StemCell Therapy

New pet food companies are springing up to meet what they say is growing demand for plant-based, sustainable alternatives to Fancy Feast and Kibbles N Bits.

By making products from fermented fungus and experimenting with lab-grown food from animal cells and microbes, alternative pet food makers are hoping to carve out a share of the $30 billion U.S. pet food market.

And multibillion-dollar pet food companies, like Mars Petcare and Nestl-owned Purina, are starting to take notice.

Our mission is almost the exact same as Impossible Foods, which is [to] reduce or eliminate factory farming, which has this giant environmental footprint, said Josh Errett, CFO of Because Animals, one of the companies developing new pet foods. I mean, calling it a footprint is too nice, its an environmental disaster.

The other mission is to make a profit. These companies are catering to pet owners who value their ecological footprint and have the income to pay for an alternative product that tends to be more expensive than a can of Pedigree.

Pulling away from factory farming

A UCLA study from 2017 by Professor Gregory Okin estimated that dog and cat food accounts for the release of millions of tons of the greenhouse gases methane and CO2 and constitutes about 25%30% of the environmental impacts from animal production in terms of the use of land, water, fossil fuel, phosphate and biocides.

Like plant-based market leaders Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, alternative pet food companies say their product will reduce the amount of land and energy used for conventional meat production.

Industrial animal farming, or concentrated animal feed operations, produce large amounts of byproducts and off-cuts like organs and bone meal which are not usually used in human food, but are re-purposed for pet food production.

The goal is to cut factory farming out of the supply chain completely without a market for the unused parts, the meat industry would collapse due to lost revenue, Errett said.

But many large pet food companies defend their use of animal byproducts.

One might argue that this is actually a super sustainable source, because were using materials that most of us wouldnt consume and would be wasted, said Richard Butterwick, global nutrition advisor at the Waltham Petcare Science Institute, a research center for Mars Petcare.

Because Animals along with another company, Wild Earth are using cellular technology to culture real meat from animal cells biopsied from living creatures. The cells are encouraged to proliferate and reproduce in a bioreactor, creating muscle protein without the need to slaughter animals. This process is also being used by more than 30 companies worldwide to develop clean or lab-grown meat for human consumption.

Next year, both Because Animals and Wild Earth hope to release their first cell-grown cat foods, made of cultured mouse meat.

Were getting back to what the cats system was built to digest, Errett said. You dont have to add taurine or anything back, you can make an ancestral diet.

A cat owner himself, Errett wanted to address the ultra-processed nature of a lot of the conventional cat food, or as he calls it biological waste. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they need to eat meat to get the 11 essential amino acids they require or they could have serious health problems like blindness or even death.

By culturing animal meat in a lab, these companies can genetically control what nutrients present in the food. They can also eliminate potentially dangerous substances that have made their way into some conventional pet foods. Some popular pet foods companies have had to recall their products in recent years due to toxic levels of Vitamin D and even the euthanasia drug sodium pentobarbital.

Will pet owners buy lab-grown mouse meat for their cats?

Beyond Meat increased its revenues by 250% between 2018 and 2019; consumers are taking an interest in the health and environmental benefits promoted by plant-based foods. Pet owners are showing that they will pay more for luxury and premium pet foods.

Wild Earth is making dog food from cultured fungi proteins and, according to CEO Ryan Bethencourt, revenue is growing steadily even though production is still relatively small.

This plant-based type of cultured pet food, already on the market, is much more expensive than the conventional options. A 18-pound bag of Wild Earth dog food sells for $49 on its website; whereas the website Chewy sells a 18.5-pound bag of Purina Dog Chow for $11.99.

Bethencourt said the potential for cultured protein could be 10% of the total pet food market within the next 10 years. He is using the success of plant-based proteins for humans as evidence for the market potential of alternative pet foods.

Research backs his point; according to one study from 2019, it is clear that an association exists between the diet a pet owner has chosen to follow and the diet they choose to feed their pet.

Culturing microbes into pet food

Another alternative pet food company, Bond Pet Foods, is taking a slightly different approach to cultured pet food. Bond is experimenting with genetically engineering microbes, like yeast.

Theres a lot more that isnt known about growing mice cells to create meat. Theres just a lot more technical challenges that they have to figure out how to ramp up and replicate that kind of meat production, said Rich Kelleman, CEO of Bond Pet Foods.

Bond is using the same approach to genetic engineering used to synthetically produce rennet for cheese production or insulin for diabetics.

What were doing is isolating a skeletal muscle protein so the building blocks of meat and inserting the DNA from that into a microbe, and then using the machinery of the microbe to produce identical animal proteins that you get on a farm and field, drying it down and then using that in a broader recipe to provide high quality nutrition, Kelleman said.

The major pet food companies are also looking for environmentally friendly, alternative proteins that could be inexpensive to scale up as a replacement for conventionally raised meat.

One area were currently exploring is looking at insects as a potential protein source, said Richard Butterwick at the Waltham Institute. They are potentially much more sustainable than traditional mammalian sources of protein and potentially very nutritious, as well.

Venture capital funds are eyeing the potential of cultured alternatives

Last year, Bond completed a $1.2 million seed round of funding and won a $10,000 innovation award from Purina.

Because Animals won this years innovation award and Wild Earth received a $200,000 investment from Mars Petcare during its 2018 investment round. So far, Wild Earth has raised over $16 million from various venture capital funds to pay for its continued growth.

These are relatively small amounts on the scale of the industry, but there is a sense of momentum.

All the big pet food manufacturers are looking at their supply chain and they see challenges with the growth of the pet food market and the population overall, more people means more pets, Kelleman said. Theyre looking for ways that they could mitigate the risk.

Richard Butterwick said that the main concern is that a pets nutritional needs are understood by their owners. He said consumer trends and the humanization of pets should not compromise pet needs, just because there is a trend towards more sustainable eating for humans.

A 2015 study in the Journal of Animal Science looked at the changing attitudes of pet owners choice in food for their companions. The study said it was paramount that sustainability be weighed against animals nutritional demands.

That means conscientious pet owners need to be wary of compromising a pets health just because eating kogi fungus, cricket treats, or lab-grown meats is trending for humans.

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Pet food makers look to tap the alternative meat market - Marketplace

University of Birmingham Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood with representatives of partner organisations at the signing ceremony in Delhi.

Experts at the University of Birmingham will work with partners in India across education, healthcare, genetic engineering and sports science.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir David Eastwood signed a range of Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with the Universitys partners at a special signing ceremony in Delhi.

The agreements form a key part of the Universitys strategic vision to continue building meaningful education and research partnerships in India.

Professor Sir David Eastwood signed MoUs with:

The University of Birminghams collaborative research output with India partners has almost doubled over the last five years. We currently have over 40 joint research projects of outstanding quality, commented Professor Sir David Eastwood.

We are a global university with a civic heart and a long, illustrious relationship with India. Signing these exciting new agreements with partners in areas such as health, transport and environment gives us a great opportunity to further contribute to Indian society as we continue to forge meaningful research and education partnerships in India.

The University and ICGEB plan to work together on multidisciplinary research including immunity and infection, as well as projects tackling human diseases, compound screening for identifying autophagy modulators, and exchanges of students and staffs across relevant projects.

Working in partnership with CIPLA, University experts will develop healthcare Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programmes.

Researchers at PDPU and Birmingham will continue working on the joint India-H2O project, which is developing, designing and demonstrating high-recovery, low-cost water treatment systems for saline groundwater, as well as domestic and industrial wastewaters. The partners will also identify new research opportunities.

The agreement with Technofin will see the partners working together on a bid to provide rail research and consultancy to the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd., to support the establishment of a Heavy Haul Research Institute. They will also develop other infrastructure-related research.

Manipal engineering students will be able to join Birmingham courses in Civil Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics Engineering - after completing two years of study in India, graduating with degrees from both universities.

University experts will work with Inspire Institute of Sport to develop bespoke distance-learning and blended CPD programmes for the development of the Institutes staff, as well as developing scholarships for postgraduate study in sports science. The MoU is an outcome of the India-UK Sports Alliance set up by the UK Governments Department for International Trade to drive collaboration in sports between the two countries.

Crispin Simon, Her Majestys Trade Commissioner for South Asia, UKs Department of International Trade and British Deputy High Commissioner, Mumbai and West of India, said: I am delighted that the University of Birmingham is strengthening its presence in India across education, healthcare, genetic engineering and sports science. The UK government has played an instrumental role in establishing their partnership with Inspire Institute of Sport, and we will continue to support their work in India.

I am also glad that Professor Tim Cable from the University of Birmingham has made significant contributions to the Indian-UK Sports Alliance organised by the UK government, to bring together influential individuals in both countries to help drive collaboration. I look forward to his continued participation.

See the article here:
University of Birmingham signs up for strategic research vision in India - University of Birmingham

The bioindustry will require more cell and gene therapy plants, says an expert, who says the facilities of the future must be automated, scalable, and flexible.

The number of cell and gene therapies entering clinical development has increased significantly in recent years. According to the Alliance for Regenerative Medicines (ARM) there are 1,066 such therapies in trials at present1, which is a 32% increase on the number of studies in 2014. But the surge in clinical activity has not been matched by an increase in production capacity says Darren Dasburg, a cell and gene therapy-focused consultant.

Hundreds of facilities will be needed to manufacture the treatments that are in play now, he said, adding that if you factor in the plants needed to make viral vectors that could exceed a thousand facilities.

The good news, Dasburg says, is that these facilities are more like labs than traditional large biopharmaceutical plants.

Viral vector capacity is critical to the cell and gene therapy sector. Vectors are hollow viruses used to insert genetic material into cells, both cells used in protein expression and cells used therapeutically. Various organisations have voiced concerns about industry capacity to make vectors. In 2018, for example, the Alliance for Advanced Biomedical Engineering said the scarcity of viral vectors could hamper expansion2. Since then the situation has improved, but it has not been resolved3. While viral vector production capacity in the contract services sector has increased, the expansion is still falling short of demand.

Partly this is because of the complexity of making the vectors, according to Dasburg.

Most viral vectors are produced using adherent manufacturing technologies which are expensive to operate, he explains. A vial of just 20 million cells can cost $2030K because it is so challenging to make.

To bring down costs, vector capacity still needs to increase, continues Dasburg, who predicted that biopharma will continue to rely on CDMOs for the foreseeable future.

Cell and gene therapy manufacturing is still a young industry. Biopharma is still figuring out what the ideal production facility should look like.

Building for flexibility and multipurpose manufacturing is important, Dasburg says, noting that explaining CDMOs and IP holders need to understand they are attacking rare genetic diseases and ailments where the therapy might be a third-line treatment. The numbers are often quite lower, and the treatments can be one and done. All meaning the companies of the future will be attacking many more areas of need.

In terms of technology, all cell and gene therapy facilities should feature sufficient isolator capacity, Dasburg says. Isolators are probably the number one investment to make. Too many people are trying to work five people in full dress in a small room attempting to manufacture in a hands-on traditional way when isolation and automation could help immensely.

Dasburg pointed to benchtop platforms capable of processing a single CAR-T patients treatment as an example of an innovative approach being used. These can be arranged in an array within a single ballroom-like facility providing 100% containment going from leukapheresis bag to treatment bag without any human intervention.

