge in early February. Continuity was important because they had just started uploading sequences of SARS-CoV-2 into the online genomics engine Nextstraina collaboration started in 2014 to track flu virus diversity and help predict the next flu strain.

Because Nextstrain has hubs in Europe and the United States, the absence of data uploads at the University of Basel would hamper runs during the European daytime. She has, in her own words, never looked back.

The pipeline analysis that Nextstrain runs makes phylogeny from viral genome mutations. Phylogenetics is a field full of limitations, Hodcroft notes. She adds that the field is particularly troublesome because its beautifully dangerousthe picture that is drawn is always less certain than it looks. While it is tempting to start telling stories about these sequences, she says, one must be cautious. The roughly 40,000 cases currently in the system is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of COVID-19 cases. There is much more likelihood that we havent sampled someone than we have, she admits.

As borders reopen and travel resumes, continued genomic analysis, Hodcroft tells GEN, could uncover details about virus transmission, including transmission routes. She will be keeping a close watch while cautiously communicating new findings. These data are of interest to a large and growing audience, and members of this audience may misinterpret (intentionally or not) what they hear. Deciphering the uncertainty that surrounds the field of phylogenetics requires expertisesomething not all scientists who have ventured into the world of COVID-19 phylogenetics possess.

Hodcroft gets upset when misinterpreted data spark a storyline that needs to be debunked. I dont think that telling these false stories that panic the public helps anybody, she declares. There is plenty to be worried about with this virus.

COVID-19 is the second SARS epidemic Rachel Graham, PhD, has worked on since she started her graduate work in a coronavirus lab in 2002. Currently working in a large coronavirus laboratory at University of North Carolina (UNC) led by Ralph S. Baric, PhD, she says that Barics group has scaled up from what was a busy program to an extremely busy program.

Graham uses large sequence sets to study how the virus transcriptional program contributes to replication and virulence. As the virus mutates, its subgenomic RNAs are produced in different ways, indicating that the transcription itself may be a virulence factor. She says that as the population acquires more herd immunity, researchers may see a lot of transcriptional differences in the virus, and these differences could result in changes in virulence. SARS-CoV-2 will be the first virus where this relatively new idea in virology will be examined in detail.

Lisa Gralinski, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology at UNC, has been studying coronaviruses for 12 years. Her current work centers around virus host interactions, specifically in animal models such as the humanized ACE2 transgenic mouse. The mouse was developed at UNC in the mid-2000s after the first SARS outbreak. Researchers had even started the paperwork to cryopreserve the mouse just before COVID-19 struck. Quickly adjusting to COVID-19, they changed course and started as many breeding pairs as possible.

Graham and Gralinski may be new to the UNC faculty, but they are veterans in a rapidly growing field. Gralinski notes that six months ago, few people worked in coronavirus. Unlike SARS, SARS-CoV-2 is not currently a select agentwhich means that more people are free to work on it. Both Graham and Gralinski welcome more hands on deck, but theyve been alarmed by some of the ways that people are working with SARS-CoV-2 in their Biological Safety Level 3 (BSL3) labs. SARS-CoV-2 requires special precautions and security due to the high titers used in experiments.

In early March, Anne L. Wyllie, PhD, an associate research scientist in epidemiology at Yale, was chatting with her colleague, Nathan D. Grubaugh, PhD, an assistant professor of epidemiology. He was lamenting the level of SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in patient samples. Wyllie drew his attention to a method she had been using to detect Streptococcus pneumoniae from saliva samples of asymptomatic carriers.

Her method, which used Thermo Fishers MagMAX Kit for Nucleic Acid Extraction, had worked so well for Wyllie that she suggested that Grubaugh use it to test for SARS-CoV-2. Wyllie recalls that when Grubaugh and colleagues compared the methods, Wyllies method blew the other one out of the water. Ultimately, the MagMAX Kit and the King Fisher platform (which happens to be named Frankie in the lab, in honor of Rosalind Franklin) became the Grubaugh laboratorys method of choice. Wyllie is now co-lead on the COVID-19 project with Grubaugh.

Wyllie was the lead author on a preprint uploaded to medRxiv showing that saliva samples offer a more sensitive and consistent alternative to nasopharyngeal swabs for COVID-19 testing. Saliva samples, the paper argued, should be considered a viable alternative to nasopharyngeal swabs to alleviate COVID-19 testing demands. This could be key to meeting public testing demands.

We knew a pandemic would come and we knew we would have to be ready, says Viviana Simon, MD, PhD, professor of microbiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. A decade after starting her virology laboratory in 2006, Simon and her colleagues built the Virology Initiative in 2017, which allowed real-time access to samples from patients with viral infections. The goal, she explains, was to study emerging viruses in New York Cityviruses such as Zika, chikungunya, and dengue. Having the initiative established allowed the laboratory to spring into action when the pandemic hit. Simon notes that a virology infrastructure capable of such responsiveness would not be easy to build in the middle of a pandemic.

Simon remarks that there was never any doubt that there would be a pandemic: We thought that it would be a respiratory virus and figured that it would be an avian influenza strain. Any pandemic would almost certainly come through New York City, which serves as a gateway not just for people, but for viruses from all over, she says.

Simon tells GEN that her team heard rumors about a new virus in December and began preparing. The moment the first sequences were released in mid-January, she recalls, We ordered primers. And then? Simon and colleagues waited and waited, she says, for the first case to show up. The first COVID-19 case was diagnosed at Mount Sinai on February 29. Only then could the Simon team grow the virus and sequence it.

Simons team has analyzed the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 circulation in New York City and how the virus was introduced. The team is also interested in assessing the durability of antibodies and determining the degree to which antibodies are protective.

The size of Simons laboratory has doubled, primarily due to a temporary influx of postdoctoral researchers and technicians, volunteers that come from laboratories shut down by COVID-19. This COVID task force jumped in to support the COVID-19 research being done at Mount Sinai. Simon remarks that when temporary personnel start returning to their own laboratories, she will be busy hiring more people.

The dedicated researchers highlighted in this article have been working almost nonstop for months, motivated by a shared passion to beat back a virus that has taken over the world. These researchers represent different scientific backgrounds, and they are tackling different facets of the virus. But they would no doubt recognize common elements in their professional development. For example, the challenges that come with being women in male-dominated fields. Hopefully, it will not take decades to recognize and celebrate the contributions of some of these outstanding scientists.

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COVID-19 Research: Women Are Changing the Face of the Pandemic - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

GMOs, short for genetically modified organisms, are subject to a lot of controversy.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), GMO seeds are used to plant over 90% of all maize (corn), cotton, and soy grown in the United States, which means that many of the foods you eat likely contain GMOs (1).

Although most notable organizations and research suggest that GMO foods are safe and sustainable, some people claim they may harm your health and the environment.

This article helps explain what GMOs are, provides a balanced explanation of their pros and cons, and gives guidance on how to identify GMO foods.

GMO, which stands for genetically modified organism, refers to any organism whose DNA has been modified using genetic engineering technology.

In the food industry, GMO crops have had genes added to them for various reasons, such as improving their growth, nutritional content, sustainability, pest resistance, and ease of farming (2).

While its possible to naturally give foods desirable traits through selective breeding, this process takes many generations. Also, breeders may struggle to determine which genetic change has led to a new trait.

Genetic modification significantly accelerates this process by using scientific techniques that give the plant the specific desired trait.

For example, one of the most common GMO crops is Bt corn, which is genetically modified to produce the insecticide Bt toxin. By making this toxin, the corn is able to resist pests, reducing the need for pesticides (3).

GMO crops are incredibly common in the United States, with at least 90% of soy, cotton, and corn being grown through genetic techniques (4).

In fact, its estimated that up to 80% of foods in supermarkets contain ingredients that come from genetically modified crops.

While GMO crops make farming much easier, there is some concern around their potential effect on the environment and their safety for human consumption specifically surrounding illnesses and allergies (5).

However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and USDA maintain that GMOs are safe for human and animal consumption (6).

GMOs are food items that have been made using genetic engineering techniques. They comprise 90% of soy, cotton, and corn grown in the United States and are deemed safe for human consumption.

GMO foods may offer several advantages to the grower and consumer.

For starters, many GMO crops have been genetically modified to express a gene that protects them against pests and insects.

For example, the Bt gene is commonly genetically engineered into crops like corn, cotton, and soybeans. It comes from a naturally occurring bacteria known as Bacillus thuringiensis.

This gene produces a protein that is toxic to several pests and insects, which gives the GMO plants a natural resistance. As such, the GMO crops dont need to be exposed to harmful pesticides as often (7).

In fact, an analysis of 147 studies from 2014 found that GMO technology has reduced chemical pesticide use by 37% and increased crop yields by 22% (8).

Other GMO crops have been modified with genes that help them survive stressful conditions, such as droughts, and resist diseases like blights, resulting in a higher yield for farmers (9, 10, 11).

Together, these factors help lower the costs for the farmers and consumers because it allows a greater crop yield and growth through harsher conditions.

Additionally, genetic modification can increase the nutritional value of foods. For example, rice high in beta carotene, also called golden rice, was developed to help prevent blindness in regions where local diets are chronically deficient in vitamin A (12).

Moreover, genetic modification may be used simply to enhance the flavor and appearance of foods, such as the non-browning apple (13).

In addition, current research suggests that GMO foods are safe for consumption (14).

GMO foods are easier and less costly for farmers to grow, which makes them cheaper for the consumer. GMO techniques may also enhance foods nutrients, flavor, and appearance.

Although current research suggests that GMO foods are safe, there is some concern around their long-term safety and environmental impact (14).

Here are some of the key concerns around GMO consumption.

There is some concern that GMO foods may trigger an allergic reaction.

This is because GMO foods contain foreign genes, so some people worry that they harbor genes from foods that may prompt an allergic reaction.

A study from the mid-1990s found that adding a protein from Brazil nuts to GMO soybeans could trigger an allergic reaction in people sensitive to Brazil nuts. However, after scientists discovered this, they quickly abandoned this GMO food (15).

Although allergy concerns are valid, there have been no reports of allergic reactions to GMO foods currently on the market.

According to the FDA, researchers who develop GMO foods run tests to ensure that allergens arent transferred from one food to another (16).

In addition, research has shown that GMO foods are no likelier to trigger allergies than their non-GMO counterparts (17).

Yet, if you have a soy allergy, both GMO and non-GMO soy products will prompt an allergic reaction.

Similarly, theres a common concern that GMO foods may aid the progression of cancers.

Because cancers are caused by DNA mutations, some people fear that eating foods with added genes may affect your DNA.

This worry may stem partly from an early mice study, which linked GMO intake to a higher risk of tumors and early death. However, this study was later retracted because it was poorly designed (18, 19, 20).

Currently, no human research ties GMO intake to cancers.

The American Cancer Society (ACS) has stated that theres no evidence to link GMO food intake to an increased or decreased risk of cancer (21).

All the same, no long-term human studies exist. Thus, more long-term human research is needed.

Although GMO crops are convenient for farmers, there are environmental concerns.

Most GMO crops are resistant to herbicides, such as Roundup. This means that farmers can use Roundup without fear of it harming their own crops.

However, a growing number of weeds have developed resistance to this herbicide over time. This has led to even more Roundup being sprayed on crops to kill the resistant weeds because they can affect the crop harvest (22, 23, 24).

Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate are subject to controversy because animal and test-tube studies have linked them to various diseases (25, 26, 27).

Still, a review of multiple studies concluded that the low amounts of glyphosate present on GMO foods are safe for human consumption (28).

GMO crops also allow for fewer pesticide applications, which is a positive for the environment.

That said, more long-term human research is necessary.

The main concerns around GMOs involve allergies, cancer, and environmental issues all of which may affect the consumer. While current research suggests few risks, more long-term research is needed.

Although GMO foods appear safe for consumption, some people wish to avoid them. Still, this is difficult since most foods in your supermarket are made with ingredients from GMO crops.

GMO crops grown and sold in the United States include corn, soybean, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, cotton, potatoes, papaya, summer squash, and a few apple varieties (29).

In the United States, no regulations currently mandate the labeling of GMO foods.

Yet, as of January 2022, the USDA will require food manufacturers to label all foods containing GMO ingredients (6).

That said, the labels wont say GMO but instead the term bioengineered food. It will display either as the USDA bioengineered food symbol, listed on or near the ingredients, or as a scannable code on the package with directions, such as Scan here for more information (6).

Presently, some foods may have a third-party Non-GMO project verified label, which indicates that the product contains no GMOs. However, this label is voluntary.

Its also worth noting that any food labeled 100% organic does not contain any GMO ingredients, because U.S. law prohibits this. However, if a product is simply labeled organic, it may contain some GMOs (30).

In the European Union (EU), foods with more than 0.9% GMO ingredients must list genetically modified or produced from genetically modified [name of food]. For foods without packaging, these words must be listed near the item, such as on the supermarket shelf (31).

Until the new regulations come into place in the United States, there is no clear way to tell if a food contains GMO ingredients.

However, you can try to avoid GMO foods by eating locally, as many small farms are unlikely to use GMO seeds. Alternatively, you can avoid foods that contain ingredients from the GMO crops listed above.

Until the 2022 USDA rule takes effect, its hard to determine which foods contain GMOs in the United States. You can avoid GMOs by limiting GMO ingredients, eating locally, looking for third-party non-GMO labels, or buying 100% organic.

GMOs are foods that have been modified using genetic techniques.

Most foods in your local supermarket contain GMO ingredients because theyre easier and more cost-effective for farmers, which makes them cheaper for the consumer.

In the United States, foods grown using GMO techniques include corn, soybean, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, cotton, potatoes, papaya, summer squash, and a few varieties of apples.

Although current research suggests that GMO foods are safe for consumption, some people are concerned about their potential health effects. Due to a lack of long-term human studies, more research is needed.

In the United States, its currently not mandatory to label foods that contain GMOs. However, as of 2022, all foods that contain GMO ingredients must have the term bioengineered food somewhere on the packaging or a scannable code to show that it has GMO ingredients.

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GMOs: Pros and Cons, Backed by Evidence - Healthline

The internet

Musk believed the internet, nascent in the '90s, would "fundamentally change humanity," he said on the podcast.

"I would not regard this as a profound insight but rather an obvious one," Musk said.

He compared the internet to the human nervous system: "If you didn't have a nervous system, you wouldn't know what's going on. Your fingers wouldn't know what's going on. Your toes wouldn't know what's going on. You'd have to do it by diffusion," he said.

"The way information used to work was by diffusion. One human would have to call another human or write them in a letter. [That was] extremely slow diffusion. And if you wanted access to books, and you did not have a library, you don't have it. That's it."

He knew the internet could change all that.

And while Musk only had minimal access to the internet at the time (only to use it for his physics studies, he said), he knew the internet would be a "fundamental and profound change."

"Now, you have access to all books instantly, and you can be in a remote mountaintop location and have access to all of humanity's information if you got a link to the internet," he said on the podcast. "Now suddenly, human organisms anywhere would have access to all the information instantly."

Musk believed "making life multi-planetary and making consciousness multi-planetary" would change the world, he said on the podcast.

As a child, Musk was influenced by a variety of science fiction booksand he believed he'd one day "[build] spaceships to extend the human species's reach," according tothe book"Elon Musk." (Musk previously said that theseven-book "Foundation" science fiction series by scientist and author Isaac Asimov, for example, was "fundamental to the creation of his aerospace company, SpaceX.")

On May 30, SpaceXsuccessfully launched two NASA astronautsinto orbit for the first time. It was a milestone forhuman spaceflightand got Musk one step closer to achievinghis Mars ambitions.

Just as a character in the 1997 movie Gattaca undergoes genetic engineering to pursue his dream of space travel, according to Musk, when he was younger he believed being able to change human genetics could change the world.

And it's happening today, with technology like Crispr, Musk said on the podcast.

"It will become normal, I think, to change the human genome for getting rid of diseases or propensity to various diseases," he said. "That's going to be like the first thing you'd want headed out. If you've got a situation where you're definitely going to die of some cancer at age 55, you'd prefer to have that edited out."

"There's the Gattaca sort-of extreme thing where it's not really edited out but it's edited in for various enhancements and that kind of thing," he said, "which probably will come too."

"I'm not arguing for or against it," Musk said. "I'm just saying it's more likely to come than not down the road."

As a teenager, Musk felt a "personal obligation" for the fate of mankind and felt inspired to create "cleaner energy technology" one day, according to the book"Elon Musk."

So he believed that sustainable energy would change the future.

"Sustainability, actually, was something that I thought was important before the environmental implications became as obvious as they are," he said on the podcast. "If you mine and burn hydrocarbons[compounds that form the basis of natural gas, oil and coal], then you're going to run out of them. It's not like mining metals.... We will never run out of metals, but we will run out of hydrocarbons."

He said the future may bring a carbon taxthat would raisethe cost of burning fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, which is a "no brainer."

In 2004, Musk invested in and became a co-founder ofelectric car companyTesla.Hebecame CEO in 2008. On Wednesday, Tesla became the world's most valuable automakerwhen the electric vehicle company's market capitalization surpassed Toyota's for the first time.

"AI is a really major one" too, Musk said on the podcast.

In 2019,at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Musk (who co-founded non-profit AI research lab OpenAIbut laterleft the company's board) said computers will "surpass us in every way," including scary things, likejob disruptionfrom robots or even apotentialAIracethatleadstoa third World War.

AI is "capable of vastly more than almost anyone knows and the rate of improvement is exponential," he saidhe said at the 2018 South by Southwest tech conference.

Musk also founded machine intelligence venture Neuralink, because he believes humans must merge with AI to avoid becoming irrelevant.

"We do want a close coupling between collective human intelligence and digital intelligence,"he said at the SXSW conference, "and Neuralink is trying to help in that regard by trying creating a high bandwidth interface between AI and the human brain."

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In college, Elon Musk thought these 5 things would change the world - CNBC

Historically, scientific and engineering expertise has been key in shaping research and innovation (R&I) policies, with benefits presumed to accrue to society more broadly over time (1). But there is persistent and growing concern about whether and how ethical and societal values are integrated into R&I policies and governance, as we confront public disbelief in science and political suspicion toward evidence-based policy-making (2). Erosion of such a social contract with science limits the ability of democratic societies to deal with challenges presented by new, disruptive technologies, such as synthetic biology, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, automation and robotics, and artificial intelligence. Many policy efforts have emerged in response to such concerns, one prominent example being Europe's Eighth Framework Programme, Horizon 2020 (H2020), whose focus on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) provides a case study for the translation of such normative perspectives into concrete policy action and implementation. Our analysis of this H2020 RRI approach suggests a lack of consistent integration of elements such as ethics, open access, open innovation, and public engagement. On the basis of our evaluation, we suggest possible pathways for strengthening efforts to deliver R&I policies that deepen mutually beneficial science and society relationships.

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Improve alignment of research policy and societal values - Science Magazine

[98 pages report] This market research report includes a detailed segmentation of the global genome editing market by technology (CRISPR, TALEN, ZFN, and Others), by application (Cell Line Engineering, Genetic Engineering, and Others), By end-user (Research Institutes, Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Companies, and Contract Research Organizations), by regions (North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World).

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Overview of the Global Genome Editing Market

Infoholics market research report predicts that the Global Genome Editing Market will grow at a CAGR of 14.4% during the forecast period. The market has witnessed steady growth in the past few years with the development in technology and the introduction of highly sensitive, robust, and reliable systems in the market. The market is fueled due to increase in genetic disorders, increasing investment and funds, and technological advancements in genome editing.

The market continues to grow and is one of the increasingly accepted market in many countries worldwide. Vendors are focusing towards obtaining funds and collaborating with universities to enlarge their research and development capabilities. The majority of the revenue is generated from the leading players in the market with dominating sales of ThermoFisher Scientific, GenScript Corp., Sangamo Therapeutics, Lonza Group, and Horizon Discovery Group plc.

According to Infoholic Research analysis, North America accounted for the largest share of the global genome editing market in 2018. US dominates the market with majority of genome editing companies being located in this region. However, China has not been too far behind and has great government support for the research in genome editing field.

Genome Editing Market by Technology:

In 2018, the CRISPR segment occupied the largest share due to specific, effective, and cost-effective nature of the technology. Many companies are focusing on providing genome editing services. For instance, in January 2019, Horizon Discovery extended CRISPR screening service to primary human T cells.

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Genome Editing Market by Applications:

In 2018, the cell line engineering accounted the maximum share followed by genetic engineering. Increase in the number of people suffering with genetic disorders has driven the growth of the genome editing market.

Genome Editing Market by End Users:

In 2018, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies gained the highest market share for genome editing market due to increased pervasiveness of cancer and infectious diseases are driving research goings-on in biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies segment.

Genome Editing Market by Regions:

The market is dominated by North America, followed by Asia Pacific and Europe. The major share of the North America market is from the US due to quick adoption of new and advanced technologies.

Genome Editing Market Research Competitive Analysis The market is extremely fragmented with several smaller companies struggling for market share. Big pharmaceutical establishments have also united with venture capitalists to provide funding to the start-ups. In 2015, Bayer financed $335 million and in the very same year, Celgene combined with Abingworth invested $64 million in CRISPR Therapeutics. The NIH recently granted 21 somatic cell genome editing grants of almost $86 million over the next half a decade. These endowments are the foremost to be granted through the Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE) program that was initiated in January 2018 with NIH Common Fund.

The companies are collaborating and licensing to increase their capabilities in the market. CRISPR, TALEN, ZFN, Meganuclease, ARCUS, and RTDS are some of the key technology areas concentrated by key players in the market. Since 2015, the deals on the CRISPR technology has drastically increased.

Key vendors:

Key competitive facts

Benefits The report provides complete details about the usage and adoption rate of genome editing market. Thus, the key stakeholders can know about the major trends, drivers, investments, vertical players initiatives, and government initiatives towards the healthcare segment in the upcoming years along with details of the pureplay companies entering the market. Moreover, the report provides details about the major challenges that are going to impact the market growth. Additionally, the report gives complete details about the key business opportunities to key stakeholders in order to expand their business and capture the revenue in specific verticals, and to analyze before investing or expanding the business in this market.

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Genome Editing Market to Exhibit Rapid Surge in Consumption in the COVID-19 Crisis 2025 - 3rd Watch News

ISLAMABAD: Minister for National Food Security and Research Fakhar Imam on Saturday said the government was working hard in applying genetic engineering, crop diversification, and biotechnology in agriculture sector to ensure countrys food security.

The government is committed to double the income of the farmers and this can be achieved only if they use technology and opt for crop diversification, he said.

There is also a dire need to move towards precision agriculture technology, big data, and quality assurance to meet international quality parameters.

The minister said the government wanted to focus on agricultural research, education, and extension to promote export-focused production and that could not be avoided anymore as it was vital for agro-based industrial development.

He said the universities and research departments should be groomed and advanced technology be applied for the benefit of agriculture, adding, there was no doubt Pakistan was an agro-based country but we had not focused on it as we should have over the years.

We should continue to work together towards climate change resilient research, mechanisation in pulses cultivation and processing, improving seed replacement rate to fill the gap of technology adoption in the farming fields.

He said the government would take all-out measures to facilitate the farmers as development of the agriculture sector was among its priorities.

Agriculture is not only the basis for countrys economy, but it also ensures the supply chain of foods to the masses. That is why it is of paramount importance to focus on agriculture sector to avoid food security issues, the minister said.

He explained the agriculture sector was faced with multiple issues including water scarcity, low quality seeds and pesticides.

Moreover, the locust swarms and climate change, were also emerging threat for the sector as it had become a huge challenge for the crops the same way COVID-19 had become a threat to human life, Imam added.

Food availability will be ensured through increase in production of food items, he said, adding, Improved farm techniques will also be promoted and issues like land and water management will also be addressed.

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Minister ties smart farming to food security - The News International

Four more US biotechs filed to go public Friday as yet more companies clamber to get through a yawning IPO window and onto a market thats signaled its willingness to reward nearly any new drugmaker.

The new entrants are led by ALX Oncology and the biological analytics biotech Berkeley Lights, each of whom filed to raise $100 million. The autoimmune company Pandion Therapeutics also filed for $75 million, and Kiromic Biopharma, a tiny immuno-oncology startup based in San Antonio, filed for $25 million.

These companies will try to capitalize on a 2020 biotech IPO boom that the investment firm Renaissance Capital recently called historic. The spree began in January and, after a brief interlude when the pandemic first hit the US and Europe, has only picked up in the last two months. The 23 companies that have gone public averaged an 80% return on their offering price, according to Renaissance Capital numbers. Every single one priced above their midpoint or upsized their offering.