References1. alliancerm.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/CBX-Meeting-7-Feb-2020-FINAL.pdf2. aabme.asme.org/posts/virus-shortage-for-cell-therapies-creates-engineering-opportunity3. http://www.genengnews.com/insights/gene-therapy-dollar-is-waiting-on-viral-vector-dime/

Link:
More Cell and Gene Therapy Facilities in the Hundreds are Needed - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Agriculture is responsible for the production of a quarter of the total human-generated greenhouse gases. Growing food also uses about 70 percent of the water available to us. Moreover, agriculture (especially meat production) is the single most significant driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Food production is detrimental to the health of the planetbut it doesnt end there. Once the food reaches plates, poor-quality diets cause malnutrition, claiming more lives than tobacco, drug and alcohol combined.

Search for malnutrition online and you will see pictures of frail and sick children. But along with stunting, wasting, vitamin and mineral deficiency, malnutrition also includes overweight, obesity and other diet-related illnesses. Yes, 1 in 9 people around the world go to sleep hungry, but nearly 2 billion adults are also overweight or obese. As such, more than one-third of the world population suffers from at least one form of malnutrition.

With the climate and biodiversity crises, and the global public-health crisis in the form of malnutrition, we must find a healthy and environmentally sustainable diet to feed the growing population. In 2019, the EAT-Lancet Commission brought together leading experts in nutrition, health, sustainability and policy to recommend ways to transform the global food system to achieve a healthy and sustainable diet.

The EAT-Lancet report recommends that planetary health diets to feed 10 billion people by 2050 requires cutting down meat consumption by half and eating twice as much as fruits, vegetables, beans and nuts. Despite recognizing the need to make healthy food affordable for the poor, the EAT-Lancet Commission didnt review the cost and affordability of the ideal diet. Therefore, in a recent global study, scientists reviewed prices for nearly 750 food items to calculate the value of healthy and sustainable diets in 159 countries.

The research, published in Lancet Global Health, shows that many people in low and lower-middle-income countries are too poor to afford EAT-Lancets ideal diet. EAT-Lancet says that we would need to eat twice as much as many fruits and vegetables, and get more protein and fats from plant-source foods. However, the new study found that fruits, vegetables, beans and nuts are the most expensive items of the ideal diet accounting for half of its total price.

Shifting foodsystems

A key challenge of the 21st-century is to change our food system to produce a healthy diet that is both economically and environmentally sustainable. As EAT-Lancets ideal diet isnt affordable for much of the worlds low-income population, authorities must make several parallel interventions to tackle global food inequality.

Lower food prices and higher earnings would give poor people more purchasing power. We must also find cheaper, nutritious food alternatives that are affordable and accessible to people living in low-income areas. I believe that biotechnology has the power to lower the cost of locally and globally grown food, making the ideal diet economically viable to those that need it the most.

One problem is the lack of available, affordable options, which partly stems from decreasing agrobiodiversity. Just three crops (rice, wheat and corn) provide over half of the plant-derived calories worldwide. Shifting calories away from the starchy staple foods towards more nutritious fruits, vegetables and other protein-sourced food remains a significant challenge in meeting EAT-Lancet targets. Grand challenges require great technological solutions, and genetic engineering technology is among the most powerful tools at our disposal.

Power of biotechnology

Biotechnology can improve agrobiodiversity and provide more locally-grown food options for people in low-income areas. One way to do this would be to make inedible plants into a good source of nutrition and calories. Take cottonseed, for example, which has the potential to be a cheaper alternative to nuts. Cottonseeds are highly nutritious, containing oils and proteins in abundance, but many low-income cotton farmers cant eat cottonseeds because they produce toxins called gossypol.

Now, scientists have engineered cotton plants to remove the toxin, making cottonseeds safe for us to eat. And recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved genetically modified (GM) cottonseed for human consumption. Biotech cottonseed can act as an excellent alternative dietary source in low-income regions, where people struggle to meet the costs of the ideal diet recommended by EAT-Lancet.

Genetic engineering can also enable widespread cultivation of local plants. The groundcherry plant in its native form has a wild, sprawling growth habit which causes its fruits to drop to the ground while still small. Difficulties in cultivating the wildcherry mean its an orphan plant. However, scientists used genetic engineering to improve wildcherrys undesirable traits, including the plants weedy shape, flower production and fruit size. Now there are hopes for large-scale cultivation of genetically engineered groundcherry, which is native to Central and South America.

Millions of children and adults around the world suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, and biotechnology can also help fortify current crops to improve their vitamin and micronutrient contents. For example, scientists have recently developed biofortified cassava, which has higher zinc and iron contents than regular cassava. The biofortified cassava may one day prevent illnesses related to iron and zinc deficiencies.

Golden Rice is perhaps the prime example of a biofortified cropconventional rice that is genetically engineered to produce the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene. Golden Rice, acting as a source of vitamin A, can address vitamin A deficiency that blinds and kills hundreds of thousands of children every year. After a rigorous biosafety assessment in the Philippines, the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Plant Industry found Golden Rice to be safe as conventional rice. Golden Rice regulation application is under review in Bangladesh, as well. This biofortified crop can provide much-needed micronutrients, taking the everyday staple food further to meet peoples dietary requirements in the poorest regions of the world.

Economic benefits

Improved agrobiodiversity and availability of local food varieties, enabled by biotechnology, will bring down the cost of the ideal diet, reducing food inequality. But GM technology also has the power to lift people out of poverty and increase the spending power of the low-income communities in developing regions.

Higher farm productivity, especially in low-income areas, can lower food prices. A meta-analysis of studies published after 1995 found that adopting GM technology has widespread benefits, including economic gains for farmers that grow GM crops. The meta-analysis found that GM technology increases crop yields by 21 percent. Some GM crops are engineered to be more resistant to pest damage, which helps achieve higher yields, for example.

The meta-study also found that GM crops require 37 percent less pesticide, which reduces pesticide costs by 39 percent and helps spare the environment. Even though GM seeds are more expensive than non-GM seeds, savings in pest control and pesticide use mean that farmers adopting GM crops enjoy 68 percent more profit. Therefore, GM crops can increase farmers spending power, which is excellent news for the quarter of the worlds working population employed in agriculture . More importantly, the yield and profit from GM crops are higher in developing countries than in developed countries.

If adopted widely, genetic engineering technology will bring us closer to meeting the EAT-Lancet dietary targets, which will help us protect the environment, public health, and reduce inequality.

Rupesh Paudyal holds a PhD in plant science and covers agriculture and the environment as a freelance writer. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter @TalkPlant

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Viewpoint: We can sustainably feed 10 billion people. Here's how CRISPR and GMO crops can help - Genetic Literacy Project

Two more cases of the new strain of coronavirus have been confirmed at the San Antonio military base where some evacuees from a cruise ship were quarantined Monday, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said at a press conference Friday. This brings the number of confirmed Texas cases of the strain named COVID-19 to three.

The two evacuees were among 329 Americans repatriated against the CDC's recommendation after disembarking from the Diamond Princess off of Japan. Another 16 cruise ship evacuees quarantined in California and Nebraska have also been confirmed to have coronavirus.

"[The passengers] are considered at high risk for infection, and we do expect to see additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the passengers," said Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, during the press conference.

There are also several Americans hospitalized in Japan who are "seriously ill," she said.

The first Texas case was confirmed Feb. 13 when one of 91 Americans evacuated from the Hubei province of China, the epicenter of the outbreak, was hospitalized. The remaining 90 Americans were released from the San Antonio base Thursday because they showed no symptoms after a 14-day quarantine.

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a public health emergency by last month. According to the latest CDC report, there are over 75,000 confirmed cases worldwide, and the death toll has surpassed 2,000. But outside of China, there have been only three fatalities, and none in the U.S.

The total number of confirmed U.S. cases is 34. However, the CDC makes a distinction between cases among repatriated Americans and all other U.S. cases, as the former aren't an accurate representation of how the virus is spreading within the country, according to Messonnier.

"We don't yet have a vaccine for this novel virus, nor do we have a medicine to treat it specifically," Messonnier said.

The goal now is to slow the introduction of the virus into the U.S. to buy time to prepare the community for more cases and possibly sustained spread, she added.

Two elderly Japanese passengers aboard the Diamond Princess died after testing positive for the virus, Japan's health minister said Thursday.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are working on a vaccine, and a Houston-based genetic engineering company announced this week it finished developing one. However, the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved a vaccine.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Link:
Texas coronavirus cases climb to three in San Antonio - The Texas Tribune

The internet can be a confusing place. A five-minute Google search for nutrition advice is perhaps the best illustration of this fact. Allow me to demonstrate with a classic example. Do GMO crops cause cancer?

Most GMOs are designed to be sprayed with Monsantos Roundup herbicide Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is classified as a class 2A carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer ...

Or this:

Science has been studying cancer for a long time, and it has come to a few conclusions. One of which is that there are precious few ways to prevent cancer, and avoiding GMOs is not one of them.

The first statement was written by an anti-biotechnology activist with a history of fabricating fears about genetic engineering, the second by a biochemist with 30 years of research experience. Nonetheless, the average consumer or athlete may not know whom to believe at first glance. Faced with this contradictory but seemingly authoritative commentary, what do you do if you really want to know if GMOs boost your cancer risk?

The solution is simple, if not always easy to apply: turn to the experts and think critically about everything you read. To make that task a bit easier in practice, nutrition scientist David Lightsey has produced a helpful handbook to guide curious consumers through the morass dietary nonsense they'll inevitably encounter online: The Myths About Nutrition Science (TMNS).

A food and nutrition science advisor to QuackWatch, Lightsey has spent 31 years separating evidence-based information from plain old nonsense. His book, at just over 200 pages, will arm readers with a basic understanding of many perennially important nutritional issueseverything from obesity and supplements to GMO crops and pesticidesand a useful immunization against the junk science peddled online, what Lightsey calls the quagmire of misinformation which is so pervasive in this area.

This book would have been enormously helpful to me as a budding science journalist a decade ago, but anybody looking for sound nutrition information will get something out of TMNS.

The useless media and health news

Arguably the best part of TMNS is its takedown of mainstream health reporting. Citing the now classic 2005 study by physician John Ioannidis, Lightsey begins by pointing out that the bulk of medical research published today is simply incorrect. Eager to publish flashy results in top-tier science journals and desperate for grants (the lifeblood of any working scientist), many academics have resorted to cutting corners to get the results they know will attract attention, and thus more research funding.

If bona fide experts get so much wrong, Lightsey asks, can a journalist with little or no science background accurately assess what he or she is reporting on? The answer is usually no, unfortunately. Reporters don't have to be crippled by scientific illiteracy; a dedicated journalist can correct their knowledge deficit by doing some homework before writing a story. The real problem is, few of them do.

Instead, reporters more or less copy their stories from press releases universities distribute to promote research conducted by their faculty. Lightsey cites a 2015 study, for instance, which found that just over 85% of 312 medical news stories were derived from a press release or some other secondary source.

This is sloppy reporting, pure and simple. But science by press release has more lasting consequences: it exaggerates a study's results and fails to contextualize them among the much larger body of research on the topic in question. This is one of the primary reasons ACSH has caught just about every mainstream media network irresponsibly reporting, for example, that 95% of baby food is contaminated with heavy metals.

Misinformation is everywhere

This is a recurring theme throughout Lightsey's book. Whether it's a mainstream reporter, a supplement salesman at the gym or a celebrity athlete, nobody's entitled to our trust when it comes to nutrition. That's not because these sources of information are inherently unreliable, although they often do peddle nonsense. The real reason is that informed consumers should make decisions that comport with the available evidence, and not based on the conclusions of a single study or the recommendations of Tom Bradyno matter how many Super Bowls he's won.