Unlike most of their fellow newly or would-be public biotechs, Berkeley Lights will enter the market with significant revenue on the books. The company doesnt make drugs but instead has built a digital cell biology platform that can analyze living cells from a variety of different dimensions and, in principal, accelerate drug development. Theyve partnered with Sanofi and Pfizer on antibody discovery and last year, signed a $150 million pact with Ginkgo Bioworks to help the synthetic biology unicorn advance its genetic engineering capabilities.

All told, the company earned $51 million in revenue last year. Unlike a drug developer, they have no cash earmarked for specific pipeline products, and said they will use proceeds for research, potential acquisitions and general corporate purposes.

For ALX Oncology, a successful offering would mean their second $100 million tranche of the year. In February, the California biotech raised $105 million to help advance its sole pipeline candidate: an antibody designed to target CD-47. Thats the same dont-eat-me signal targeted by Irv Weissmans Forty Seven Inc., the biotech Gilead paid $5 billion for in January. ALXs pitch is that their antibodys FC receptor is engineered to not attract macrophages, reducing toxicity. The biotech will use their proceeds to push the drug through its ongoinghead and neck squamous cell carcinomaand gastric cancer trial and begin new trials for it in acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome. A portion is also earmarked for CMC work.

Founded out of Polaris in 2018, Pandion Therapeutics was tapped last year for an up-to $800 million partnership to help a reorganizing Astellas develop antibodies for auto-immune disorders. That deal included $45 million upfront and the company also earned $80 million from a Series B in April. The new funding will be used to push their lead molecule through Phase I/II trials in ulcerative colitis while also backing preclinical research, particularly on a pair of antibodies meant to turn on the PD-1 checkpoint and tamp down the immune system.

Kiromic, meanwhile, is in part just trying to stay alive. With less than $2 million 5 million when a subsequent $3 million Series B is included in the bank at years end, they acknowledged in their S-1 that theres substantial doubt regarding the Companys ability to continue as a going concern. In this climate, though, thats worked out just fine for other companies. Applied Molecular Transport went publicin May with the same concerns. They ultimately raised $177 million.

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The biotech IPO boom is becoming 'historic' as four more throw their hats in - Endpoints News

ISLAMABAD, Jul 4 (APP):Minister for National Food Security and Research Fakhar Imam Saturday said that government was working hard in applying genetic engineering, crop diversification and biotechnology in agriculture sector to ensure food safety in the country.His government was committed to double the income of the farmers and this can be achieved only if farmers use technology and opt for crop diversification, he said while speaking to PTV news channel.He said there is a dire need to move towards precision agriculture technology, big data and quality assurance to meet international quality parameters.The PTI government wants to focus on agricultural research, education and extension to promote export-focused production that cannot be avoided anymore as it is vital for agro-based industrial development, headded.Imam stated that universities and research departments should be groomed and advanced technology be applied for the benefit of agriculture.The minister said there was no doubt that Pakistan was an agro-based country but we had not focused on it as we should have over the years.We should continue to work together towards climate change resilient research, mechanization in pulses cultivation and processing, improving seed replacement rate to fill the gap of technology adoption in the farmers fields.He said the government would take all-out measures to facilitate the farmers as development of the agriculture sector was among its priorities.Imam said agriculture is not only the basis for countrys economy but it also ensures the supply chain of foods to the masses. That is why it is of paramount importance to focus on agriculture sector to avoid food securityissues.He further explained that the agriculture sector of the country was being faced with multiple issues including water scarcity, low quality seeds and pesticides.Moreover, the locust swarms and climate change, were also emerging threat for the sector as it had become a huge challenge for the crops the same way COVID-19 had become a threat to human life.Food availability will be ensured through increase in production of food items, he said, adding, improved farm techniques will also be promoted and issues like land and water management will also be addressed.He said the present government of PTI had also formulated different policies, which would became especially important in the wake of climate change and water shortages.

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Fakhar Imam stresses importance of biotechnology, crop diversification for food security - Associated Press of Pakistan

(THE CONVERSATION) This summer, for the first time, genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in the U.S.

On May 1, 2020, the company Oxitec received anexperimental use permitfrom the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to releasemillions of GM mosquitoes(labeled by Oxitec as OX5034) every week over the next two years in Florida and Texas. Females of this mosquito species, Aedes aegypti, transmit dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika viruses. When these lab-bred GM males are released and mate with wild females, their female offspring die. Continual, large-scale releases of these OX5034 GM males should eventually cause the temporary collapse of a wild population.

However, as vector biologists, geneticists, policy experts and bioethicists, we are concerned that current government oversight and scientific evaluation of GM mosquitoes do not ensure their responsible deployment.

Genetic engineering for disease control

Coral reefs that can withstand rising sea temperatures,American chestnut treesthat can survive blight andmosquitoes that cant spread diseaseare examples of how genetic engineering may transform the natural world.

Genetic engineering offers an unprecedented opportunity for humans to reshape the fundamental structure of the biological world. Yet, as new advances ingenetic decodingandgene editingemerge with speed and enthusiasm, the ecological systems they could alter remain enormously complex and understudied.

Recently, no group of organisms has received more attention for genetic modification than mosquitoes toyield inviable offspringor make themunsuitable for disease transmission. These strategies hold considerable potential benefits for the hundreds of millions of people impacted bymosquito-borne diseaseseach year.

Although the EPA approved the permit for Oxitec, state approval is still required. A previously planned release in the Florida Keys of an earlier version of Oxitecs GM mosquito (OX513) waswithdrawn in 2018aftera referendum in 2016indicated significant opposition from local residents. Oxitec has field-trialed their GM mosquitoes inBrazil, the Cayman Islands, Malaysia and Panama.

Thepublic forumon Oxitecs recent permit application garnered 31,174 comments opposing release and 56 in support. The EPA considered these during their review process.

Time to reassess risk assessment?

However, it is difficult toassess how EPA regulatorsweighed and considered public comments and how much of theevidence used in final risk determinationswas provided solely by the technology developers.

The closed nature of this risk assessment process is concerning to us.

There is a potential bias and conflict of interest when experimental trials and assessments of ecological risk lackpolitical accountabilityand are performed by, or in close collaboration with, the technology developers.

This scenario becomes more troubling with afor-profit technology companywhen cost- and risk-benefit analyses comparing GM mosquitoes to other approachesarent being conducted.

Another concern is thatrisk assessmentstend to focus on only a narrow set of biological parameters such as the potential for the GM mosquito to transmit disease or the potential of the mosquitoes new proteins to trigger an allergic response in people and neglect other importantbiological,ethicalandsocialconsiderations.

To address these shortcomings, the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign convened a Critical Conversation on GM mosquitoes. The discussion involved 35 participants from academic, government and nonprofit organizations from around the world with expertise in mosquito biology, community engagement and risk assessment.

A primary takeaway from this conversation was an urgent need to make regulatory procedures more transparent, comprehensive and protected from biases and conflicts of interest. In short, we believe it is time to reassess risk assessment for GM mosquitoes. Here are some of the key elements we recommend.

Steps to make risk assessment more open and comprehensive

First, an official, government-funded registry for GM organisms specifically designed to reproduce in the wild and intended for release in the U.S. would make risk assessments more transparent and accountable. Similar to the U.S.database that lists all human clinical trials, this field trial registry would require all technology developers to disclose intentions to release, information on their GM strategy, scale and location of release and intentions for data collection.

This registry could be presented in a way that protects intellectual property rights, just as therapies entering clinical trials are patent-protected in their registry. The GM organism registry would be updated in real time and made fully available to the public.

Second, a broader set of risks needs to be assessed and an evidence base needs to be generated by third-party researchers. Because each GM mosquito is released into a unique environment, risk assessments and experiments prior to and during trial releases should address local effects on the ecosystem and food webs. They should also probe the disease transmission potential of the mosquitos wild counterparts andecological competitors, examine evolutionary pressures on disease agents in the mosquito community andtrack the gene flowbetween GM and wild mosquitoes.

To identify and assess risks, a commitment of funding is necessary. The U.S.EPAs recent announcementthat it would improve general risk assessment analysis for biotechnology products is a good start. But regulatory and funding support for an external advisory committee to review assessments for GM organisms released in the wild is also needed;diverse expertise and local community representationwould secure a more fair and comprehensive assessment.

Furthermore, independent researchers and advisers could help guide what data are collected during trials to reduce uncertainty and inform future large-scale releases and risk assessments.

The objective to reduce or even eliminate mosquito-borne disease is laudable. GM mosquitoes could prove to be an important tool in alleviating global health burdens. However, to ensure their success, we believe that regulatory frameworks for open, comprehensive and participatory decision-making are urgently needed.

This article was updated to correct the date that Oxitec withdrew its OX513 trial application to 2018.

[Deep knowledge, daily.Sign up for The Conversations newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here:https://theconversation.com/genetically-modified-mosquitoes-could-be-released-in-florida-and-texas-beginning-this-summer-silver-bullet-or-jumping-the-gun-139710.

The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Brian Allan,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;Chris Stone,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;Holly Tuten,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign;Jennifer Kuzma,North Carolina State University, andNatalie Kofler,University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Genetically modified mosquitoes could be released in Florida this summer - WFLA

Each night, around 7 o'clock, I drift off into a little daydream. This has been the case for weeks now. My beloved Mets are jogging onto the grass at Citi Field, taking their positions; their ace, Jacob deGrom, making a beeline to the mound. I am up out of my seat, applauding, gazing out onto the field. I look up to the sky, and that's it, really. The scene tends to slip away from there. I look down to see the gates of my apartment's window guard and the emptied streets of Manhattan beyond them. I really am clapping, but it's got nothing to do with baseball. It's in support of local nurses and doctors at work or changing shifts. Across New York City, this ritual plays out night after night (the clapping for health care workersnot the Mets fantasies, I don't think).

There's a crossing of wires at play, like my precious sports memories are mingling with the signatures of my life during the COVID-19 eraclapping, quarantining, boredom. Will it stay this way? For a while, at least, I think it will.

As MLB, the NBA and other leagues near their returns, I find myself fascinated by questions pertaining to the virus and the ways it will ripple through our leagues. How many players will contract it? How will leagues' models evolve as they move forward? Even for mea lifelong overcommitted fan who sends excessive, neurotic text threads (unresponded to) during regular-season gamesI think most of the drama in sports will come not from daily games but from daily tests results. This is the virus overpowering the once-invincible sports machine.

Already, so much of the mystique of sports has been lost. I miss the steady, circular rhythm of leagues in-season, the way they appeared day after day, overlapping only a few sacred times a year as if choreographed by the moon instead of computers and marketing teams. I miss the shameless self-importance of teams playing no matter what. (Spring training continued for 10 days after the first cases of COVID-19 appeared in Florida.) It was simply more fun back when we could view athletes as impervious superheroes rather than as bored video-gamersor, worse, as medical patients. There is something uncomfortable about having seen a dominant, intimidating player like Rudy Gobert briefly exposed as reckless and unhygienic. Games will return soon enough, but what about the underlying myths that lend them relevance and depth?

The NBA's bubble-based return, set for July 30, cuts against team fandomso driven by proximityby moving everyone to Disney World. It admits that the game could go on without us, the fans, rowdy old faithful, by playing in near silence. Game rules are changing, too, yielding to the virus' demands. There are smaller coaching staffs to protect older people from exposure, and expanded rosters for when the inevitable happens. Every league is making compromises: MLB might ban its most endearing prop, the sunflower seed, and tweak its most fundamental, unique feature, the nine-inning game.

These leagues are right to weigh these measures and to take them. They are preventing tragedies, not creating them. But the bending of tradition makes me wonder about the future of sports, about how things just changed overnight, and how they might change again in 10 years or 50. Maybe that will be the enduring impact of COVID-19 when it comes to sportsthat it opened the gates to change.

Naturally, this is where things get strange. Stick it out anyway. Consider the ways that fans and leagues are already adapting to this odd time, this time of no sports, and then imagine what comes next, and what after that. One small bit of innovation leads to an unpredictable new one, and on it goes. Very quickly, this evolution brings us into the realm of science fiction.

We might be there already. While games were on hold, the public embraced something that in the past seemed both silly and dystopian: game simulations. Las Vegas offered sim-game betting lines; we hosted virtual Madden watch parties right here at B/R. They were and are an obvious placeholder for real sports. Still, their popularity made me curious about their power down the road, if animated graphics improve enough to match real sports. Technologically speaking, could that day be coming? I asked an expert.

Nicholas Bostrom is a professor at Oxford and a pioneer of the simulation theory, which posits that we may be living in a knockoff version of Earth created by a more advanced (real-life) society. (Assuming that computers will someday be able to produce unlimited realistic simulations of life, we might be wise, he suggests, to already "think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather than among the original biological ones.") Bostrom published Are You Living in a Computer Simulation? way back in 2003. Today, few are better equipped to tell us about the future of sims. So, Professor, how good can they get?

"Eventually we will have completely realistic virtual reality simulations that would be indistinguishable from physical reality," he says. "I don't see why in theory you couldn't have a purely artificial creature that was competing against another in a way that would create a sports event."

You might be wondering what the point of this would be once sports return. Well, consider the NBA's most exhausting debate topic: load (or injury) management. Back when there were regularly scheduled games, we wasted much time meditating on the notion of, say, Kawhi Leonard taking a night off, letting his teammates dominate the lowly Cavaliers or Knicks in front of a crowd that paid to see him play. It's obvious that if there were fewer games, the need to skip some of them would decrease. Fewer games would also soothe another of the league's concerns: players' lack of sleep amid a busy travel schedule.

Simulations could merge these issues and resolve them at once. Why not simulate lopsided games like Clippers-Cavs, providing rest for Leonard and everybody else involved? Each year, each team could sim 10 or 12 games, allowing a 70- or 72-game schedule for playersalready a desired ballparkand a full 82-game slate for the league's partners, like TV networks and casinos, who would package the simulated visuals and box scores.

Maybe this idea seems a little far out, but the NBA rarely minds. It is already welcoming the ideas of the future, from the four-point shot to aerospace revolution.

Indeed, Commissioner Adam Silver has long seen supersonic flight as the key to a truly global league. With it, Portland could face Sydney and return four hours later, in time for bed. We already have an Atlantic Division with teams from America's Northeast; how about adding a Transatlantic Division featuring Brazil, Spain and Nigeria? For now, the problem is a logistical one. "Under existing airline technology, the planes aren't fast enough to at least play in the current framework of our regular season," Silver told USA Today in 2017. Fortunately, with help from Elon Musk, Richard Branson and more, supersonic jets are on their way. Just one of many game-changers to come.

Robots have perfected three-point shooting and will someday make flawless floor-spacers. Salaries paid in cryptocurrency will provide a cap loophole and threaten the league's financial structure. Augmented reality on-screen willsomehowincrease complaints about players' shot selection. Advanced tracking through biometric data will grow into a major concern regarding personal privacy. How much should bidding teams know about a free agent's body? Who gets to dictate the right body fat percentage for somebody else or whether a balky ankle is strong enough to play on? And, as the Wall Street Journal once asked: If a fan gains access to a player's medical status and uses it to wager on a game, is that insider trading? (If the answers to these questions seem like a privacy violation, then consider how quickly athletes' COVID-19 test results became expected public information, even though they're irrelevant so long as sports are on hold. If there is already a demand to know whether Ezekiel Elliott, a running back, is experiencing an inability to smell, then there's no doubting the future demand for intimate insight about his legs.)

Yes, the future can seem vast and spookythough not to Thomas Frey. Frey is an author and member of the Association of Professional Futurists. His job is to burst with ideas, and he's bursting all right, riffing on the future of medicine, tech, sports, you name it. He envisions not only the events of the future but also the issues that will counter those eventsthe future's future. "Drone racing is kind of a hot area right now," he says, "but my sense is that the drone racing eventually gets so fast that you can't even see it, and so I'm not sure that sport sticks around." Dang. What else? Frey wants to elevate existing sportsthe ones played on the groundthrough the control and reduction of gravity. (Think NFL meets Quidditch or Slamball with no need for trampolines.) He wonders about anti-aging, tooin this case, what 3,000-year lifespans might mean for athletic primes.

Other revolutions are impossible to imagine playing out (unless you happen to be a member of the APF). "We're close to reviving extinct species like woolly mammoths," Frey notes, before pondering the cruelty of secluding them from other, natural-born animals. An idea strikes him. "Creating a sport with woolly mammoth riders going around the trackthat would seem bizarre today," he says. "But I would definitely pay to go see that."

Of course, there is not only the matter of tweaking (or inventing) sports, but also that of tweaking the players themselves. One of Frey's favorite topics is genetic engineeringthe process of tinkering with human genes before birth. "We're reinventing people. We're making people more durable. We're giving rights to CRISPR [the bio-tech giant], who will give us superbabies who grow up to be superhumans," he says. OK then. Frey thinks it's inevitable that, someday, we'll be able to genetically manufacture superior athletes: bigger, faster, smarterto an uncanny degree. He wonders about "downloading the human brain" and uploading it into the mind of another person. In time, if this all gets easy and silly enough, a supertoddler could have the basketball IQ of LeBron James. (Just imagine the recruiting violations that would follow.)

Bostrom has explored genetic engineering as well. "The enhancement options being discussed," he wrote in 2003, "include radical extension of human health-span, eradication of disease, elimination of unnecessary suffering" and more. A superhuman ability to ward off illnesssay, a coronaviruswould certainly come in handy. So too would advancements that eliminate athletic limitations. Imagine how a perfect set of knees would have changed the careers of Greg Oden, Brandon Roy and others; imagine Shaquille O'Neal with a sprinter's endurance; imagine Jimmer Fredette at 7'3".

Sounds pretty greator actually it sounds like it would look pretty great, visually. But would this be good for sports? Is it ethical? Or the right spirit? And how would this impact the lives of the athletes we love?

Every tech innovation takes something away from the humans it replaces or (ostensibly) aids. Flawless three-and-D bots entering the NBA would not only change the game but also eliminate dozens or hundreds of lucrative jobs. Supersonic travel, alluring as it may be, could have untold effects on passengersespecially international-league athletes, flying overseas day after day. Genetic engineering could draw a devastating, permanent line between the haves and the have-nots.

When it arrives in full force, Frey says, crafting a given attribute"20/10 vision, a perfect heart"may well cost tens of thousands of dollars. There's no telling what else will be at the disposal of fortunate young athletes then (though Frey, of course, has some ideas, including advanced VR headsets).

Already, financial inequality pervades all of sports. Young basketball players need to be able to cover the costs of trainers and AAU travel teams to earn recognition; it's probably not a coincidence that the children of well-off former players are entering the league at a higher rate than ever. Young baseball players need not only training but also equipment, toomitts, balls, bats, helmets, cleats. (Cleveland pitcher Mike Clevinger recently blamed these costs for the sport's declining popularity among young athletes.) Golf, football, hockeyevery major sport operates behind a financial barrier to entry. In 2018, The Atlantic noted that "just 34 percent of children from families earning less than $25,000 played a team sport at least once a day in 2017, versus 69 percent from homes earning more than $100,000." (Those numbers came from a study by the Aspen Institute, which found that the gap was rapidly growing.)

Imagine a world in which the NBA MVP is an 8'6" trust-fund kid. It seems awfully shallow. Could a souped-up superhuman celebrate the award with the same tenderness as Kevin Durant did in 2014? Even if they did, would we bother to cry along with them? There is no great story in sports without long odds and a dash of relatability.Genetic engineering would destroy the enduring notion of the underdog. It would dull the sweetness of our games, the unpredictability, the misery, the reward. What, then, would be left?

"I'm not particularly excited about sports enhancements," Bostrom says, speaking broadly. "We shouldn't make the mistake of thinking everything that makes the sport easier or makes performance better makes the sport more enjoyable. I think we should think of these things more as, You're designing a game. Think creatively about what would make the most fun game. It's not always the easiest thing."

So far, leagues have mostly welcomed new tech as it arrives, a concerning trend. Consider the modern obsession with instant replay.

Think back to the men's NCAA title game last April. With the season on the line, the ball was knocked out of a Texas Tech dribbler's hands and flew out of bounds. For anybody who has ever picked up a basketball and played a game on any level, it was instantly recognizable as Tech's ball. But after several minutes of replaywhich included referee consultant Gene Steratore saying, "At times, guys, I will tell you, when you start running replay really, really slow, you get a little bit of distortion in there as well, so you've gotta be cognizant to that," suggesting that looking more closely may bring us further from the truththe ball was given to Virginia, the underlying logic being that the most important thing is to get the call right. Is it? What about the flow of the game, the sanity of the viewer, the unspoken understandingsI knocked it out; it's your ballthat run between players and fans, deepening the sport?

This, I will always believe, is the good stuff. Even Bostromwho is so technical that he at one point connects sports fandom to ancient Greek war and says, "You can speculate that, from an evolutionary point of view, being able to detect small differences in fitness would be valuable"agrees these intangibles are worth protecting. Even at the cost of, say, letting simulations run wild.

"You can't predict how an actual game will play out just by sort of measuring the circumference of the biceps and the speed on the treadmill of the athletes," Bostrom says. "And I think if you could predict it, in some sense it could reduce interest. It's not the same as seeing the struggle, the human spirit, the grit, the audience cheering them on."

The question, then, is not so much whether replay or sims or any other technical advance are helpful or efficient but whether we have the ability to recognize when they are aiding sports versus when they are harming them, and when the time is right to rein them in.

"Rather than just allowing everything that makes the performance better," Bostrom says, "we should think more about changes that make the game more fun and rewarding for both the players and the audience."

Are we doing this now? It's hard to say. The COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating change and the acceptance of change. It is clouding the rule-changing thought process. Already, long-standing traditions and powerful illusions have been altered across sports. After years of debate within baseball about the designated hitter, it will be implemented leaguewide as part of MLB's plan for a safe return. It is but a footnote to a much more complex story, which is fine. But also, how does the DH protect anybody from the coronavirus?

The NBA's bubble league will introduce its own oddities, though not everyone will be there to experience them firsthand. Several players have already tapped out of the NBA reboot, some fearing the virus, some having tested positive for it, some unwilling to separate from their loved ones. Others are sitting out so they can focus on social justice reform after expressing concerns that basketball could detract from those efforts. For those traveling to Disney World, it will be a lonely undertaking. Players themselves "are not permitted to enter each other's hotel rooms." Card games, if they do occur, will be monitored closely, and decks will be swapped out frequently.

Every league is drawing its own unprecedented game plan. The NFL is planning to cover the seats closest to the sidelines to keep fans away from players (though the league of course will advertise on the tarp). The NHL will reportedly route its action through two hub cities, Toronto and Edmonton. The measures that college sports will need to takeassuming anybody is on campus come Septemberfigure to be the most drastic of all.

Tech innovation will accompany each return: temperature screenings, artificial crowd noise, broadcasting from home. As quarantine warps our collective sense of time, it feels as though we've known these quirks forever. But not long ago they would have seemed quite strange, impossible, unwelcome, like somebody somewhere out there was toying with our settings.

Leo Sepkowitz joined B/R Mag in 2018. Previously, he was a Senior Writer at SLAM Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter: @LeoSepkowitz.

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The Future of Sports - Bleacher Report

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Cell Culture Protein Surface Coating Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2020-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global cell culture protein surface coating market is currently experiencing strong growth. Looking forward, the publisher expects the market to grow at a CAGR of around 12% during 2020-2025.

A cell culture protein surface coating helps in enhancing the adhesion and proliferation of different cells, such as leukocytes, neurons, epithelial and fibroblasts, in vitro isolation and cultivation process.

The inner surface of a flask or petri dish is generally coated with extracellular matrix or proteins like laminin, collagen, fibronectin and vitronectin. Cell culture enables researchers to grow animal or plant cells in a favorable artificial environment, which further assists in understanding the roles of proteins in cell attachment, migration and function. It also aids in developing model systems for research, studying cellular functions, stem cell research, drug discovery and genetic engineering.

Owing to the growing prevalence of chronic diseases, the interest of scientists and various biotechnology companies in cancer and stem cell research is escalating around the world. Stem cells are effective in treating cancer, brain diseases, cell deficiency therapy, and cardiovascular diseases. This represents one of the significant factors, which is strengthening the global cell culture protein surface coating market growth.

Apart from this, the adoption of 3D cell cultures has increased in recent years, which has also contributed to market growth. A 3D cell culture refers to a process that assists in growing biological cells in a controlled environment, wherein these cells can interact with their surroundings. Furthermore, inflating income levels and increasing healthcare expenditures are projected to strengthen the market growth in the upcoming years.