Returning to our opening point above, Lightsey pithily sums things up:

Nutrition 'science' has become so contradictory that one must learn to take every new 'study' which declares to enlighten us about some purported nutritional health threat or benefit with a large grain of salt.

Excerpt from:
Confused About Obesity, Supplements and Organic Food? Here's A Handbook For Busting Nutrition Myths - American Council on Science and Health

With Calyxt making fried foods healthier, maybe celebs will actually eat them instead of just posing with them. Rich Polk/Getty Images for The Weinstein Company

Eat up, America. Your favorite standby comfort foodthose slightly greasy, salted-just-right French fries that have thrown many a dieter off the straight and narroware now healthy. Or at least healthier than they ever have been, thanks to food-tech disruptor Calyxt (pronounced Kay-Lix with an aspirated t at the end) and its breakout vegetable oil, which is designed with less saturated fat and more healthy oleic acid than typical unmodified frying oils.

I first stumbled across Calyxts healthy frying oil at the most unlikely of places: the Minnesota State Fair,a 320-acre mecca of unhealthy eating, butter sculptures, live farm animal births and other assorted curiosities.

SEE ALSO: How Blue Apron Became a Massive $2 Billion Disaster

Any good Minnesotan worth his weight in walleye, even those of us like me who have lived all over the world, will always make a point to come back to our native Land of 10,000 Lakes in late August, in part so we can take in one of the states few months of non-sub-zero temperatures, but also because the second half of August is precisely when we can visit the two-week affair known among locals as the The Great Minnesota Get-Together. Its the largest of its kind in the country, and last years attendance drew in over two million visitors, meaning over a third of all Minnesotans took a day out of their lives to join in on the perennial celebration.

At last years gathering, word was spreading quickly that the Ball Park Caf, a long-time state fair staple, known for its famous beer selection, burgers and garlic fries, had switched to Calyxts healthier vegetable oil for all of its frying needs. Given that the fair happened to fall just as I was several weeks into one of my many concerted efforts to finally get back in shape, I was intrigued.

I was expecting the fries I ordered to taste somehow artificial or rubbery, as do many healthy versions of other foods, but the flavor and consistency of the Calyxt-fried Freedom Fries was exactly as one might expect from a normal bath of hot oilcrispy and yummy. Decadence never tasted so good.

Several weeks after the fair, I looked up the company behind this healthy oil and scheduled a meeting with Calyxts communications head, Trina Lundblad and company CEO Jim Blome. We decided to meet at their offices, a sleek, ultra-modern building in a Minneapolis suburb, overlooking a large swath of prairie grass and pristine crop rows.

The Calyxt headquarters have a definite Silicon Valley feel. Were not an ag company; were a tech company that is applying its IP to the ag sector, said company spokeswoman and communications head Trina Lundblad. Courtesy of Calyxt

For the next several hours that I spent touring the Calyxt headquarters, I came to realize that I was not just visiting, contrary to my expectations going in, another food-based CPG company simply riding the wave of a popular new frying oil with a healthy twistI was at ground zero of the tech revolution in agriculture, where genome editing is revolutionizing the nutritional attributes of the foods we, as humans, will need to continue as a species in the years and centuries to come.

If that sounds like a big deal, its because it is.

Calyxt describes its oil, the product of an improved soybean plant, as having the heart-healthy fat profile of olive oil without the distinctively earthy aftertaste that is fine for spaghetti, but less so for waffles or fried chicken. By using a breakthrough gene-editing technology, Calyxt is engineering an entirely new set of processes for improving the genetic profile for many staples of the nutritional supply chain without introducing transgenic, foreign properties into the mix; Calyxts technology stands out in that it is simply accelerating and improving upon what nature would have probably gotten around to eventually on its own, only several millennia later.

Importantly, the process used by Calyxt, which relies on DNA-cutting enzymes that thankfully go by the abbreviation TALEN (transcription activator-like effector nuclease), sidesteps much of the public and regulatory outcry often associated with traditional GMOs (genetically modified organisms), in which an organisms genetic makeup has been modified in a laboratory using transgenic technology that combines, in a sort of Frankenstein-esque way, plant, animal, bacterial and virus genes that do not occur in nature or through traditional crossbreeding methods.

Calyx, which is a publicly-traded company on the NASDAQ, is improving upon the farm to table fever, by starting upstream.

Way upstream.

Calyxts unique engineering process begins in the high-tech labs on the top floor of the companys headquarters, where a team of scientists reconfigure gene molecules on large computer monitor screens before instructing robotically controlled laboratory pipettes to do their thing. Later, embryonic plant cells are transferred to petri dishes that deliver the customized TALENs, which are then bathed in stimulating hormones and left to grow until they become big enough to see if the edits made upstream in the top floor lab were successful.

Plants that meet the designer teams original specs get pampered in high-tech temperature-regulated nurseries before later graduating to a greenhouse or to the small outdoors plot trials that abut the Calyxt headquarters. From the top performing plants, Calyxt begins developing seed banks that will eventually be sold to farmers.

But that is only the beginning. Its here, at this leg of the business, where Calyxt is positioning itself for long-term, paradigm shifting growth at the crossroads of technology and agriculture.

Jim Blome, the CEO of Calyxt, grew up in a family farm in central Iowa. Today, he leads a company that is playing a major role in defining the future of food on a global scale. Courtesy of Calyxt

Unlike most biotech companies that play in the broader competitive landscape of gene-editing, Calyxt is unique in that it is vertically integrating, contracting with farmers across the Midwest to grow its gene-edited, high oleic soybeans. Earlier this month, the company achieved an important milestone, having successively contracted 100,000 soybean acres with U.S. farmers, more than doubling the size of its planted acres from the previous year. Calyxt CEO Jim Blome lauded the achievement stating that 100,000 contracted acres will support market demand for our high oleic soybean oil.

Calyxts scientists design gene-editing molecules on computer screens, then use robots to build them using a set of DNA-cutting enzymes called TALENs, which are later transferred to petri dishes for analysis. Courtesy of Calyxt

After the growing season, just a few weeks after the Minnesota State Fair wraps up, Calyxt exercises its contracts to buy back the beans from the farmers at a premium to market prices and crushes them to make its healthy, french fry-friendly oil, which it is currently shipping across the country to food services companies and restaurant chains.

Farmers love the higher-than-market commodities prices Calyxt agrees to pay them. The food services sector loves the healthy aspects of the Calyxt end-product, which also has a reuse rate far more efficient than other oils on the market. And Calyxt loves sitting in the middle of both the supply and distribution chains.

I have spent my life in agriculture, and there is nothing as revolutionary happening around genome editing as what we are doing at Calyxt, added Blome, who previously served as the president and CEO of the North American Crop Science division of Bayer, the German multinational pharmaceutical and life sciences juggernaut. We are developing a foundation for the future of global agriculture through precision plant breeding and advanced analytical tools to solve complex challenges with system-based approaches. Tillable land is growing increasingly scarce, populations are growing and the earth is warming, and frankly, we arent ready for what this will mean even five or 10 years down the road.

What we are doing at Calyxt is harnessing the technology that will enable the entire global nutritional and industrial supply chain to adapt to these seismic changes underfoot. And were doing it in a responsible, ethical manner, that brings new opportunities to U.S. farmers, added Blome.

The Calyxt chief isnt simply talking about healthier frying oils, there is a much, much bigger play in the offing: Calyxts technology can be harnessed to address some of the most pressing concerns across all of food and nutritionfrom removing the allergens from nuts and peanuts, to designing better cereal plants, such as wheat, that not only deliver better yields but also address common allergies and afflictions like gluten intolerance. Tubers, tree fruits, CBD productsthe list of potential applications for Calyxt genome-editing is nearly endless.

Where high-tech meets agriculture. Calyxt researchers and plant scientists use state-of-the-art aeroponics growing facilities to iterate on plant-based genome editing. Courtesy of Calyxt

Chris Neugent, a veteran food marketer and former CEO of Post Consumer Brands, the maker of everything from Oreo Os to Grape-Nuts, sits on the board of Calyxt, bringing mission-critical consumer marketing and story-telling gravitas to a company known best for its high-tech bioengineering.

If the Calyxt story was a book, then you could say we are still in the first chapter, probably still on page one. Our work with smarter, healthier soybean oilsas groundbreaking as it isis still proof of concept. As we scale our business and begin adding more products, the market will begin to see us not as the healthier french fry guys but as a company that is revolutionizing next-generation nutrition in agriculture, observed Neugent. We are literally laying track for the biggest agricultural revolution since the transformation of human societies from hunting and gathering to farming. Its that big.

This Second Agricultural Revolution Neugent is alluding to envisages a not-so-far-off future in which Calyxt is redesigning crops to better withstand the massive changes underfoot caused by global warming, over-population and other seismic shifts affecting the future of food.

A young soybean plant flowers inside the Calyxt high-tech laboratory facilty. Courtesy of Calyxt

Like any industry that is shaking up the status quo, Calyxt is beginning to encounter its share of crosscurrents. So far, at least, U.S. regulators seem to be of the opinion that as long as Calyxt is making genetic alterations that could have conceivably occurred naturally, as opposed to other transgenic techniques used in GMOs, no special regulation is needed.

Other incumbent seed engineering companies have dabbled in the high oleic soybean space, but for the most part, they have come at the challenge through a more conventional gene-editing approach, which mixes in organisms that do not naturally conjoin outside of a laboratory, necessitating additional layers of regulatory safeguards.

Calyxt is using high-tech genome editing to serve up healthier versions of the same delicious plant-based foods that we have eaten for decades. Courtesy of Calyxt

For now, Calyxts approach doesnt require any additional oversight or specific product labeling, nor do company executives feel that any will be required at any point in the foreseeable future. The 2018 USDA-released GMO labeling requirements defines bioengineered foods as those containing detectable genetic material that has been modified through lab techniques that cannot be created through conventional breeding or found in nature. As a result, Calyxt is not subject to any additional regulatory or labeling requirements, which is allowing the company to forge ahead on multiple fronts. The company is already engaged in early experimentation with genome edited wheat plants, and it has scores of other applications in development.

For now, Calyxt is a still a small company, but one poised to make a big impact on the global food market.

However, for most of usat least those of us that just like to be able eat French fries from time to time and not feel too bad about it the next dayCalyxt is performing an equally important service on par with helping prepare global food sourcing for the impacts of climate change; they are giving us peace of mind the next time we hit the state fair, or anywhere else where Calyxt-fried French fries are being served.

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Healthy-ish French Fries Are Now a Thing Thanks to Genetic Redesigning - Observer

North America has been the largest market for protein expression, with the U.S. as the larger contributor to the regional market as compared to Canada.

The protein expression market valued at $1.4 billion in 2016, and during the forecast period, it is expected to grow at an 11.7% CAGR, generating revenue of $3.0 billion by 2023. The key drivers of the market are technological advancements, growing life sciences sector, and increasing chronic disease prevalence, funding for protein-based research, and geriatric population.

Protein expression is a collective term for ways in which proteins are synthesized, modified, and regulated in living organisms.

Download sample copy of this report at@bit.ly/38YmQAq

A prominent trend in the protein expression marketis the increasing research and development (R&D) activities on recombinant proteins. The technologies that are used to produce recombinant proteins, such as gene cloning and genetic engineering, have revolutionized the life sciences sector and enabled the production of biopharmaceuticals at an industrial scale.