Companies Mentioned

Key Questions Answered in this Report:

Key Topics Covered:

1 Preface

2 Scope and Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Introduction

4.1 Overview

4.2 Key Industry Trends

5 Global Cell Culture Protein Surface Coating Market

5.1 Market Overview

5.2 Market Performance

5.3 Market Forecast

6 Market Breakup by Protein Source

6.1 Animal-derived Protein

6.2 Human-derived Protein

6.3 Synthetic Protein

6.4 Plant-derived Protein

7 Market Breakup by Type of Coating

7.1 Self-Coatings

7.2 Pre-Coatings

8 Market Breakup by Application

8.1 Scientific Research

8.2 Industrial Production

9 Market Breakup by Region

9.1 North America

9.2 Asia Pacific

9.3 Europe

9.4 Latin America

9.5 Middle East and Africa

10 SWOT Analysis

10.1 Overview

10.2 Strengths

10.3 Weaknesses

10.4 Opportunities

10.5 Threats

11 Value Chain Analysis

12 Porters Five Forces Analysis

12.1 Overview

12.2 Bargaining Power of Buyers

12.3 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

12.4 Degree of Competition

12.5 Threat of New Entrants

12.6 Threat of Substitutes

13 Price Indicators

14 Competitive Landscape

14.1 Market Structure

14.2 Key Players

14.3 Profiles of Key Players

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/v7pik4

Continued here:
Outlook into the Cell Culture Protein Surface Coating Global Industry to 2025 - Featuring PerkinElmer, Promega & Qiagen Among Others -...

As a species, humans are fortunate in their adaptive capacity. The technologies that make us better equipped to live in a warming world heating, air conditioning, drinking water infrastructure, and the like are part and parcel to modernity, accessible to much, though still too little, of the global population. While we can expect these technologies to become more widespread in emerging economies, there will certainly be a multitude of socioeconomic and political challenges to overcome.

Non-human nature, by contrast, is sharply limited in its capacity to adapt to climate change, and even the best-case mitigation scenarios will put massive pressure on ecosystems. In a 2C world, a full25 percentof species are at risk of regional extirpation (double that in a 4.5C world). Already, climate-related local extinctions have occurred in hundreds of species. These impacts are terrifying and poorly understood. There have been and will continue to be ecosystem thresholds that we cant predict such as the massive pine beetle outbreaks that decimated drought-stricken western forests and biodiversity loss could be worse than projected.

The time is ripe for a conversation about how humans could help adapt the natural world through more direct forms of intervention, a conversation that does not sit comfortably with the values of traditional environmentalism, which regard such intervention with reflexive wariness.

To date, the conservation community has been understandably focused on protecting habitat and reducing emissions to shield non-human life from the impacts of climate change. And while adaptation in the natural world is not a new concept there have beennumerous studies and recommendationsmade in this space direct, technology driven interventions such as translocation, genetic modification, biocontrols, and the use of human infrastructure to support ecosystems have not been part of the mainstream conversation.

Traditional conservation approaches are no longer enough

Climate change will amplify ecosystem stressors like disease, habitat degradation, and invasive species, and indeed already has. Research shows that the effectiveness of disease resistance genes may vary depending on the climate.Big blue-stem, the dominant grass species in tallgrass prairie ecosystems, had higher infection rates when exposed to larger but more infrequent precipitation events, and longer periods of drought. Pathogens may also shift their range as a result of changing conditions, as may also be true ofneedle blight, a fungal disease that impacts ponderosa pine.

Restoring degraded habitat is becoming more challenging as a result of climate change.Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, one of the largest tracts of tidal salt marsh on the West Coast, is the subject of ongoing research to determine the most effective way to restore and maintain the landscape in the face of sea level rise.

Invasive species are another threat being amplified by climate change. Many invasives are able to spread faster as the growing season is extended by earlier spring snowmelt and later fall frost onset. These harmful species are sometimes better able to match shifts in season timing than native species,for example, the invasive plant speciespurple loosestrifeis now blooming in Massachusetts much earlier than its native counterparts. This resilience can be a serious problem as it enhances the ability of invasives to outcompete native species.

On top of amplifying existing stressors, climate change is also triggering more direct impacts in especially vulnerable ecosystems. Already, the majority of tropical coral reefs are projected tosuffer significant losseseven if global warming is limited to 1.5C. The Great Barrier Reef suffered unprecedented bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, whichdamaged two thirdsof the reef, and is in the midst ofyet another the third in five years leaving little time for recovery.

Likewise, kelp forests are being decimated by aseries of connected eventstriggered by warming temperatures. These ecosystems already weakened by marine heatwaves are being devoured by booming populations of sea urchins, precipitated by warmer waters. In northern California, more than 90 percent of bull kelp was lost along 217 miles of coastline, and huge losses have also occurred off the coast of Japan, the Aleutian Islands, and Tasmania.

We need to employ intentional and direct interventions in addition to existing strategies to ensure we pursue every opportunity to prevent biodiversity loss.

Extensive terrestrial impacts are occurring as well. Globally, insect populations have plummeted, and worsening climate change could mean some40 percentof all insect species could go extinct in the coming decades. This will negatively impact the numerous insectivores that depend on them as a food source, and it threatens agricultural sectors dependent on pollinators.

While mitigating climate change and minimizing these existing stressors will be critical first steps to ensuring ecosystems are best able to withstand the worsening impacts of climate change, they are no longer enough to counter the magnitude of the threat. We need to employ intentional and direct interventions in addition to existing strategies to ensure we pursue every opportunity to prevent biodiversity loss.

Translocation

As climate change begins to shift habitats and change the range that species occupy, protected lands and wildlife corridors though critical tools wont always be sufficient. While some species are able to traverse rugged landscapes and cover vast distances, the same cannot be said for many other plants and animals. Amphibians, small mammals, and other species that are endemic to isolated areas are especially vulnerable. If species are not able to naturally disperse as their ranges shift in a changing climate, wildlife managers may need to take a more active role in physically introducing them into new areas.

Historically, wildlife managers have focused on restoring species to their past ranges, and have reintroduced captive-bred individuals to boost endemic populations. But translocation can be used for more than these past practices. It can be used to move species that are unable to disperse naturally, or else can be used as a form of ecological correction by introducing a species to fill a void created by a local extinction of a different species.

The practice is controversial, as people worry that a translocated species will become invasive in its new habitat (or transfer new pathogens) and decimate the ecosystem as a result. Predator translocation is often the most expensive and controversial of these efforts, though it is also often one of the most valuable in terms of improving ecological health by controlling herbivore populations and slowing the spread of wildlife disease.

While there is a risk of unforeseen consequences, there have also been success stories. For example, in England,the marbled white butterflywas successfully translocated to previously unoccupied habitat and was able to establish a viable population without impacting other endemic species. And theAldabra giant tortoisewas introduced to Mauritian islands to replace an extinct Mauritian tortoise species and successfully fulfilled the same seed-dispersal and vegetation-control role the original species filled.

Genetic modification

Restoration efforts will be limited as a result of climate change. Setting funding aside for restoring sand dunes damaged by hurricanes and forests damaged by wildfires will help. But restoring ecosystems to their previous state may no longer be sufficient in some areas. As impacts worsen and vulnerable species are not able to adapt quickly enough on their own, scientists may be able to prevent local extinctions by intervening via genetic modification either through genetic selection or engineering.

TheAmerican Chestnutis a paradigmatic example of a species that will most likely requiregenetic modificationbefore recovery efforts can be successful. These trees once grew up to 100 feet tall and had 10 foot diameter trunks. But in the early 1900s an imported fungus decimated the native Eastern chestnut forests wiping out 99.9 percent of the species and over 100 years later the species still hasnt recovered. That may change. By inserting a gene from wheat into a wild chestnut embryo, scientists are striving to give the vulnerable trees the ability to produce enzymes that detoxify the fungus, and these efforts have already begun to prove successful as modified experimental trees are able to withstand infection.

The black-footed ferret, another example, is extremely vulnerable to Sylvatic plague and suffers from a severe lack of genetic diversity. While captive breeding programs have been successful, these limitations make it difficult to establish populations in the wild. Genetic modification may make it possible to reintroduce lost genetic diversity and convert the vaccine for the Sylvatic plague into a permanent inheritable trait.

Genetic modification offers a host of opportunities to strengthen species that are being wiped out by worsening climate impacts as well. In forested areas damaged by bark beetle outbreaks and severe fires, it would be more effective to reforest with trees that are genetically predisposed to withstand infestations (or drought, or disease, depending on the threats identified in the region). Similar strategies are being employed across many tropical reefs, as scientistscultivate resilient lines of coralin the hopes that they will prove more resistant to the warmer temperatures and increased ocean acidification.

Such strategies could help ensure restoration investments are more secure against future impacts, highlighting the need for the field of conservation genetics as a backstop to the risk of future extinctions. Scientists can bank genetic material, map genomes, and reprogram tissue culture cells for genetic rescue efforts. TheSan Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Researchhas a genetic bank with over 10,000 living cell cultures, oocytes, sperm, and embryos representing nearly 1,000 taxa, and theSvalbard Global Seed Vaultholds over one million seed varieties in order to protect cultivated and wild plant biodiversity.

Human made infrastructure to support ecosystem function

Human infrastructure also has a role to play in conservation, especially for helping species adapt to changing precipitation patterns. In areas where changing precipitation patterns lead to more extreme rainfall events, certain manmade infrastructure can help manage runoff in order to avoid soil erosion in sensitive habitats, and can help protect the habitat of vulnerable species. For example, albatross in Tasmania are struggling to survive as chicks are killed bywarmer temperaturesand nests are washed away by sea-level rise and more frequent and severe precipitation events. Scientists are transportingartificial nestsmade of concrete and coconut fiber by helicopter to the nesting sites in order to increase the chicks chances of survival. So far, scientists have found that pairs using the artificial nests had a 20 percent higher success rate than those using natural nests.

In ecosystems hit especially hard by drought we may be able to transport additional water to help maintain function. InKenya, arid landscapes are predisposed to extended periods with little precipitation, but climate change is exacerbating poor land management to extend these dry periods even further which could spell disaster for vulnerable wildlife. Further, lack of water increases conflict between wildlife and people as ranchers struggle to support their own herds. By installing boreholes, water pipes, strategic dams, and other human made infrastructure to bring water from aquifers to the surface and manage current supply, land managers can help ensure wildlife are able to survive changing precipitation patterns.

Biocontrols

Failed biocontrol efforts are often given as cautionary tales against ecosystem intervention. In the early 2000s, the US releasednon-native beetlesto control the spread of an invasive plant called tamarisk. At the time, managers believed the beetle would only inhabit a limited range and would not be able to disperse widely an assumption that proved untrue. The beetle did spread, with the unforeseen cost of decimating the habitat of the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher. There are numerous other stories, such as the extreme failures of cane toad introduction in Australia, and mongoose introduction in Hawaii.

But while there are risks associated with biocontrol interventions, there have also been remarkable success stories. The gypsy moth, which was first brought to the US to breed with the native silkworms, escaped through an open lab window in 1868 and began to decimate deciduous trees across North America. Afungus, found to infect the moths, was discovered in Japan and brought back to the US, and eventually a strain of the fungus was found to effectively spread through the moth population. A coordinated program calledSlow the Spread Program (STS)was funded by Congress in 2000 and has reduced the spread of gypsy moths by more than 70 percent.

Using pathogens and predator species to control the increased spread of invasive species in the face of a changing climate raises several red flags. The thought of a disease jumping host species is almost as frightening as climate change itself, especially given the rapid spread of COVID-19, which scientists believe originated in a live animal market. But biocontrols have been used extensively in agriculture, and highly specialized pathogens and predator species are unlikely to expand beyond the intended target. Scientists are continuing to look for new tools to expand the use of biocontrols beyond the agriculture sector to the natural environment.

Expanding options for conservation

Healthy ecosystems increase human adaptive capacity. Healthy insect populations support the agriculture sector, healthy wetlands provide flood control and clean water, healthy forests provide stable long term carbon storage, and healthy oceans offer a critical source of protein for many developing countries. But as we observed above, humans are unique in our capacity to augment ecosystem services via direct, technology-driven interventions, which is why the impacts of climate change pose a far greater threat to wildlife and ecosystems than to people. Imported pollinators, engineered water infrastructure, and farmed seafood are just a few examples. We have only dimly begun to conceptualize the adaptive limits of the natural world, but we should employ all available tools to protect not just ourselves, but our non-human neighbors.

Lauren Anderson is a climate and energy analyst at the Breakthrough Institute. Follow her on Twitter @LaurenRAnders1. Zeke Hausfather is the Director of Climate and Energy at the Breakthrough Institute. Follow him on Twitter @hausfath

This article was originally published at the Breakthrough Institute and has been republished here with permission. Follow the Breakthrough Institute on Twitter @TheBTI

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Viewpoint: Conservation isn't enough. We need technology to blunt the impacts of climate change - Genetic Literacy Project

The Global Genome Editing/Genome Engineering Market report offers users the detailed study of the market and its main aspects. There are different marketing strategies that every marketer looks up to in order to ace the competition in the Global market. Some of the primary marketing strategies that is needed for every business to be successful are Passion, Focus, Watching the Data, Communicating the value To Your Customers, Your Understanding of Your Target Market. There is a target set in market that every marketing strategy has to reach. Some of the important aspects analyzed in the report includes market share, production, key regions, revenue rate as well as key players. This Genome Editing/Genome Engineering report also provides the readers with detailed figures at which the Genome Editing/Genome Engineering Market was valued in the historical year and its expected growth in upcoming years. Besides, analysis also forecasts the CAGR at which the Genome Editing/Genome Engineering is expected to mount and major factors driving markets growth.

This study covers following key players:Thermo Fisher ScientificMerckHorizon DiscoveryGenscriptSangamo BiosciencesIntegrated Dna TechnologiesLonzaNew England BiolabsOrigene TechnologiesTransposagen BiopharmaceuticalsEditas MedicineCrispr Therapeutics

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Global Genome Editing/Genome Engineering Market 2020 By Components, Application, Leading Players, Industry Updates, Business Prospects, Forthcoming...

Humans have been able to genetically alter the world around them for thousands of years. With the domestication of dogs at least 14,000 years ago, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been a constant feature of human society; only recently have we gained the ability to perform these modifications at the molecular level.

Even more recently, gene drive technology has fundamentally added the ability of humans to modify wild organisms, not only domesticated organisms. With the ability to make rapid, permanent changes to wild species on the near horizon, we must act now to implement policies that will carefully regulate their use while allowing for vital scientific research to continue.

While GMOs have become fundamental to the farming industry, they always have the same limitation: they must be protected and maintained on farms, in pens, or other human-maintained environments. If released into the wild, GMOs find themselves out-competed by their naturally occurring cousins, since genetic modifications made to suit human tastes (think seedless watermelons) typically have a hard time surviving in the wild. An exception to this rule is the survival of invasive species when introduced into a different environment and have no natural competition in their new habitat.

Gene drive technology now makes it possible for humans to engineer species that are currently and will remain, wild such as the mosquito. Gene drive engineering can create an artificial selective pressure to transmit the gene drive from parent to offspring at a higher rate than would naturally occur.

Eventually, offspring with the gene drive replace the unaltered form of the organism, an overwhelming natural section that would normally favor the unaltered form. This profoundly new capability makes gene drives different from GMOs which are not designed to replace wild organisms and do not have the capability to overtake wild populations if accidentally released.

Because gene drives, as tools for the management and engineering of species in the wild, are intrinsically different from GMOs, it is not adequate to regulate them like other GMOs or rely only upon the framework of existing GMO regulations. We need a series of policy goals to prevent missteps in the deployment of this powerful tool.

It is unlikely that gene drives will see direct use in agricultural crops and animals, despite the agricultural application being the main concern of gene drive opposers. Such cultivated species are already under de facto genetic control by farmers who decide which animals to breed and which seeds are sown. As such, a gene drive in farmed species would be a very expensive and complex way to achieve something already possible through conventional agricultural methods.

It is, however, quite likely that gene drives will soon be used to control malaria, either to suppress malaria-carrying mosquito populations or genetically alter them such that they are unable to transmit malaria to humans. Should this public health application prove to be safe and beneficial, further applications of gene drives may soon follow. Another near-term application could be to control agricultural pest species such as leafhoppers or aphids in order to improve crop yield.

The management of human-influenced species with gene drives presents a potential flashpoint where conflicting economic and environmental interests intersect. We define human-influenced species as those that live and breed wild but are harvested heavily by humans. In other words, humans do not actively alter the environment of these species for agricultural purposes, but human harvesting activities have direct and indirect impacts on their population dynamics. Oceanic fish are an example of human-influenced species. These fish may live and travel across international and national territorial waters, and thus the release of a gene drive in these species would result in significant and competing economic interests. The ability of genes to drive fish to move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction presents a unique problem to international biodiversity protocols.

With the first release of gene drives for malaria control is likely to occur within the next 5-10 years, there is a need for immediate national regulation of gene drives and a need for broad international harmonization of gene drive regulation. While great care has been taken by researchers to safely and ethically advance malaria control gene drive research, explicit regulation is required to mitigate risks from future efforts and to hold all deployable gene drives to appropriate standards.

As we have experienced during COVID-19 with poorly functioning antibody tests, a loose regulatory environment can lead to products entering the market that have not been properly validated. In the case of gene drives, a loose regulatory environment could lead to irreversible damage to wild ecosystems.

The U.S. government should create nationally-mandated tiered registries of gene drive research. Coordinated, nationally-mandated registries would allow for the fast adoption of clear gene drive documentation. In time, the multiple national registries can hopefully be harmonized into a single international registry. These registries should be tiered in such a way that gene drives that are closer to possible deployment must report more detailed information than research projects that are in the exploratory phase.

As projects approach deployment, public transparency and independent review become more important considering the potential for gene drives to radically alter a wild environment. To realize the potential benefits of this technology, we now must act practically, proactively, and carefully to regulate their progress from small-scale research all the way through large-scale deployment.

Michael Montague, Ph.D. is a senior scholar and Amanda Kobokovich, MPH is a senior analyst at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The authors recently published a report Gene Drives: Pursuing Opportunities, Minimizing Risk.

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Soon we'll be able to engineer the wild, can the policies keep up with the science? | TheHill - The Hill

A team of quantitative biology researchers from Northwestern Engineering and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences has uncovered new insights into the impact of stochasticity in gene expression, offering new evolutionary clues into organismal design principles in the face of physical constraints.

In cells, genes are expressed through transcription, a process where genetic information encoded in DNA is copied into messenger RNA (mRNA). The mRNA is then translated to make protein molecules, the workhorses of cells. This entire process is subject to bursts of natural stochasticity or randomness which can impact the outcome of biological processes that proteins carry out.

The researchers' new experimental and theoretical analyses studied a collection of genes in Drosophila, a family of fruit flies, and found that gene expression is regulated by the frequency of these transcriptional bursts.

It has been known for almost two decades that protein levels can demonstrate large levels of stochasticity owing to their small numbers, but this has never been empirically demonstrated in multicellular organisms during the course of their development, said Madhav Mani, assistant professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at the McCormick School of Engineering. This work for the first time identifies the role of randomness in altering the outcome of a developmental process.

A paper outlining the work, titled The Wg and Dpp Morphogens Regulate Gene Expression by Modulating the Frequency of Transcriptional Bursts, was published in the journal eLife. Mani is a co-corresponding author on the study along with Richard Carthew, professor of molecular biosciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Both are members of Northwesterns NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology, which brings together mathematical scientists and developmental biologists to investigate the biology of animal development.

This study builds upon a recent paper in which the researchers studied the role of stochastic gene expression on sensory pattern formation in Drosophila. By analyzing experimental perturbations of Drosophilas senseless gene against mathematical models, the team determined the sources of the genes stochasticity, and found that the randomness appears to be leveraged in order to accurately determine sensory neuron fates.

The researchers applied that understanding to this latest study using a technique called single molecule fluorescence in situ hybridization (smFISH) to measure nascent and mature mRNA in genes downstream of two key patterning factors, Wg and Dpp, responsible for the organ development of fruit fly wings. In comparing the measurements to their data models, the researchers found that, while each genes pattern of expression is unique, the mechanism by which expression is regulated which the team named burst frequency modulation is the same.

Our results show that proteins levels of randomness are impacted by the physical structure of the genome surrounding the gene of interest by modulating the features of the software that control the levels of gene expression, Mani said. We developed an experimental approach to study a large collection of genes in order to discern overall trends as to how the stochastic software of gene regulation is itself regulated.

The observed patterns of gene regulation, Mani said, works like a stochastic light switch.

Lets say you are quickly flipping a light switch on and off, but you want more brightness out of your bulb. You could either get a brighter bulb that produced more photons per unit time, or you could leave the switch on more than off, Mani said. What we found is that organisms control the amount of gene expression by regulating how often the gene is permitted to switch on, rather than making more mRNAs when it is on.

Carthew, director of the Center for Quantitative Biology, added that this mode of gene expression regulation was observed for multiple genes, which hints at the possibility of a broader biological principle where quantitative control of gene expression leverages the random nature of the process.

From these studies, we are learning rules for how genes can be made more or less noisy, Carthew said. Sometimes cells want to harness the genetic noise the level of variation in gene expression to make randomized decisions. Other times cells want to suppress the noise because it makes cells too variable for the good of the organism. Intrinsic features of a gene can imbue them with more or less noise.

While engineers are excited by the ability to control and manipulate biological systems, Mani said, more fundamental knowledge needs to be discovered.

We only know the tip of the iceberg, Mani said. We are far from a time when basic science is considered complete and all that is left is engineering and design. The natural world is still hiding its deepest mysteries.

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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New Insights Into the Impact of Stochasticity in Gene Expression - Technology Networks

Imagine there was a single method for making just about any product in the worldplastics,food,medicine,data storage devices, evena brain-computer interfaces. Now imagine that this method was faster, cheaper, and more sustainable than conventional manufacturing. Sounds like science fiction, right?

Its not science fiction: itssynthetic biology, a field that uses biology as a manufacturing platform. Using the latest gene-editing techniques, synthetic biology can program yeast and bacteria into tiny cellular factories capable of making an endless range of products. Its also the driving force behindthe $4 trillion bioeconomy, with great promise for building a more sustainable and abundant world.

Compared to sectors like pharmaceuticals and industrial chemicals, synthetic biology is relatively young. About 150 companies on Crunchbase describe themselves using the term synthetic biology, although SynBioBeta tracks more than 700 companies in the field. These early adopters either manufacture their own products with synthetic biology or provide synbio tools and technologies to help other companies transform the way they make things.

Early innovators in synthetic biology have had to get creative to grow not just their own businesses, but the industry as a wholeand perhaps few companies have contributed more to the industrys growth than Ginkgo Bioworks.

Ginkgo Bioworks is in a class of companies like Genomatica,Arzeda,Conagen,Zymergen, andAmyrisAMRSthat provides biotech infrastructure and servicesthe back-end of the synthetic biology industry. Rather than produce final products itself, Ginkgo designs and engineers microbes for a wide range of customer needs, from cannabinoid-producing bacteria to yeast that ferment next-generation food proteins.

Inside of Ginkgo Bioworks.

While Ginkgo believes that its microbes could one day produce virtually any physical good, most of Ginkgos would-be customers have relied for decades on traditional petrochemical or agricultural means of production. But Ginkgo isnt waiting for the slow, gradual adoption of synthetic biology by old-world players. Instead, its bringing its biology-based approach to the market by creating its own demand.

Already,Ginkgo has announced three spin-outs and strategic investments:

In February 2019 GinkgolaunchedMotif Foodworks with a $90 million Series A, the largest in food tech history. This spin-out is using microbes to provide next-generation alternative proteins and other ingredients to food companies, showing the holistic view Ginkgo takes in the synthetic biology market. Ginkgo spun out Motif to develop and manufacture animal-free food ingredients, betting that plant-based meats and alternative dairy products would grow into a lucrative market. As part of this spin-out, a servicing agreement positioned Ginkgo as the provider of the microbes that Motif would use to manufacture its products.

Depending on the project, a subsidiary like Motif might have access to Ginkgos platform and technology at no cost. Alternatively, the investment may have dollars specifically earmarked for Ginkgos services, resulting in an immediate, new revenue-paying customer. Regardless of the initial financial arrangement, Ginkgo successfully created both a promising investment and a reliable future customer in one ambitious move.

Joyn Bio is a joint ventureannouncedin March 2018 and funded to the tune of $100 million by agricultural giantBayer, Ginkgo, and Viking Global Investors. The Joyn Bio venture carries technological benefits as well, with 100,000 of Bayers proprietary microbial strains being shared with Gingko. These strains can now be incorporated into Ginkgos internal metagenomics database. Even without explicit IP transfer, Ginkgo gets to flex its technological and commercial muscles in the context of a new industry.

In the pharmaceutical industry, Ginkgo has invested $80 million in its partner Synlogic, which will use Ginkgos cell programming platform to accelerate Synlogics pipeline of living medicines. Both companies believe that the ability to program living cells to sense and respond to treat complex diseases has great potential, possibly transforming the next generation of pharmaceuticals.