Their production on such a large scale has led to their application in disease diagnosis and treatment. Many pharmaceutical companies are focusing on the production of recombinant proteins and their expression systems to support the drug discovery process and develop biotherapeutics.

The protein expression market is segmented by region, system, end user, product and services, and application.

Based on system, the categories are algal-based, prokaryotic, cell-free, mammalian cell, yeast, and insect cell expression systems. In 2016, prokaryotic expression systems registered the largest share as they are comparatively cheaper than other expression systems, such as insect cell and mammalian systems.

In addition, the shorter protein synthesis time of the prokaryotic expression system, as the bacteria multiply and grow rapidly in these systems, giving a higher yield, promotes their adoption.

Pre-AccessInquiry at@bit.ly/2SVOV5E

North America, Middle East & Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific (APAC) are the subdivisions of the region segment of the protein expression market. In 2016, the market was dominated by North America, followed by Europe.

Even though during the forecast period, the market is expected to be led by North America, the fastest growing market would be APAC. This may be attributed to the increasing geriatric population, rising R&D funds, improving per capita income, and rising prevalence of chronic diseases in the region.

Therefore, the market for protein expression is set to experience remarkable growth during the forecast period owing to an increase in drug discovery and development and growing prevalence of several types of diseases.

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Protein Expression Market size, leaders, segment analysis and future scope scrutinized in the new analysis - WhaTech Technology and Markets News

The spread of coronavirus seems to be slowing down in China as the country continues to put proper measure in place to slowdown the spread of the disease. However, the virus outbreak in Iran, Italy, and South Korea are raising fears of a broader epidemic. The coronavirus (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2 started in Whuan China started in December 2019. To date, coronavirus has claimed 2,701 human lives and wreck havoc to global markets.

As of 25 February 2020, around 80,149 cases have been confirmed, including in all provinces of China and more than two dozen other countries. Of these, 11,569 cases were classified as serious. There have been 2,701 deaths attributable to the disease, including 38 outside mainland China, surpassing that of the 2003 SARS outbreak.

As the virus spread around the world so are the rumors about the origin of the virus. Weve written many stories about the virus ranging from Chinese scientists arguing that the the virus originated from Chinas Wuhan laboratory. Some media outlets also pointed to comments from Chinas Presidentabout the need to contain the coronavirus and set up a system to prevent similar epidemics in the future. President Xi said a national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place to protect the peoples health because lab safety is a national security issue.To add to the suspicion, NY Post also pointed toa newly release directive from Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology titled: Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.

The problem, however, is these news storieshave very little scientific merit. According to a new study published in ScienceDirect titled: Full-genome evolutionary analysis of the novel corona virus (2019-nCoV) rejects the hypothesis of emergence as a result of a recent recombination event, their findings show that theCOVID-19 is 96 percent similar to the bat virus RaTG13. The 2019-nCoV although closely related to BatCoV RaTG13 sequence throughout the genome (sequence similarity 96.3%), shows discordant clustering with the Bat_SARS-like coronavirus sequences, the authors said.

The study concludes with the statement: The levels of genetic similarity between the 2019-nCoV and RaTG13 suggest that the latter does not provide the exact variant that caused the outbreak in humans, but the hypothesis that 2019-nCoV has originated from bats is very likely. Their conclusion supports the widely accepted claim that coronavirus originated from Whuan meat market where bats are snakes were sold for food.

The question is, what do we make of the study published by Chinese scientists in The Lancet?The wider scientific community, upon seeing the paper, were also less than impressed with the speculations and conclusions drawn by the Chinese scientists. The scientist at the forefront of an international effort to track the deadly coronavirus outbreak shot down claims about the diseases origins, including that it escaped from a Wuhan laboratory after being genetically engineered.Trevor Bedford, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, said:There is no evidence whatsoever of genetic engineering that we can find. He made the statement at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. The evidence we have is that the mutations (in the virus) are completely consistent with natural evolution.

Finally, on February 2, the World Health Organization (WHO)called the new coronavirus a massive infodemic, referring to an overabundance of informationsome accurate and some notthat makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.

Due to the high demand for timely and trustworthy information about 2019-nCoV, WHO technical riskcommunication and social media teams have been working closely to track and respond to myths and rumours.Through its headquarters in Geneva, its six regional offices and its partners, the Organization is working 24 hours aday to identify the most prevalent rumors that can potentially harm the publics health, such as false preventionmeasures or cures. These myths are then refuted with evidence-based information. WHO is making public healthinformation and advice on the 2019-nCoV, including myth busters, available on its social media channels (includingWeibo, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest) and website, WHO said.

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Coronavirus was not genetically engineered. Instead it is the first Infodemic - TechStartups.com

While it seems increasingly difficult to find a crew to delve into role playing games these days, they hold a special place for me.

Few gaming experiences have been as well-remembered as the first months of playing Dungeons & Dragons, and the pure combination of wonder and amazement that provided.

There have been other RPGs since then of course, and in most every case they have been fun because you become immersed in the world of the game, and the character you play becomes near and dear to you.

As a result I often look at RPGs on Kickstarter, and on one such excursion GeneFunk 2090 from CRISPR Monkey Studios.

There was some great art to the game that was advertising itself as a Biopunk RPG so I looked a little deeper.

That led to the biggest discovery, that the studio doing the game is based in Saskatoon, which made me curious to learn more.

To begin with the game is a biopunk/cyberpunk RPG and setting made using the D&D 5E Open Gaming License. Players take on the role of elite mercenaries that specialize in investigation and violence. No magic or fantasy, but tons of cybernetics, genetic enhancements, nanobots, drones, hacking, androids, high tech guns and armor, and other amazing tech, explains a quick intro on the successful Kickstarter page.

Comparisons of course are natural, and this one immediately had me thinking a game in the same vein as Shadowrun, a long-running RPG, many will know.

So next I contacted James Armstrong regarding the game he has been involved in creating, to find out some information first hand.

He said the game is certainly Biopunk on nature.

I love biology, and the idea of genetic engineering, he replied via email. I actually have a M.Sc. in molecular biology, partially because I was interested in understanding the science behind genetic modification.

Also, Ive always loved speculative fiction, especially of the biopunk variety, from Brave New World, to Cronenberg movies. While I first started this game in 2001, I can tell its only now that biopunk is starting to come into the zeitgeist. Theres currently a Netflix special on biohacking, Jaimie Metzl is on Joe Rogan speaking about his Hacking Darwin book, and CRISPR is part of school curricula.

Theres been an open niche for biopunk RPGs, especially near-future ones and I wanted to address that, and see where I could take it. Endogenous DNA computers, genetic enhancement, mind-hacking, transgenic beasts, and anything else I could think of.

Not surprisingly Armstrong comes at creating an RPG based on his own long held interest.

Ive been an RPG fan since I was in Grade 3, he said. It was the Dungeons and Dragons box sets, red and blue. My older brother brought them home and I was immediately fascinated by the art, and the idea that I could be a character in a fantasy story.

From there, it was the Marvel Super Heroes game, T.M.N.T, WEG Star Wars, and whatever else I could get my hands on! Ive made plenty of my own systems along the way as well.

So where did the germ of the idea for GeneFunk come from.

It was really a convergence of creative influences, and an open niche! I grew up reading the Eastman and Laird T.M.N.T. graphic novels and RPG, loved cyberpunk fiction of every kind, and felt the Gattaca movie was well ahead of its time, related Armstrong. I wanted to play in a world filled will genetically enhanced humans and ubiquitous biotechnology.

Armstrong went into the creative process with a vision.

Create a modern take on the cyberpunk genre using the 5e ruleset, with a biopunk twist, he said. While I love the 80s vision of cyberpunk, most cyberpunk games I see tend to fit into this mold. It could use some updating, some new spice!

Its now apparent that a great deal of human enhancement will be at the genetic level, not necessarily grafted-on chrome arms and robot bodies. I want to show how the world might look if that genetic enhancement started before birth, and how biologically specializing humans might affect society, (and) an informal genetic caste system that emerges from a global market economy.

I also wanted to make some of the cyberpunk tropes a little more fluid. Rather than an explicitly dystopian world, I wanted to showcase a series of double-edged swords. Not technological and capitalistic doom-and-gloom, but something more ambiguous, with some parts being wonderful, and other parts being nightmarish, depending on your perspective. There are pros to living in a technological wonderland. Who needs Huntingtons disease? Alienation due to a collapse of a common human condition? Yes. Ultimate expression of personal identity and diversity through a fluid human form? Also yes.

With such a vast vision to capture the game took years to develop 18-years in fact.

I started in 2001, said Armstrong. I have homebrew versions of it in 3.5e and 4e as well, but once 5e came out, I knew it fit with the mechanics well and I wanted to take it to the next level. Granted, many of those years only had very part-time development, I really kicked it into high-gear over the last three years.

So what was the most difficult aspect of designing the game?

Capturing the powerful nature of genetic enhancement at character creation, said Armstrong. I wanted a characters base genome to provide a great deal of mechanical influence, much more so than a D&D race does. Genetic enhancement is unambiguously superior in GeneFunk, and I needed the mechanics to capture that. As such, starting characters are more powerful than they are in D&D. Theyre not close to X-Men level or anything like that, but they certainly wont be spending level 1 killing boars.

But the game is more than fights and battles.

Asked what is the best element of the game Armstrong said the biohacking, and the great variety of different genomes and upgrades.

There are 42 genetic enhancements and 58 upgrades. Theres even a tool included for players and GMs to make their own genomes.

Being able to play a character with completely different abilities at level 1, each time you make a character, is great for replayability. Ive always loved the meta-game of making characters, Ive probably made 10 characters for every 1 Ive played, regardless of system.

Also, diversity is fun! D&D groups are often a hodge-podge of dragon born, tieflings, gnomes, and goliaths, even if a campaign world might describe these races as rare. I built it so that there is baked-in fluff to support the fact that youre a party of genetic weirdos, stylishly exotic appearances and all.

The vibrancy of a new game world, and the built in diversity of characters to play make GeneFunk a game well worth looking into. Like any RPG the experience of course is only partly dictated by the ruleset, the game master, the one guiding things much as the director of a stage performance, being at least equally important to the overall experience.

It will help to know the base rules of 5e, the most recent incarnation of D&D and one admittedly turned me off the game completely. While I think 5e homogenized D&D into a world of overpowered clones, in a different world setting the core rules can shine.

So check out GeneFunk, it may not be the setting for every taste, but it offers an interesting vision of a future which may be closer than we think.

Check it out via the GeneFunk 2090 page on Facebook.

See more here:
New RPG from Sask. creators - Yorkton This Week

Reports from theFood and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations,World Health Organization, andothers emphasize the critical role of plant-based diets in creating a sustainable food future for all. Plant-based diets are also key for human nutrition, highlighted in diet guidelines the world over includingUS,Canada, andBrazil. Yet livestock remains essential to aroundone billionof the worlds indigent and theglobal demand for meat and dairy is expected toincrease by 70% by 2050.

Meat production and consumption habits must shift, and solutions are sorely needed to feed the appetite for meat in the US and abroad.

Enter plant-based burgers, which exploded onto the food scene in the 2010s. While eaters love them, questions followed: Are they healthier? More sustainable? And are they even real food?

Opinions are heated, but what does the science show?

A Brave New Burger thats Just Plain Better

Forget bland veggies burgers of yore that only appealed to die-hard vegetarians. Todays food technology methods have brought consumers a beefy patty that sizzlesand theyre a game-changer.