We have been working with Ginkgo for over two years now, said Aoife Brennan, Synlogic CEO. We initially started with a pilot project that went so well, we expanded our collaboration.

Brennan says Synlogic has really benefited as a company from working with Ginkgo. Having access to Ginkgos expertise and foundry services has allowed us to initiate more projects and to make sure that we are moving the best synthetic biotics into further development.

Brennan says that Ginkgo is not just a good collaborator, it also shares her companys values. Both of our companies share a passion for synthetic biology and making a positive impact on the world.

As Ginkgo seeks to attract customers in new markets, spin-outs and investments like Motif, Joyn Bio, and Synlogic demonstrate to other big players how synthetic biology is going to disrupt industries like food, agriculture, and pharmaand how synthetic biology can be used to transform their own businesses.

With this business model successfully piloted, Ginkgo has begun building a pipeline of promising biotech start-ups poised to be users of its microbial design platform. Partnering with start-up incubatorsY CombinatorandPetri, Ginkgo offers select start-ups access to its services in exchange for equity. The start-ups benefit from access to a technology stack that can save them large amounts of capital and time that would otherwise be sunk into building their own microbial design infrastructure.

Ginkgo Bioworks was the first life sciences company YC funded, back in 2014, Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman told me. We believed early on that what they were building would help power the next generation of synbio startups, and its been impressive to see them execute on that mission.

Friedman says that Ginkgo is making it cheaper and easier for new companies to get started by providing them with a platform that makes engineering biology easier.

We have a shared vision for the future, one in which bio startups are as easy to start as software startups, where founders dont have to spend years and millions of dollars booting up a genetic engineering lab, said Friedman. Were proud to be part of Ginkgos continuing work to make this the standard.

Further enhancing this early pipeline of start-ups which rely on Ginkgos platform, the company recentlyannouncedthe creation of a $350 million Ferment Fund. The Ferment Fund will spin out additional companies into promising markets identified by the Ginkgo team. Not only do these investments provide Ginkgo with a stake in promising biotech firms, but they also enable Ginkgo to support the growth of a synbio ecosystem reliant on its platform.

In a demonstration of the flexibility of the companys technology platform, as well as its commitment to help in the fight against the coronavirus, Ginkgo recently took several actions to help scale the research communitys response to the pandemic.

Ginkgo announcedConcentric, a program to offer COVID-19 testing at scale to support schools and businesses in their reopening strategies. Concentric can provide end-to-end, on-site testing services for organizations that seek to make testing available to their communities.

Testing is essential for understanding and stopping the spread of the virus, Ginkgo said in anop/ed. By repurposing its next-generation sequencing capacity to rapidly scale testing, Ginkgo hopes to turn the tide.

In March, Ginkgopledged$25 million of its research and development resources to help researchers battling the coronavirus. Ginkgo has used its DNA synthesis capabilities to make the viruss sequences freely available for use in R&D for diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines. Ginkgo also is a part of aBerkeley Lightsconsortium for antibody discovery and testing, helping to scale up infrastructure for antibody lead optimization.

As synthetic biology start-ups grow, they will continue to lean on Ginkgos platform for microbial design, since developing in-house capabilities will appear increasingly redundant with each successful Ginkgo collaboration. In this way, Ginkgo will have created a robust ecosystem of companies modeled after its own Motif Foodworks, full of start-ups that excel at developing and biomanufacturing final products while they outsource their microbial design to the Ginkgo Bioworks mothership.

Follow me on Twitter at@johncumbersand@synbiobeta. Subscribe to my weekly newsletters onsynthetic biology. Thank you toMatthew Kirshnerfor additional research and reporting in this article. Im the founder ofSynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write aboutincluding Ginkgo Bioworksare sponsors of theSynBioBeta conferenceandweekly digestheres the full list of SynBioBeta sponsors.

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If Biology Can Build It, They Will Come: Ginkgo Bioworks Is Laying The Foundation For The $4 Trillion Bioeconomy - SynBioBeta

By: Education Desk | New Delhi | Updated: July 2, 2020 2:25:48 pm Panjab University admissions 2020: Apply at admissions.puchd.ac.in till August 8

Panjab University admissions 2020: The Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh has invited applications for admission to various UG/ PG courses for the academic session 2020-21. The interested candidates should apply online by August 8, 2020. The online window to apply for various varsity courses will be operational from July 8.

The weblink for filling of online admission for undergraduate/ certificate courses is ugadmissions.puchd.ac.in and for postgraduate/ diploma/ advance diploma/ postgraduate diploma courses is onlineadmissions.puchd.ac.in, read the varsity release.

READ | Heres what to expect from UGCs new guidelines

The candidates will have to appear in the entrance exam to secure a seat in their desired courses. The dates of the entrance exam will be announced later.

Eligibility: The candidates with a minimum of 50 per cent marks in the Bachelors programme can apply for the entrance examination. For category-wise minimum marks requirement, please check the official notification.

Age limit: There is no prescribed age limit for the UG, PG courses. For details, please check the official notification.

PU-CET: Check paper pattern

The dates of entrance exam will be announced soon. Candidates will have to answer 75 multiple choice-based questions within the duration of 1.5 hours. Each question will be of one mark each. For every wrong answer, 0.4 marks will be deducted.

Syllabus

MA Punjabi: Punjabi culture and literature, advanced Punjabi conversation, Punjabi dramas and plays, modern age Punjabi poets, culture and heritage, literature, fair and festivals, Punjabi language, grammar and Gurmukhi

MSc Mathematics: An MCQ-based test with 100 questions each for two hours duration will be conducted wherein candidates will be assessed on mathematical skills, mathematics education, general English language, reasoning and mental ability, and general awareness.

Read |As colleges prep to reopen, some campuses to act as isolated spaces, many to offer COVID scholarships

MSc Biochemistry: The syllabus includes essential molecules of life, proteins and enzymes, metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleotides, cell biology, membrane Biology and Bioenergetics Human Physiology and Hormones, gene organisation, replication, DNA repair, transcription and gene expression, concepts in genetics, genetic engineering and biotechnology, and immunology

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Kiik said: "We met with Martin Kadai on Tuesday for an hour and a half and we spoke on a lot of topics. During the conversation he informed me that he had previously written a letter of resignation and was strongly considering it."

The social minister added he asked Kadai to reconsider his decision and he would have liked to see the head of the Emergency Medicine Department continue but Kadai stayed true to his decision.

Kiik expressed hope Kadai will find employment in the Estonian health care sector because he has made significant contributions to it over the last three years.

Kadai's last working day will be July 5.

Although Kadai did not directly state the reason for leaving, it is related to the recent events in the office, which also removed the head of the Health Board Merike Jrilo.

Jriloannounced her resignationon June 18 saying she was disappointed by comments made by social minister Tanel Kiik todaily newspaper Postimees(link in Estonian), referring to a lack of trust between the board and the government, as the reason for her resignation.

Answering a question on whether Kadai has another position lined up and if it could be the Ministry of Social Affairs, Kiik said: "Not to my knowledge."

Mari-Anne Hrma appointed acting director general of Health Board

Mari-Anne Hrma, head of the infectious disease monitoring and epidemic control department at the Estonian Health Board, is to become the Health Board's acting director general from Thursday.

Minister of Social Affairs Tanel Kiik said: "Mari-Anne Hrma has been participating in the work of the Health Board's crisis headquarters since the start of the coronavirus crisis, she has a good overview of the Health Board's objectives and operations and she is well informed about the entire health care system.

"Additionally, Hrma also has a strong professional background and the relevant expert knowledge of the health care field. I wish her strength in taking on this role of great responsibility during this critical time when then spread of the coronavirus has decelerated for the summer period, however, work at detecting new infections must continue and preparations need to be carried out for a possible new wave."

Hrma said: "Looking at statistics on the spread of the virus, we're currently in a more relaxed period; however, the Health Board is keeping a close eye on both domestic as well as foreign epidemiological developments.

"I deem it important that my crisis-weary colleagues be able to properly rest and recover this summer, which has also been made possible by the present situation. At the same time, we are making preparations together with the ministry and other agencies for the possibility of the coronavirus starting to spread more widely now that many states are relaxing their restrictions."

Hrma holds a master's degree in genetic engineering from the University of Tartu and is currently pursuing a doctorate in biomedicine at the University of Helsinki.

Hrma, who began work in her current position at the Health board in January 2020, is a member of the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Finnish Diabetes Research Foundation, editor for the journal Clinical and Translational Allergy and member of the European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes.

The new director general of the Health Board will be appointed by the Government Office's civil service committee for selection of top managers. Harma has been named acting director general of the Health Board until a new director general is appointed to office.

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Behaviour is satellite responses to its environment generated by our social brain the system which we consider as mind. Mind endeavour over persuasion on which behaviour develops. Our characters are responses of some hormones produce in the cell of different gland. The shift in concentration of hormones leads to change in character.

This article reviews various effects of hormones on our physiological status and hence behavioural responses. All the body hormones produced by body cell are actually controlled and managed by the genes present in the cell. As the brain (hypothalamus) sense any character or any situation it sends the response to various hormone glands and the glands synthesis the protein as per the command of active gene.

Depending upon the circumstances behavioural response shifts vary wisely. As the behaviour is controlled by the hormones, the genes which are modulating hormones synthesis must be switching off and on as per response from brain. Specific hormone for the specific task of behaviour is produced under the command of brain. We have tried to establish a relationship between behaviour and genes so that a new study should carry out in the motive to control the gene activity by the mode of behaviour psychology. The word Acharangenetics can be used to express the relation of behaviour psychology and genes. The wordAcharangeneticsis a compound word, form by combination of two words Acharan Hindi origin word meaning behaviour and the second word is genetics the study of heredity.

The strength of any construction is understood by its pillars which are multidisciplinary in nature. To hold its existence one has to focus on its sub fundamental phenomenon, that is, behaviour. According to psychology, behaviour comprises of satellite responses to its environment generated by our social brain (Frith, C. D., 2007) the system which we consider as mind. The conscious exercise of faculty and thought are considered very important for development of mind. Mind endeavour over persuasion on which behaviour develops. Psychological practice is very commonly performed by psychologist in order to provide counselling to a person living life with some non-productive state of mind (Strong et al., 1992).

Hence, counselling can help a person to generate positive psychology, and stabilize the social life of a person with any social psychological disturbance (Harris et al., 2007). Our characters are responses of some hormones produce in the cell of different gland. The shift in concentration of hormones leads to change in character. This article reviews various effects of hormones on our physiological status and hence behavioural responses. Body hormones produced by body cell are actually controlled and managed by the genes present in the cell. As the brain (hypothalamus) sense any character or any situation it sends the response to various hormone glands (Knobil, et al., 1980; Schally, et al., 1973) and the glands synthesis the protein as per the command of active gene.

Depending upon the circumstances behavioural response shifts vary wisely. As the behaviour is controlled by the hormones, the genes which are modulating hormones synthesis must be switching off and on as per response from brain. Specific hormone for the specific task of behaviour is producd as per program under the command of brain. We have tried to establish a relationship between behaviour and genes so that a new study should carry out in the motive to control the gene activity by the mode of behaviour psychology.

Counselling psychology is very much practice in the field of academic, in the field of sports for motivating sportsman and for helping the one who is trying to come back after injury (Webster et al., 2008) or in the area of medical for strengthening the depress state of the patients suffering from chronic diseases like cancer (Watson et al.,1988; Sheard, T., & Maguire, P., 1999), diabetes (Snoek et al., 2002) or in any chronic diseases (Karademas et al., 2009) that has harassed the health as well as the mental stability of patients. Moreover, it is widely used in people who are handling life defeat mentality (Silbert et al., 1991). They are found to be very much effective in uplifting the level of psyche.

In psychology, human nature and motivation have been discussed very extensively. Freud believed that behind every human activity there is the instinctual drive that works as a motivating factor that bring upon types of human behaviour. Psychology is a science of behaviour that is observable. It also means an objective science that depends on the experimental and observable data. All human action and behaviour are the outcome of the physiological and neurological reaction in the human body. This fact also reveals that human behaviours are nothing more than the way man responses to stimuli that come from the environment.

Behaviourists accept determinism in their version of psychology. They deem that every human response can be predicted in relation to the type of stimulus that triggers mans responses. Some of our motives to act are biological, while others have personal and social origins. We are motivated to seek food, water, and sex, but our behaviour is also influenced by social approval, acceptance, the need to achieve, and the motivation to take or to avoid risks, to name a few (Morsella, Bargh, & Gollwitzer, 2009).