Beyond MeatandImpossible Foodslead the plant-based burger market, and are quite similarin nutrient content and ingredients. A key difference is the use of genetic engineering, used in Impossible to create its umami punch from soy leghemoglobin. Not surprisingly,Impossible eaters care not at all about the tech that made it tastynor should they, given the copious evidence of its safety. (Beyond, conversely, boasts theyre non-GMO.) Major food companies also offer their own plant-based burgers using a variety of techniques and ingredients, now available in supermarkets alongside Beyond and Impossible.

Critics questioned wondered whether plant-based burgers would take off; the marketplace already offers myriad vegetarian choices, after all. Yet contemporary consumersare increasingly seeking ecoconscious options that supplant meat, while delivering the pleasure of eating meatat least, some of the time. Ninety percent of plant-based meat and dairy consumers are omnivores, in fact, and Beyond reports that more than 70 percent of its consumers are meat-eaters seeking a more sustainable option. Importantly, Beyond and Impossible burgers are found on restaurant andfast foodmenus, a good thing since49% of eaters globallydine at restaurants at least weekly, and most choose fast food fare.

Public health and environmental benefits of plant-based burgers are plentiful. Research funded by Beyond Meat and conducted by independent scientists at the University of Michigan found that its burger used 99 percent less water, 93 percent less land, and 46 percent less energy and produced 90 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared to a beef burger; similar results were found in a study of the Impossible Burger. While no peer-reviewed studies are yet available, a significant body of evidencelike this report of 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90 percent of all that is eatenshows significantly higher environmental impacts of meat production on land, water, and air compared to plants. While grass-fed beef can be more sustainable, its complicatedand hardly the panacea supporters claim it to be.

And dont forget about antibiotic resistance, among the biggest threats to global health driven largely bymisuse of medicinesin livestock production.

Whatever the individual motivation to select a plant-based burger, the secret sauce is clear: When food tech delivers taste and convenience, health and sustainability win.

Burger Bloviating: Push Back on Plant-Based Meat

As with many food tech innovations, some folks in nutrition and activist circles began disparaging plant burgers as yet another ultra-processed food that consumers dont need. However, there is considerable variation in nutritional quality across the four-categoryNOVA classification(unprocessed and minimally processed foods, processed culinary ingredients, processed, ultra-processed). Andnumerous studiesincluding areportfrom several professional nutrition and food tech organizationsshow that (ultra-) processed foods like bread and canned goods are nutritionally beneficial; its thewhole dietthat matters.

Plus, beef burgers dont grow on trees; the industry employs an extensive set of ingredientsconsumers simply choose not to consider. A wide range ofadditives and preservativesand food processing methods were needed to get that cow ground up onto your bun, for instance, alongside atrocious conditions in industrial animal farming systems. And were you aware that meatpacking is among the most dangerous jobs in the world? The reality is that getting a burger to your table made from animals involves far more processing than one made with plants, facts its polystyrene package doesnt provide.

But is plant-based meat real food? The concept was popularized by journalist Michael Pollan, whose other pithy yet patronizing advice includes eat plants, not food made in plants. Food writer Mark Bittman recently opined, [w]e have to determine whether theyre actually food,likening plant-based burgers to Cheetos. (Seriously?) Other foodies jumped on the bandwagon, creatingnutrition confusionby preaching that meat from animals is inherently superior simply because its from an animal.

At the same time, some health professionals return to the dog-tired diet advice that consumers need to eat more vegetables and fruits, like fresh peas instead of burgers made from pea protein. Similarly, anivory-tower academiccalled plant-based burgers transitional en route to a whole foods diet, ignoring evidence that burgers can be part of a healthy diet, in moderationand are integral to American traditions.

Viewpoints like these reflect a lack of compassion for the realities most people face in just trying to get a meal on the table. They also undermine how difficult it is to change the way we eat, They also discount the vibrant role cuisine plays in culture and disregard the power of technology to meet food needs healthfully and sustainably.

For a Brighter Food Future, Vote With Your Fork

Addressing todays complex food challenges requires all the tools we have to curb climate change, address unsustainable and unjust practices in agriculture, and reduce diet-related chronic diseases. Though novel food technologies will always have haters, its a brave new world with a new generation of eaters.Millennials and Gen Zare highly motivated by health and sustainabilityand both are far more accepting offood technologythan previous generations. Scientific innovations like plant-based burgers will always play a role in shaping human diets,as they always haveand often for the better.

But lets not forget that a burger is a burger is a burgerand its especially tasty with all the fixins. (And fries. Obviously.) Most of us in high-income nations who strive to manage weight, stave off disease, and live longer are better off eating a vibrant salad loaded in fresh veggies, beans, and whole grains rather than a plant-based burger. At least, most of the time.

But you already know that, right?

So when that craving hits, grab a plant-based burger, and enjoy. Voting with your fork is a delicious way to support technologies that will help move forward the food revolution necessary to create a healthy and sustainable food future for all.

P.K. Newby, ScD, MPH, MS, is a nutrition scientist and author whose newest book is Food and Nutrition: What Everyone Needs to Know. Learn more about her at pknewby.com.

Related

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Burger Wars: Beyond Nutrition Idealism and Junk-Science Rhetoric, the Benefits of Choosing Plant-Based are Clear - The Spoon

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates makes a point during a Q&A with Margaret Hamburg, board chair for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been working to improve the state of global health through his nonprofit foundation for 20 years, and today he told the nations premier scientific gathering that advances in artificial intelligence and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead.

We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial intelligence and gene-based editing technologies to build this new generation of health solutions so that they are available to everyone on the planet. And Im very excited about this, Gates said in Seattle during a keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Such tools promise to have a dramatic impact on several of the biggest challenges on the agenda for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created by the tech guru and his wife in 2000.

When it comes to fighting malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, for example, CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene-editing tools are being used to change the insects genome to ensure that they cant pass along the parasites that cause those diseases. The Gates Foundation is investing tens of millions of dollars in technologies to spread those genomic changes rapidly through mosquito populations.

Millions more are being spent to find new ways fighting sickle-cell disease and HIV in humans. Gates said techniques now in development could leapfrog beyond the current state of the art for immunological treatments, which require the costly extraction of cells for genetic engineering, followed by the re-infusion of those modified cells in hopes that theyll take hold.

For sickle-cell disease, the vision is to have in-vivo gene editing techniques, that you just do a single injection using vectors that target and edit these blood-forming cells which are down in the bone marrow, with very high efficiency and very few off-target edits, Gates said. A similar in-vivo therapy could provide a functional cure for HIV patients, he said..

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence gives Gates further cause for hope. He noted that that the computational power available for AI applications has been doubling every three and a half months on average, dramatically improving on the two-year doubling rate for chip density thats described by Moores Law.

One project is using AI to look for links between maternal nutrition and infant birth weight. Other projects focus on measuring the balance of different types of microbes in the human gut, using high-throughput gene sequencing. The gut microbiome is thought to play a role in health issues ranging from digestive problems to autoimmune diseases to neurological conditions.

This is an area that needed these sequencing tools and the high-scale data processing, including AI, to be able to find the patterns, Gates said. Theres just too much going on there if you had to do it, say, with paper and pencil to understand the 100 trillion organisms and the large amount of genetic material there. This is a fantastic application for the latest AI technology.

Similarly, organs on a chip could accelerate the pace of biomedical research without putting human experimental subjects at risk.

In simple terms, the technology allows in-vitro modeling of human organs in a way that mimics how they work in the human body, Gates said. Theres some degree of simplification. Most of these systems are single-organ systems. They dont reproduce everything, but some of the key elements we do see there, including some of the disease states for example, with the intestine, the liver, the kidney. It lets us understand drug kinetics and drug activity.

The Gates Foundation has backed a number of organ-on-a-chip projects over the years, including one experiment thats using lymph-node organoids to evaluate the safety and efficacy of vaccines. At least one organ-on-a-chip venture based in the Seattle area, Nortis, has gone commercial thanks in part to Gates support.

High-tech health research tends to come at a high cost, but Gates argues that these technologies will eventually drive down the cost of biomedical innovation.

He also argues that funding from governments and nonprofits will have to play a role in the worlds poorer countries, where those who need advanced medical technologies essentially have no voice in the marketplace.

If the solution of the rich country doesnt scale down then theres this awful thing where it might never happen, Gates said during a Q&A with Margaret Hamburg, who chairs the AAAS board of directors.

But if the acceleration of medical technologies does manage to happen around the world, Gates insists that could have repercussions on the worlds other great challenges, including the growing inequality between rich and poor.

Disease is not only a symptom of inequality, he said, but its a huge cause.

Other tidbits from Gates talk:

Read Gates prepared remarks in a posting to his Gates Notes blog, or watch the video on AAAS YouTube channel.

Excerpt from:
Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world - GeekWire

In recent years, promising start-ups have faced almost no obstacles to raising capital, so long as they pursued growth at all costs. Investors accepted significant losses in the present on the premise that these would translate to incredible market share in the future. The environment of easy money created many questionable valuations (see: WeWork), and even rare instances of outright fraud (see: Theranos).

But the market shifted in 2019. Investors are thinking more objectively about the stories presented by start-ups and emerging companies, and are much more interested in profitable growth, or at least progress toward it, than empty promises of a big payoff down the road.

While tech companies such as WeWork, Uber, Slack Technologies, and others have been hit by this newfound skepticism, even swearing off the growth-at-all-costs mantra of years past, the field of synthetic biology has yet to (publicly) face its reckoning. If and when it does, Twist Bioscience (NASDAQ:TWST) might be the first to fall.

Image source: Getty Images

Twist Bioscience wields the leading technology platform for synthesizing DNA, which can be used in genetic engineering experiments to create reference probes for DNA sequencing applications and to store digital data. The company is often associated with synthetic biology, or engineered biology, which is the intentional design of living technologies with reproducible functionality.

The company recently reported fiscal first-quarter 2020 operating results for the three-month period ending Dec. 31, and announced it had settled a long-standing legal dispute with Agilent Technologies. The settlement avoided a costly jury trial, but cost the synthetic DNA pioneer $22.5 million. Investors were just pleased to be rid of the headache, and to have removed the largest source of uncertainty hanging over the stock. Shares soared on the announcement.

The immediate interpretation of this event is that the settlement will allow Twist Bioscience and Wall Street to focus entirely on growth and financial performance. A deeper dive, however, suggests investors might want to be careful what they wish for.

While the company touts impressive growth in revenue and gross profit, that means little when losses attributed to shareholders are growing even faster in absolute dollar amounts. Operating losses have now grown sequentially for eight consecutive quarters.

Metric

Fiscal Q1 2020

Fiscal Q1 2019

Change (YoY)

Revenue

$17.2 million

$11.5 million

49%

Gross profit

$3.3 million

($0.4 million)

N/A

Operating expenses

$59.2 million

$22.5 million

163%

Operating expenses excluding Agilent settlement

$36.7 million

$22.5 million

63%

Operating income

($55.8 million)

($22.9 million)

N/A

Operating income excluding Agilent settlement

($33.3 million)

($22.9 million)

N/A

Data source: Twist Bioscience press release. YoY = Year over Year.

When the Agilent legal settlement is excluded, normal day-to-day operations resulted in fiscal first-quarter 2020 operating expenses of $36.7 million. That was $14.2 million greater than in the year-ago period, which easily offset the $3.7 million improvement in gross profit in that span.