Furthermore, during motivation our body gene regulation work on activation of genes that is good in handling stress. And there are some genes that are responsible for the production of dopamine a motivation molecule, that provides the drive and focus you need to accomplish your tasks in the most productive way. This hormone is primarily involved with the attention span, focus and motivation. It is a neurohormone that is released by the hypothalamus. Lack of dopamine in the body is associated with symptoms like fatigue, lack of focus, difficulty in concentrating, forgetfulness, insomnia and lack of motivation.

When dopamine isnt regulated properly, it can contribute to a dysfunctional pursuit of good feelings, such as occurs in addictions, or lead to a hyperactive state like Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). These conditions are generally associated with an increased risk of early death, rather than longevity, but the latest study suggests that risk genes for certain problems in some environments may be beneficial in other situations.

In humans, dopamine neurotransmission is influenced by functional polymorphisms in the dopamine transporter (DAT-1) and catechol-Omethyl transferase (COMT) genes. The COMT and DAT-1 genes was found in the ventral striatum and lateral prefrontal cortex during reward anticipation and in thelateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices as well as in the mid-brain at the time of reward delivery, with carriers of the DAT-1-9 repeat allele and COMT met/met allele exhibiting the highest activation, presumably reflecting functional change consequent to higher synaptic dopamine availability.

The origin of motivation can be felt as either internal as push motivation or external as pull motivation. Push motivation is depicted in terms of biological variables arising in a persons nervous system and mind psychological variables that represent attributes of a persons mind, such as psychological needs. A person has the capability to channelize its motivation and stress hormones concentration by the mode of imagination. And if a person thought is responsible for its hormone concentration, then the person thought or imagination may affect an individual gene regulation. And this gene regulation is a background of push motivation.

Pull motivation is understood in terms of environmental variables that describe external sources of motivation, like incentives or goals. Our internal sources of motivation interact with external sources to direct behaviour (Deckers, 2014). Moreover, it may happen that this external effort implants an idea in a person which allows creating a thought process rising to an imagination.

Furthermore, this imagination leads to affect the body serum metabolite concentration and signalling metabolite modulates the process of gene regulation and gene expression. Hence, it will lead to regulation to the activity of stress handling and risk handling genes (Yashin, et al., 2012). And this leads to the production of hormones such as dopamine, oxytocinetc that are responsible to manage the level of external motivation or push motivation. This system can be observed in the field of extensive sports like boxing and rugby, where coach try to motivate the energy and skills of the player by mentoring with either using sound modulation or by some moral thought related to winning or losing.

Our evolutionary history also explains aspects of motivated behaviour, and our individual personal histories shed light on how our lifelong experiences shape our motives and determine the utility of goals and incentives.

Physiological needs like hunger, thirst, sex or some desire on the basis needs are also the biological beginnings that eventually manifest themselves as a psychological drive in a persons subjective awareness. These biological events become psychological motives. It is important to distinguish the physiological need from the psychological drive it creates because only the later has motivational properties.

The drive theory of motivation tells us that physiological needs originate in our bodies. As our physiological system attempts to maintain health, it registers in our brain a psychological drive to satisfy a physiological craving and motivates us to bring the system from deficiency toward homeostasis (Reeve, 2018). Likewise, the person who motivates themselves for the personal fitness must be channelizing their serum hormones effect. This desire might be helping them to initiate a program of self-caring; a necessity in order to keep up with personal health. As people are not under control for good diet or healthy life style; personal motivation is necessary. The biological need turns into a psychological motive when the drive to satisfy it interferes with our normal functioning by increasing tension until the need is satisfied.

Behavioural feature in relation to social interaction has performed wonders in the field of medical science. Some aspects are visible through the lenses of science but some are the trades of invisible energy. Placebo effect is among that invisible behavioural energy which has stuns the eyes of many thinkers. As per the Stimulus substitution models posit that placebo responses are due to pairings of conditional and unconditional stimuli (Montgomery et al., 1997). This Condition is either created by people or may be a natural place. The placebo effect has a very vital consequence on the synthesis of metabolites in body and in functioning of hormonal glands. Placebo effect gives rise in endorphin release (Levine et al., 1978) and drop down the symptoms of anxiety (Sternbach et al., 1968.), classical conditioning (Wickramasekera et al., 1980), and response expectancy (Kirsch, et al., 1985; Kirsch et al., 1990.).

However, Montgomery and Kirsch (1996) described data that are hard to reconcile with the hypothesis that placebo responses are mediated by such global mechanisms as anxiety reduction or the release of endogenous opioids. It has been found that it can be used as a local anaesthetic.

Genetics states that, what we express as a character, whether its behaviour or phenotype it is just a pre-programmed stimulus of genes on its switching circumstances. And the circumstances could be behavioural or environmental. The change may arise sooner or later, depends on the degree of gene regulation.

On the other hand, the arising of any action or the way someone conduct them self in response to others action is judge during psychological practice. It has been observed that the change in mood, action and development of thought triggers the secretion of different metabolite, by different gland present in different parts of brain and body. The effect of any action could be seen all over the body, such as; at the time of anger the whole body share the heat arise from anger; at the stage of happiness we can feel comfort and energetic and at the stage of meditation we can feel peace. These kicks off of anger can take place by others behavioural activity but its onset initiates the production of adrenaline and noradrenaline cortisol, which anger are causing hormones. Similarly, the state of happiness is the result of production of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin. Likewise, the action of meditation kicks off the production of all good hormones required by the body to be at peace.

The effect of these hormones on whole body can only be seen if these hormones are well distributed in the body cell. Whenever any hormone enters into cell it creates a signalling response which moves from cell cytoplasm to the nucleus. And nucleus is the place where the key genetic material which codes for the behaviour of cell the structural unit of organism.

Psychology and metabolism are mutually related to each other. Any change in psych will trigger the synthesis of different hormones or metabolite or its responsible for the alteration in concentration of metabolite or hormones. And in normal condition of outer environment, social environment and diet intake, the physiological status of a person is found to be normal. Hence, the metabolite concentration is also balanced. As soon as there is any change in the environment (social/environmental) of a person, metabolite and hormonal response changes. Hence there are vital changes in person behaviour or in its health status. There is certain situation where organism has to behave against their natural character. This situation is either created by the social environment or unpredictably. Table 1 listed some of the real life situation and various responses of body metabolism

Moreover, there are situation which are either created or present naturally and are responsible for generating some rare characters in organism. As in a situation for survival some people develop very high spirit to stay alive and start working against their nature. They are found to handle stress condition with an attitude of solving it and bring out anything good as per the things available. This can be the situation of specific activation of stress handling genes by the mode of gene regulation (Yashin, et al., 2012). This regulation tends to modulate behaviour in an organism as presented in Table 2. Hence, such people are found to be having great surviving skills and a behaviour of handling tough situation.

The character whichis in phenotype form or specific social behaviour is actually a command program of the genes present in our DNA. The happening of any behaviour and expression is basically the activity of genes. Hence, learning, expression or behaving could be on and off of genes activity. This on and off of genes is understand by the terminology of gene regulationLikewise, the metabolite or hormones are actually functional protein which produces bytaking the referencefrom the coded information, by various genes in DNA of an organism. Furthermore, the behaviour of person is more likely influenced by the metabolite and hormones. Hencehuman behaviour is more likely to be as concentration of different biochemical or its just based on switching on or switching off of different genes responsible for different character which are control by production of functional protein. Hence, whenever there is activation of any gene there is activation of a specific function which contributes in any biochemical reaction throughout the body. There arenumerous biochemical reactions going on in the bodyeachactually channelize by the metabolic protein produce by the activation of genes of an organism. Apparently, the origin of basic behaviour characteris trigger by genes e.g.in infant we can observe some facial expression and actionInfants are not taught about behaviour, some of them are basically inherited by birthwhich are trigger by genes.

Moreover,if any human psychological disorder generated either by environmental or social stress are responsible for the alteration of functional protein such as hormones and metabolites. Functional protein is only produce by the activation of genes. In a nutshell genes are responsible for behaviour psychology butbehaviour psychology also holds the capacity to influence the activity of genes. Therefore, behaviour psychology at its best possible organised way may have the efficiency to govern and channelizes the activity of genes. Hence, after recognising the complete relation between psychology and genes by the connection of metabolism we can elaborate new area of study either in the field of genetic engineering or in the field of behaviour psychology.Acharangenetics(Acharan + genetics) word can be used to express the relation of behaviour psychology and genes. The wordAcharangeneticsis a compound word, form by combination of two words Acharan a Hindi origin word meaning behaviour and the second word is genetics which is the study of heredity.

Research Questions: The research questions are:

> Can we effect gene regulation by the mode of behaviour psychology?

> Can we use behaviour psychology as a genetic regulation tool?

> As genes activation affect the behaviour and create a person personality characters, can it happen that moulding someones character results in gene regulation?

Answers to the Question

The behaviour of a person is the expression of genes. The change in behaviour by the action of word may generate such hormones which leads to the expression of different genes in the individual which codes for such protein that either alter or generate new character in an individual. Hence, the transformation of human behaviour from a child to a mature person could be response of expression of genes by certain behavioural activities. A talk between two people regarding certain mutual adjustment in behaviour could be another example of gene expression of desired characters by using concept of mutual understanding of requirements. Hence, psychology can be used as a tool for expression of specific genetic traits. If social interaction and genes both affect metabolism, then they might be interacting each other. Metabolic pathway is a connective link in many biological processes therefore; it may happen that there might be a relation between genetics and behavioural psychology. If behaviour psychology can affect genes activity, then we can use it as a tool for expression of specific genetic traits. Any effect to a person during social interaction create certain level of change in its hormones or functional protein concentration lifting the mood or results in stress conditions.

*About the authors: Rajan Keshri, Harpreet Kaur and Dr Gursharan Singh Kainth, Guru Arjan Dev Institute of Development Studies

REFERENCES

Table 1: Hormone Impact on Behaviour and Body at Different Stress Situation.

Table 2: Some Examples of Hormones and Their Effects on Human Body and Behaviour.

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Acharangenetics: Behavior Psychology As Gene Regulation Tool - Analysis - Eurasia Review

Peers are preparing plans to legalise the gene-editing of crops in England, a move that scientists say would offer the nation a chance to develop and grow hardier, more nutritious varieties. The legislation would also open the door to gene-editing of animals.

The change will be proposed when the current Agriculture Bill reaches its committee stages in the House of Lords next month, and is supported by a wide number of peers who believe such a move is long overdue. At present, the practice is highly restricted by EU regulations.

The plan would involve introducing an amendment to the bill to give the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs the power to make changes to the Environmental Protection Act, alterations that would no longer restrict gene-editing in England. The rest of the UK would need separate legislation.

Gene-editing of plants and animals is controlled by the same strict European laws that govern genetically modified (GM) organisms. However, scientists say gene-editing is cheaper, faster, simpler, safer and more precise than GM technology.

As they point out, GM technology involves the transfer of entire genes or groups of genes from one species to another while the more recently developed techniques of gene-editing merely involve making slight changes to existing genes in a plant or animal and are considered to be just as safe as traditional plant breeding techniques.

Early benefits for UK agriculture could include gluten-free wheat, disease-resistant sugar beet and potatoes that are even healthier than those that we have now, said plant scientist Professor David Baulcombe of Cambridge University.

This enthusiasm is also shared by peers who have argued that the wide use of gene editing of crops could give the nation a key advantage in agriculture and in the food industry after Brexit.

Peers have argued gene editing could give the nation a key advantage after Brexit

I would like [to send] a clear message in this bill that we will move forward to allow gene editing in our research programmes, said Lord Cameron during last weeks reading of the bill. This is a way of speeding up the natural methods of farm breeding to ensure that we can improve the environmental and nutritional outcomes of feeding our ever-expanding human population.

And there was clear evidence that the government would also be sympathetic to such a move. On gene editing, the government agrees that the EU approach is unscientific, said Lord Gardiner, who was responding for the government.

By freeing gene-editing from the expensive restrictions imposed by the EU on the growing of GM plants it will also be possible for small and medium-sized enterprises to set up new projects, say supporters.

At present only major corporations can pay the costs of the rigorous trials required when growing GM plants. We are looking for a brighter, greener, more innovative future, and this bill helps farmers produce that, said Conservative peer Lord Dobbs last week.

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Lords seek to allow gene-editing in UK 'to produce healthy, hardier crops' - The Guardian