Swelling losses have had a real impact on shareholders: dilution. Twist Bioscience has tapped into the public markets multiple times since conducting its initial public offering (IPO) in late 2018, including an offering in late January that raised $48.2 million in net proceeds. Investors now know that was largely conducted to pay for the Agilent legal settlement, which will consume roughly half of the proceeds.

In a little over 15 months as a publicly traded company, multiple stock offerings from Twist Bioscience have increased the number of shares outstanding from 26.6 million to 35.4 million. That's an increase of 33%. Considering the business reported $103 million in cash at the end of December and expects to report a net loss of at least $129.5 million in fiscal 2020, investors should expect additional public stock offerings or convertible debt offerings -- and, therefore, additional dilution -- in the near future.

It might be tempting to think the company could just flip a switch and focus on profitable growth, but a closer look at SEC filings suggests that might not be possible.

Image source: Getty Images

Investors know Twist Bioscience as the company that makes synthetic DNA. It serves industrial and pharmaceutical customers that require (relatively) large amounts of DNA for high-throughput genetic engineering research. It's by far the best in the industry -- even supplying some of its competitors.

However, most of the company's growth and profits come from an entirely different market: next-generation sequencing (NGS) tools. In fact, NGS tools are expected to generate nearly as much revenue in fiscal 2020 as synthetic genes. It's a bit ironic that the company known for writing DNA is increasingly dependent on companies that read DNA, but there are two primary reasons for that.

First, despite all of the hype, the market for synthetic DNA is simply not very large and isn't very profitable (if it's profitable at all). Roughly 25% of the company's synthetic gene revenue in fiscal 2020 will come from a single customer. It's also worth noting that the business didn't begin generating gross profit until it ramped up sales of NGS tools.

Second, Twist Bioscience's technology platform is well suited for designing NGS tools. The company uses its ability to synthesize accurate DNA sequences to create high-quality target enrichment probes, which allow researchers to detect specific genetic sequences in biological samples.

But investors cannot conflate early success in the NGS market with being on the path to profitability. Sales of target enrichment probes are far from sufficient to offset losses from the remainder of the business. The company expects roughly half of fiscal full-year 2020 revenue to come from money-losing or low-margin products related to synthetic genes; the other half will comprise NGS tools.

Revenue Category

Fiscal Full-Year 2020 Revenue Guidance

Fiscal Full-Year 2019 Revenue, Actual

Change (YoY)

Synthetic genes and related products

$42 million to $43 million

$33.3 million

26% to 29%

NGS tools

$37 million to $40 million

$21.0 million

67% to 76%

Biopharma collaboration

$1 million

N/A

N/A

Total revenue

$80 million to $84 million

$54.4 million

47% to 54%

Data source: Twist Bioscience. YoY = Year over Year.

Despite impressive revenue growth, Twist Bioscience expects to report a net loss of at least $107 million from day-to-day operations in the current fiscal year. That's exactly the same net loss reported in fiscal 2019, and it jumps to at least $129.5 million when the Agilent legal settlement is included.

That also suggests that Twist Bioscience might be stuck financially for the foreseeable future. In order toremain relevant in a money-losing market for synthetic genes and a very competitive market for NGS tools, it must spend significant sums of money on sales and marketing expenses, which are the main driver of operating losses.

In other words, although NGS products are responsible for most of the company's gross profit, they're also responsible for much of the company's operating losses. If the company stopped marketing its products as heavily in an attempt to pare losses, then it might not grow quickly enough to achieve breakeven operations. That suggests Twist Bioscience is pursuing growth at all costs because it doesn't really have any other options. That's not a very secure position for individual investors.

Image source: Getty Images

Investors might be drawn to Twist Bioscience because of its industry-leading technology platform for synthesizing DNA. It can create products today for high-throughput genetic engineering experiments or NGS tools, while tomorrow's opportunities could span digital data storage in DNA or rational design of biologic drugs.

But, to be blunt, publicly traded synthetic biology companies have a downright awful track record of living up to their lofty promises. The best product from the field to date has been hype, and that's led to terrible outcomes for individual investors who invested on storytelling alone. Shares of Twist Bioscience have rewarded investors with solid gains since the IPO, but swelling losses make it reasonable to question if and when the sentiment will turn negative.

Continued here:
Twist Bioscience Pursues Growth at All Costs. How Long Will Investors Tolerate It? - Motley Fool

(KTSDESIGN/Science Photo Library)

Science issues whether connected with climate, childhood vaccines or new techniques in biotechnology are part of the fabric of civic life, raising a range of social, ethical and policy issues for the citizenry. As members of the scientific community gather at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) this week, here is a roundup of key takeaways from our studies of U.S. public opinion about science issues and their effect on society. If youre on Twitter, follow @pewscience for more science findings.

The data for this post was drawn from multiple different surveys. The most recent was a survey of 3,627 U.S. adults conducted Oct. 1 to Oct. 13, 2019. This post also draws on data from surveys conducted in January 2019, December 2018, April-May 2018 and March 2016. All surveys were conducted using the American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of being selected. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, education and other categories. Read more about the ATPs methodology.

Following are the questions and responses for surveys used in this post, as well as each surveys methodology:

1Some public divides over science issues are aligned with partisanship, while many others are not. Science issues can be a key battleground for facts and information in society. Climate science has been part of an ongoing discourse around scientific evidence, how to attribute average temperature increases in the Earths climate system, and the kinds of policy actions needed. While public divides over climate and energy issues are often aligned with political party affiliation, public attitudes on other science-related issues are not.

For example, there are differences in public beliefs around the risks and benefits of childhood vaccines. Such differences arise amid civic debates about the spread of false information about vaccines. While such beliefs have important implications for public health, they are not particularly political in nature.

In fact, Republicans and independents who lean to the GOP are just as likely as Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party to say that, overall, the benefits of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine outweigh the risks (89% and 88% respectively).

2Americans have differing views about some emerging scientific and technological developments. Scientific and technological developments are a key source of innovation and, therefore, change in society. Pew Research Center studies have explored public reactions to emergent developments from genetic engineering techniques, automation and more. One field at the forefront of public reaction is the use of gene editing of babies or genetic engineering of animals. Americans have mixed views over whether the use of gene editing to reduce a babys risk of serious disease that could occur over their lifetime is appropriate (60%) or is taking medical technology too far (38%), according to a 2018 survey. Similarly, about six-in-ten Americans (57%) said that genetic engineering of animals to grow organs or tissues for humans needing a transplant would be appropriate, while four-in-ten (41%) said it would be taking technology too far.

When we asked Americans about a future where a brain chip implant would give otherwise healthy individuals much improved cognitive abilities, a 69% majority said they were very or somewhat worried about the possibility. By contrast, about half as many (34%) were enthusiastic. Further, as people think about the effects of automation technologies in the workplace, more say automation has brought more harm than help to American workers.

One theme running through our findings on emerging science and technology is that public hesitancy often is tied to concern about the loss of human control, especially if such developments would be at odds with personal, religious and ethical values. In looking across seven developments related to automation and the potential use of biomedical interventions to enhance human abilities, Center studies found that proposals that would increase peoples control over these technologies were met with greater acceptance.

3Most in the U.S. see net benefits from science for society, and they expect more ahead. About three-quarters of Americans (73%) say science has, on balance, had a mostly positive effect on society. And 82% expect future scientific developments to yield benefits for society in years to come.

The overall portrait is one of strong public support for the benefits of science to society, though the degree to which Americans embrace this idea differs sizably by race and ethnicity as well as by levels of science knowledge.

Such findings are in line with those of the General Social Survey on the effects of scientific research. In 2018, about three-quarters of Americans (74%) said the benefits of scientific research outweigh any harmful results. Support for scientific research by this measure has been roughly stable since the 1980s.

4The share of Americans with confidence in scientists to act in the public interest has increased since 2016.

Public confidence in scientists to act in the public interest tilts positive and has increased over the past few years. As of 2019, 35% of Americans report a great deal of confidence in scientists to act in the public interest, up from 21% in 2016.

About half of the public (51%) reports a fair amount of confidence in scientists, and just 13% have not too much or no confidence in this group to act in the public interest.

Public trust in scientists by this measure stands in contrast to that for other groups and institutions. One of the hallmarks of the current times has been low trust in government and other institutions. One-in-ten or fewer say they have a great deal of confidence in elected officials (4%) or the news media (9%) to act in the public interest.

5Americans differ over the role and value of scientific experts in policy matters. While confidence in scientists overall tilts positive, peoples perspectives about the role and value of scientific experts on policy issues tends to vary. Six-in-ten U.S. adults believe that scientists should take an active role in policy debates about scientific issues, while about four-in-ten (39%) say, instead, that scientists should focus on establishing sound scientific facts and stay out of such debates.

Democrats are more inclined than Republicans to think scientists should have an active role in science policy matters. Indeed, most Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (73%) hold this position, compared with 43% of Republicans and GOP leaners.

More than four-in-ten U.S. adults (45%) say that scientific experts usually make better policy decisions than other people, while a similar share (48%) says such decisions are neither better nor worse than other peoples and 7% say scientific experts decisions are usually worse than other peoples.

Here, too, Democrats tend to hold scientific experts in higher esteem than do Republicans: 54% of Democrats say scientists policy decisions are usually better than those of other people, while two-thirds of Republicans (66%) say that scientists decisions are either no different from or worse than other peoples.

6Factual knowledge alone does not explain public confidence in the scientific method to produce sound conclusions. Overall, a 63% majority of Americans say the scientific method generally produces sound conclusions, while 35% think it can be used to produce any result a researcher wants. Peoples level of knowledge can influence beliefs about these matters, but it does so through the lens of partisanship, a tendency known as motivated reasoning.

Beliefs about this matter illustrate that science knowledge levels sometimes correlate with public attitudes. But partisanship has a stronger role.

Democrats are more likely to express confidence in the scientific method to produce accurate conclusions than do Republicans, on average. Most Democrats with high levels of science knowledge (86%, based on an 11-item index of factual knowledge questions) say the scientific method generally produces accurate conclusions. By comparison, 52% of Democrats with low science knowledge say this. But science knowledge has little bearing on Republicans beliefs about the scientific method.

7Trust in practitioners like medical doctors and dietitians is stronger than that for researchers in these fields, but skepticism about scientific integrity is widespread. Scientists work in a wide array of fields and specialties. A 2019 Pew Research Center survey found public trust in medical doctors and dietitians to be higher than that for researchers working in these areas. For example, 48% of U.S. adults say that medical doctors give fair and accurate information all or most of the time. By comparison, 32% of U.S. adults say the same about medical research scientists. And six-in-ten Americans say dietitians care about their patients best interests all or most of the time, while about half as many (29%) say this about nutrition research scientists with the same frequency.

One factor in public trust of scientists is familiarity with their work. For example, people who were more familiar with what medical science researchers do were more trusting of these researchers to express care or concern for the public interest, to do their job with competence and to provide fair and accurate information. Familiarity with the work of scientists was related to trust for all six specialties we studied.

But when it comes to questions of scientists transparency and accountability, most Americans are skeptical. About two-in-ten or fewer U.S. adults say that scientists are transparent about potential conflicts of interest with industry groups all or most of the time. Similar shares (roughly between one-in-ten and two-in-ten) say that scientists admit their mistakes and take responsibility for them all or most of the time.

This data shows clearly that when it comes to questions of transparency and accountability, most in the general public are attuned to the potential for self-serving interests to skew science findings and recommendations. These findings echo calls for increased transparency and accountability across many sectors and industries today.

8What boosts public trust in scientific research findings? Most say its making data openly available. A 57% majority of Americans say they trust scientific research findings more when the data is openly available to the public. And about half of the U.S. public (52%) say they are more likely to trust research that has been independently reviewed.

The question of who funds the research is also consequential for how people think about scientific research. A 58% majority say they have lower trust when research is funded by an industry group. By comparison, about half of Americans (48%) say government funding for research has no particular effect on how much they trust the findings; 28% say this decreases their trust and 23% say it increases their trust.

Originally posted here:
Key findings about Americans' confidence in science and their views on scientists' role in society - Pew Research Center

Lee Greenberger, chief scientific officer at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, discusses the use of immunotherapy in blood cancer treatment.

BY Kristie L. Kahl and Lee Greenberger

Transcript:

Kristie L. Kahl: Can you give us a background on what immunotherapy is and how it works?

Lee Greenberger: Immunotherapy has a long history in blood cancer. It goes all the way back to transplantations where you take the immune cells from one patient and put it into the other. It actually can end up being curative in that transplant situation. We now know the molecular basis of that, and immunotherapy has evolved considerably, specifically in the last 10 years where we have sort of brought it out of the lab and now moving it forward.

The story begins with monoclonal antibodies and (Rituxan [rituximab]), which is a monoclonal antibody to CD20, which sits on the surface of tumor cells. It was one of the first antibodies approved, along with (Herceptin [trastuzumab]) for breast cancer. Rituxan is used for blood cancers and used widely. So, the concept that you can make antibodies in the laboratory, manufacture them, bring them out to patients and it has shown that it is highly effective in multiple lymphomas. Since that time, there are multiple antibodies that have come out.

Beyond that, in the last 10 years in particular, we now know that there are all sorts of mechanisms control the immune system, and in fact, the immune system is highly effective at getting rid of tumor cells. For example, in the late 1980s, there was an investigator in Israel who figured out how to actually manufacture from scratch, a gene and put it into T cells, which would allow the T cells, which are part of the immune system, to home on the tumor cells and kill those cells. That evolved into something called chimeric antigen receptor-therapy, or CAR-T. CAR-T has gone through multiple evolutions, but there are now two CAR-T products on the market, and basically what this is a genetic engineering of the T cells.

You take the T cells out of the patient, genetically engineer that gene, put it into those T cells, and now that T cell can home on the tumor cell. When it arrives at the tumor cell, it is recognizing something very specific on those tumor cells. It will dramatically expand. So, instead of having one T cell, now youll have a million cells. And those cells can very effectively kill tumor cells for certain patients. For example, its been used very effectively in children with B-cell type leukemia. Its also used in certain types of lymphoma, most notably diffuse large B cell lymphoma and recently mantle cell lymphoma.

So, thats one type. The cells have to come out of the patient. Manufacturing takes about 14-21 days, and put back into the patient. That can be a very effective solution for treating patients with relapsed disease.

Along with CAR-T cell therapy, there is bi-specific antibodies. These are antibodies that are capable of taking the T cells of the patient and making them recognize the tumor cells. So, instead of a linker that will move these cells together, hence the notion of bi-specific: one to the tumor cells, one to the T cells, bring them together and it makes the T cells capable of killing the tumor cells.

You also have antibody drug conjugates. In that case, you take an antibody which is going to home in on the surface of the tumor cells, and you link it to a toxin. This technology is actually quite fascinating because it actually grew up about the same time that monoclonal antibodies were developed. We had a bunch of super toxins discovered from products. They were so toxic they couldnt even be used by themselves, but if you take that toxin and link it to an antibody, now you have a guided missile. The antibody arrives at the tumor cell, brings the toxin into the tumor cell. Antibody drug conjugates have been on the market since the late 1990s.

Bottom line is, the reason why immunotherapy is so attractive is because it specifically homes on the tumor cell, its highly effective at killing the tumor cell, and it doesnt have some of the harsh, toxic side effects that cytotoxic drugs typically do. Thats not to say they are devoid of toxicity, but its of a different nature and it in general can be managed well.

Kristie L. Kahl: What are some of the more notable side effects?

Lee Greenberger: For CAR-T cell therapy, which is among the most advanced, you get something called cytokine release syndrome. These T cells basically become so revved up, that they secrete a lot of cytokine products that can make you feel ill, cause fever, and in rare cases can be lethal if you cant control them. So, they can compromise organs. Physicians nowadays with CAR-T cell therapy are well aware of some of these cytokine release syndrome (symptoms). They tend to appear a few days after therapy, and dont last for very long but you have to recognize that theyre there. Its a very common event for CAR-T cell therapy. Were getting better at these things. They used to be grade 3, which is serious, now some of the new CAR-T cell therapies are having low-grade (side effects), which do not require observation.

Neurotoxicity is another, where the patient may be disoriented. This also comes up as the T cell numbers increase dramatically, the neurotoxicity could manifest as confusion, disorientation, and then it will die away over time, generally over a couple of weeks.

So, those are two things to watch out for for CAR-T cell therapy. Theyre manageable, but it can be of a serious nature.

Kristie L. Kahl: How does the multidisciplinary approach play a role?

Lee Greenberger:CAR-T cell therapy requires the involvement of many people in the treatment. There are cells that have to come out of the patient, where you take the blood out of the patient and harvest the cells, so there are technicians involved harvesting the cells. Then they go out to a laboratory, and they will make them in their labs. The cells go back into the patient, and that requires careful observation, typically for the next week after you get these cells. This can require an in-hospital stay or outpatient. It requires a physician overseeing it, nurses who are qualified to recognize some of the early symptoms, careful monitoring. We can monitor these things because we know we have biomarkers to know how aggressive these T cells are expanding. So, for example, for cytokine release syndrome, IL6 levels can shoot way high. So, if you are analyzing the blood, and can get these results back quickly, we now have therapies to knock down the IL6 levels and block those effects.

Kristie L. Kahl: What are some questions patients can ask their doctors so that they can become better informed about their treatment decisions?

Lee Greenberger: The road to treating these blood cancers is actually a long, involved road. In some cases, some blood cancers require watch-and-wait and we dont do anything. In other cases, a newly diagnosed patient will begin to get treatment, which depends on (the type of blood cancer). The treatments are all quite different. In some of those cases, the initial treatment will keep the patient in check for years. Dont forget that many of these blood cancers happen in older patients (60-70 years old). So, if you can keep the disease in check for 20 years, youre doing fine. In other cases, these lymphomas will come back. Even with CAR-T therapy, where we can control the disease long-term as best as we can, we can expect that a certain number of these patients, the disease will return. So, with relapsed or refractory disease, these are the ones that are going to require additional treatments.

Transcript Edited for Clarity

Link:
The Use of Immunotherapy in Blood Cancer Treatment - Curetoday.com

2/13/20

Hannah Boucher | Staff Columnist

Mass-produced bananas are dying at an increasingly faster rate and are at risk of one day going extinct.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are not as new of a concept as many would like to believe. While it has been a controversial scientific advancement since the 1970s, when Herbert Boyer and Stanley Cohen invented modern-day genetic engineering, artificial selection has been used to cultivate crops and animals for over 30,000 years.

The misconception that GMOs are dangerous has derived from a misunderstanding of the definition. In fact, agriculture exists because humans selectively bred organisms to cater to their needs. This is the definition of agriculture.

Genetic engineering the true controversial topic falls under the umbrella of genetic modification, which is what has brought society its big, red tomatoes, giant ears of yellow corn and sweet bananas.

The technology used to genetically engineer common produce can also be used on animals and bacteria. Cloning and gene transfer have been successfully carried out in scientific labs, however, these successes have been met with much concern.

While humans possess the power to multiply livestock by the masses, or create an entirely new species in a lab, that does not mean it should be done. These processes violate certain ethical standards because they are seen as being humane which is technically true.

An example of this issue is the banana industry. The Cavendish banana which is actually the second species commercially grown fell victim to Panama disease, a fungus that spreads quickly and kills the entire plant. Bananas are mass produced by corporations such as Dole and Chiquita to appeal to the millions but at a cost.

Scientists are struggling to find a banana plant that carries the gene that fights the disease to breed with the Cavendish. Banana plants are now dying at a faster rate than can be produced, meaning that they may go extinct. This is not the first occurrence of this issue either. In the 1950s, the first species of banana, the Gros Michael, was completely wiped out from a strain of the Panama disease.

The main difference between normal cultivation and monoculture is that monoculture decreases the variability within a population. Cultivation has been successfully practiced for thousands of years. Some of the most commonly consumed vegetables are actually all derived from the same species. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, brussel sprouts and a few other popular greens are all cultivated forms of Brassica oleracea, or, wild cabbage.

Although there are major risks associated with selective breeding, there are also major benefits. By selective the most favorable traits within a species, the fitness, or the species ability to produce viable offspring, increases.

This has helped the farming industry keep up with the growing pool of consumers that continues to increase as the population rises. Certain modifications reduce the need for pesticides and increase the overall crop yield, which also increases the overall income for farmers.

Another big issue with GMOs is that not all of the health risks are currently known. Before any new modified products are released to consumers, they must undergo a series of tests assessing the possible hazards posed from consumption. However, the regulations put in place by the Center for Food Safety [CFS] require all products that contain genetically engineered ingredients to be clearly labeled so people are aware of its contents.

It is important to consider though that many technological advancements pose risks to the general public. It is not the act of genetically manipulating an organism that is the problem, but rather the lack of consideration of the possible issues. Scientists must be careful not to cross a line because they hold the fate of species in their hands. There is nothing to fear when it comes to GMOs. Civilization would be nonexistent without the cultivation of crops and animals.

Related

Visit link:
Public fears and anxieties over GMOs growing old - The Duquesne Duke

Such is the extent of our dominion on Earththat the answers to questions around whether we are still part of nature and whether we even need some of it rely on an understanding of what we want as Homo sapiens. And to know what we want, we need to grasp what we are.

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

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

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Many years ago, a novel written by Vercors called Les Animaux Dnaturs (Denatured Animals) told the story of a group of primitive hominids, the Tropis, found in an unexplored jungle in New Guinea, who seem to constitute a missing link. However, the prospect that this fictional group may be used as slave labour by an entrepreneurial businessman named Vancruysen forces society to decide whether the Tropis are simply sophisticated animals or whether they should be given human rights. And herein lies the difficulty.

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

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

Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found.The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission."Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study."But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there."

Getty

The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year

PA

Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average.

Getty

The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females.But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal

Ye et al/Current Biology

African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017.

Reuters

Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago

A. Gennari

A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste

Steven G Johnson

Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands

Clay Bolt

Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal

New Mexico Museum of Natural History

Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold

Faye Levine, University of Maryland

A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males

Getty

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase

Getty

The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies

Getty/AFP

The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Grard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers

Reuters/AP

The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn"

Viktor Radermacher / SWNS

Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star.

ESO/A. Mller et al

Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins

Getty

Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs

Jos Iriarte

More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test.Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly.

Getty

The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth.

Pictures by: Tom Momary

Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found.The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission."Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study."But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there."

Getty

The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year

PA

Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average.

Getty

The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females.But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal

Ye et al/Current Biology

African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017.

Reuters

Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago

A. Gennari

A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste

Steven G Johnson

Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands

Clay Bolt

Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal

New Mexico Museum of Natural History

Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold

Faye Levine, University of Maryland

A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males

Getty

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase

Getty

The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies

Getty/AFP

The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Grard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers

Reuters/AP

The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn"

Viktor Radermacher / SWNS

Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star.

ESO/A. Mller et al

Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins

Getty

Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs

Jos Iriarte

More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test.Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly.

Getty

The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth.

Pictures by: Tom Momary

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

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

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

A new age

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

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

We were no longer fearful of nature, but of what we would do to it, and ourselves. In short, we still did not know where we came from but began panicking about where we were going. We now know a lot more about our origins but we remain unsure about what we want to be in the future or, increasingly, as the climate crisis accelerates, whether we even have one.

Arguably, the greater choices granted by our technological advances make it even more difficult to decide which of the many paths to take. This is the cost of freedom. I am not arguing against our dominion over nature nor, even as a biologist, do I feel a need to preserve the status quo. Big changes are part of our evolution. After all, oxygen was first a poison which threatened the very existence of early life, yet it is now the fuel vital to our existence.

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

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

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

Changing our world

Continue reading here:
Have humans evolved beyond nature? - The Independent

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MARKET INTRODUCTION

A gene is the basic physical and function unity of heredity. Genetic engineering is the changing the structure of the genes of a living things in order to make it healthier, stronger and more useful to human. Changing DNA in cell is to understand their biology. Genetic engineering are currently used in both animal and plant cells this modifications are helps to improve performance of cell.

MARKET DYNAMICS

The genetic engineering market is expected to grow during the forecast period due to rising use of genetic engineering in the field of medical as well as in agriculture, high prevalence of infectious disease and awareness of steam cell therapy, and increasing no of genomics project due to government raising funds in genetic engineering field and more R&D. Thus, various governments are taking initiatives to create awareness amongst people about genetic engineering.

The report also includes the profiles of key Genetic Engineering Market companies along with their SWOT analysis and market strategies. In addition, the report focuses on leading industry players with information such as company profiles, components and services offered, financial information of last 3 years, key development in past five years.

Key Competitors In Market are

Integrated DNA Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Merck KGaA, Horizon Discovery Group, Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, New England Biolabs, Genscript Biotech Corporation, Lonza Group, Origene Technologies, Sangamo Therapeutics

TOC pointsof Market Report:

Market size & shares

Market trends and dynamics

Market Drivers and Opportunities

Competitive landscape

Supply and demand

Technological inventions in industry

Marketing Channel Development Trend

Market Positioning

Pricing Strategy

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Target Client

MARKET SCOPE

The Global Genetic Engineering Market Analysis to 2027 is a specialized and in-depth study with a special focus on the global market trend analysis. The report aims to provide an overview of Genetic Engineering Market with detailed market segmentation by product type, drug class, and geography. The global genetic engineering market is expected to witness high growth during the forecast period. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the leading genetic engineering market players and offers key trends and opportunities in the market.

Market segmentation:

Genetic Engineering Market to 2027 Global Analysis and Forecasts by Technology (CRISPR, TALEN, ZFN, Antisense, Other Technologies); By Application (Cell line Engineering, Genetic Engineering, Diagnostics & Therapeutics); By End User (Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies, Academic and Research Institutes, Contract Research Organizations) and Geography

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Read more from the original source:
Genetic Engineering Market to Reflect Impressive Expansion by Integrated DNA Technologies, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Merck KGaA, Horizon Discovery...

The world is watching with alarm as China struggles to contain a dangerous new virus, now being called SARS-CoV-2. It has quarantined entire cities, and the US has put a blanket ban on travellers whove been there. Health officials are scrambling to understand how the virus is transmitted and how to treat patients.

But in one University of North Carolina lab, theres a different race. Researchers are trying to create a copy of the virus. From scratch.

Led by Ralph Baric, an expert in coronaviruseswhich get their name from the crown-shaped spike they use to enter human cellsthe North Carolina team expects to recreate the virus starting only from computer readouts of its genetic sequence posted online by Chinese labs last month.

The remarkable ability to boot up viruses from genetic instructions is made possible by companies that manufacture custom DNA molecules, such as Integrated DNA Technology, Twist Bioscience, and Atum. By ordering the right genes, which cost a few thousand dollars, and then stitching them together to create a copy of the coronavirus genome, its possible to inject the genetic material into cells and jump-start the virus to life.

The ability to make a lethal virus from mail-order DNA was first demonstrated 20 years ago. Its enough of a bioterrorism concern that companies carefully monitor who is ordering which genes. But its also an important way to respond to a sudden outbreak, since synthetic virus recipes give researchers powerful ways to study treatments, vaccines, and how mutations could make it more dangerous.

When a synthetic virus is better than the real thing

Barics North Carolina lab, which specializes in engineering viruses, has previously butted heads with Washington agencies over the work, which has included synthesizing new, never before seen coronaviruses that can infect mice. In 2014, the National Institutes of Health froze funding to several labs, including Barics, over concerns that such research was too risky. The funding was later reinstated.

For the China virus, Baric said in a telephone interview, his team placed an order for matching DNA from a manufacturer last month. Their first step was to go online and look at genetic sequences of the virus. They then compared several available sequences, which differ slightly, and picked a consensus version to have manufactured.

Once Baric gets his DNA, something that could take a month, he plans to inject the genetic instructions into cells. If things go as planned, the cells should begin making actual infectious viral particles.

CDC

By rolling their own germs, scientists can get hold of viruses even if they cant obtain them directly from a country, especially one thats in the grip of an epidemic. Baric says so far samples of the live virus from patients have not been made widely available from China. This is the future in terms of how the medical research community responds to a new threat, says Baric.

The real virus and the synthetic one should be basically identical. But with the synthetic one, we have a DNA copy that we can go back to over and over and over again, to make genetically identical viruses, says Timothy Sheahan, a researcher at UNC who works with Baric. Starting from these copies, scientists can remove genes, add others, and figure out things like what makes the germ spread and how it gains access to human cells. Sheahan wants to try infecting mice with the virus and giving them various drugs to see what stops it.

Artificial copies may also help scientists keep up with the outbreaks unpredictable path. I worry this virus is going to mutate in the course of the epidemic, and this would allow me to study what effects those mutations have, says Stanley Perlman, a microbiologist who works on coronaviruses at the University of Iowa. The synthetic virus is just a substitute for the actual virus, but with the DNA clone you can manipulate it and find the weak points and develop a therapy.

During past outbreaks, scientists would have had to wait months or years to get a look at the germ behind an outbreak. But with SARS-CoV-2 it took only weeks until its genetic sequence was posted online. Immediately, some scientists began analyzing the genetic data, comparing it to viruses from bats, snakes and pangolins; they concluded it could have begun circulating last November.

Biotech companies, governments, and universities also quickly started ordering physical copies of particular genes found in the virus. DNA manufacturers say they have been deluged with orders for virus parts, including those useful for verifying diagnostic tests and others needed to make potential vaccines.

Its been a pretty dramatic uptick, starting with the publication of the genome, says Adam Clore, technical director of synthetic biology at IDT, based in Iowa, and one of the worlds largest sellers of DNA. Its high priority. There are a number of institutions that are devoting nearly all their energy working on detection or vaccines.

Still, most researchers need only one or two genes from the virus to carry forward work on tests and vaccines. Barics lab in North Carolina is the only one in the US known to be trying to re-create the virus completely from ordered DNA parts.

How to keep deadly viruses out of the wrong hands

It was in the early 2000s that scientists first showed that synthetic DNA strands could be used to resurrect viruses just from their genetic code. A team in New York State did it with polio, producing infectious material from DNA they ordered online.

The technology immediately created bio-weapon worries. What if terrorists used the technique to resurrect smallpox? That hasnt happened, but it does mean that scourges like polio, smallpoxand now the Chinese coronaviruscannot now ever be truly wiped out. Researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drove that point home in 2005 when they resurrected the influenza virus that killed tens of millions in 1918-1919.

To keep the technology out of the hands of evil-doers, companies that manufacture DNA banded together a few years ago to limit access to dangerous genes. The big US players have all agreed to compare incoming DNA orders to a database of about 60 lethal germs and toxins called select agents so that only authorized labs can ever obtain the DNA needed to resurrect them.

CDC

At our request, Battelle, a scientific R&D company whose software ThreatSEQ can make those comparisons, ran the scenario of someone trying to order a copy of SARS-CoV-2. According to Craig Bartling, a senior research scientist at Battelle, the software flagged both the entire virus, and most of its genes individually, at the highest threat level. Bartling says the alerts went off because the virus is highly similar to the original SARS, a related virus that sparked a global outbreak starting in 2002.

Research into the new virus is seen as risky enough that manufacturers of DNA hurried last week to meet and formulate a policy about who should be able buy complete versions of the new germs genome. In a statement released on February 11, the International Gene Synthesis Consortium, a trade group, struck a cautious position. It said it would treat the new Chinese virus as if it were SARS, a germ added to the select agent list in 2012 and whose possession is tightly monitored by the US government.

That means anyone who wants a complete synthetic copy of SARS-CoV-2 would need to undergo specific and detailed vetting and prove they are already registered by the CDC to work with SARS, as the North Carolina researchers are.

However, companies that manufacture DNA still have discretion over what they sell and to whom, and not all of them think they should make the whole genome of this virus. Claes Gustaffson, founder and chief commercial officer of Atum, a DNA supplier in California, says hes gotten orders from eight companies for parts of the virus genome and has personally approved a request by a US government agency to make 90% of its geneslikely to create an attenuated (i.e., harmless) version of it.

They probably want to figure out how to make a vaccine as quickly as possible, says Gustaffson. But if someone wanted the whole thing, I wouldnt make it. Some things, like polio, you dont want to make, no matter who is asking.

UNC Gillings School of Public Health

Not everyone thinks synthesizing the new coronavirus is particularly dangerous. I dont really see a huge amount of risk, says Nicholas G. Evans, who studies biothreats at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Right now, a lot of people are spending a lot of time on how this coronavirus works. I think the risks are outweighed by the benefits.

The outbreak, which appears to have begun in a live animal market in the city of Wuhan, had caused more than 64,000 cases and 1,350 deaths in China by February 14, so its even worse than SARS, which killed 774 people.

Still, the US has not yet declared the new virus to be a select agent. According to Baric, the decision to add a new virus to the most-dangerous list is not made in the expanding outbreak, because it slows down research.

Scaring people

For now, only a very few sophisticated centers can actually re-boot a virus; theres no chance a nut working from a garage could do it. We are at the point where the best of the best can start to synthesize this new virus contemporaneously with the outbreak. But that is just a few labs, says Evans. Fortunately, we are still far from the point when lots of people can synthesize anything.

The advanced state of synthetic virus research, and the ability to genetically engineer germs, inevitably feeds fears, and conspiracy theories. Social media and some blog sites have been full of groundless speculation that the new virus was accidentally released from a Chinese bioweapon lab located outside of Wuhan. Theres no evidence that is the case, and substantial evidence it is not, but the rumor caused a diplomatic breach with China after it was repeated in the US Congress by a senator, Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Baric says he doesnt see a particular danger to synthesizing the new virus at this stage of the outbreak, especially because the virus is still circulating in the wild. The important thing is to figure out what it does and stop it. Whether you get it from a cell or synthesize it, it ends up the same thing, says Baric.

Read the original here:
Biologists rush to re-create the China coronavirus from its DNA code - MIT Technology Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read more from the original source:
The Future Is Here, and Uncomfortably Close to Home - The New York Times