StemCell Therapy

(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

Only the best news in your inbox

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

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 Insight Partners recently added Genetic Engineering market Report by manufacturers, regions, type and application, forecast to 2027 in his database. This research report focus on complete assessment of market and contains future trend, growth factors, attentive opinions, facts, historical data, statistically supported and industry validated market data. Environmental concerns & regulatory guidelines regarding release of effluents through different industries. Genetic Engineering market comprehensive coverage of underlying economic and technological factors under key trend analysis.

If your Company involved in the Genetic Engineering industry or intend to be, then this study will provide you comprehensive outlook Future Industry by Analysts and know what to expect from this along with analysis By Industry Experts. Its vital you keep your market knowledge up to date segmented by In-Depth Insight of Sales Analysis, Growth Forecast and Upcoming Trends Opportunities by Applications Manufacturing, Product Types By major Manufacturers. If you have a different set of players/manufacturers according to geography or needs regional or country segmented reports we can provide customization according to your requirement globally With Expanding Future Business Scope.

Get the inside scope of the Sample report @https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00004544/

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

Brand Strategy

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

By Geography North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South & Central America. And 13 countries globally along with current trend and opportunities prevailing in the region.

The target audience for the report on the market

Manufactures

Market analysts

Senior executives

Business development managers

Technologists

R&D staff

Distributors

Investors

Governments

Equity research firms

Consultants

Click to buy full report with all description:-https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00004544/

About Us:

The Insight Partnersis a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are committed to provide highest quality research and consulting services to our customers. We help our clients understand the key market trends, identify opportunities, and make informed decisions with our market research offerings at an affordable cost.

We understand syndicated reports may not meet precise research requirements of all our clients. We offer our clients multiple ways to customize research as per their specific needs and budget

Contact Us:

The Insight Partners,

Phone: +1-646-491-9876

Email:[emailprotected]

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 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

Imagine a world where a mosquito bite is just an itchy annoyance. No malaria. No dengue fever.

Last month, scientists announced they had taken one more step toward that vision. A paper in the journal PLOS Pathogens described how they synthetically engineered mosquitoes to stop the spread of dengue fever, a viral tropical disease that sickens as many as 100 million people each year.

Now imagine genetically tweaking an invasive species of mosquito to save native Hawaiian birds from extinction, or transferring genes from one species of endangered chestnut tree to another to help the latter resist blight. Employing the same sort of genetic engineering used to make a plant-based burger bleed, scientists are beginning to explore the ways synthetic biology could help protect biodiversity and conserve species.

Synthetic biology, or synbio, employs the latest and greatest gene-editing tools, such as the cut-and-paste technology known as CRISPR-Cas9. Combined with new techniques to digitize and automate the design and modeling of various genetic elements, scientists can now engineer organisms to produce novel food ingredients or to rewire the switches that express genes that control certain functions.

In the case of those dengue-carrying mosquitoes, scientists genetically tweaked members of the Aedes aegypti species by transferring genes from the human immune system that create an antibody to suppress dengue fever into the blood-sucking insect. The antibody is activated and expressed once the female mosquito draws blood. In effect, the mosquito is cured of dengue fever before it can transmit the disease.

The next step would be to propagate the new genetic element to confer dengue immunity through a population. Thats where a gene drive comes in. Gene drive systems, which can be natural or synthetically engineered, skew inheritance of a certain genetic element so that it will spread more quickly through generations.

The idea is to bypass normal inheritance rulesthat classic Darwinian concept that inheritance is driven by genetic variations that improve an organisms ability to compete in a dog-eat-dog worldso that re-engineered traits become dominant.

In terms of conservation, synbio could potentially address several areas of concern, such as curbing invasive species, reducing pressures from wildlife trade, improving resistance to disease, and even bringing a species back from the brink of extinction.

Biologists at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), who also led the team that wrote the PLOS Pathogens paper on mosquitoes, developed a novel gene drive system for manipulating genetic inheritance in Drosophila suzukii, a fruit fly with the common name spotted-wing drosophila.

This particular pest, native to Japan and first discovered in the US in 2008, injects its eggs into soft ripening fruit like berries. Current practices to defend against spotted-wing drosophila rely on either heavy insecticide use or early harvesting. Its estimated the pest costs the US economy as much as $700 million each year in losses.

The engineered gene drive from UCSD, dubbed Medea after the character in Greek mythology that killed her offspring, uses a synthetic toxin and a corresponding antidote function to achieve 100 percent inheritance bias in less than 20 generations.

This genetic Trojan Horse could then be used to spread elements that confer susceptibility to certain environmental factors, such as triggering the death of the modified fruit flies at a certain temperature.

UC San Diego associate professor Omar Akbari told Singularity Hub that his team is getting close to field testing some of our technologies. The furthest along for our group would be the use of [precision guided sterile insect technique] to control wild populations of D. Suzuki.

A number of companies are turning to synbio to create ingredients where the natural product is expensive, rare, or threatened. Take the well-known example of vanilla. Most products on the market use a synthetic version of vanillas main ingredient, vanillin, made from petrochemicals.

Swiss company Evolva has developed a genetically modified yeast to produce vanillin in a manner similar to brewing beer. Modern Meadow also uses DNA editing tools to engineer specialized collagen-producing yeast cells for making leather products.

In a case more directly related to wildlife conservation, Singaporean scientists engineered a synthetic replacement for horseshoe crab blood cells, which have been used in biomedical applications for decades. All four species of horseshoe crabs are considered imperiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

However, while a replacement product for horseshoe crab blood has been commercially available for more than 15 years, it has yet to be broadly adopted for various reasons. Thats finally changing, as new studies have confirmed that available synthetics are just as reliable as horseshoe crab blood for detecting endotoxins in biomedical manufacturing.

The long-lived American chestnut was once one of the dominant tree species of forests in the eastern US. A blight from Asia introduced in the late 1800s has all but wiped them out. Efforts to breed American chestnuts with disease-resistant chestnut trees in China have had limited success, as its not easy to propagate the desired traits from several genes through succeeding generations.

A project led by the College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York is using synbio to produce a blight-resistant American chestnut without even harming the fungus.

The researchers have copied a single gene from wheat and transferred it into American chestnuts. The gene produces an enzyme called oxalate oxidase that doesnt kill the fungus. Instead, it breaks down the fungus toxin that attacks the trees tissue properties.

The bonus is that the fungus itself is left untouched, so the blight remains dormant and doesnt evolve resistance over time.

While bringing the dead back to life is one trick that will likely elude scientists in our lifetime, synbio researchers have been actively working to resurrect the woolly mammoth and other extinct species such as the passenger pigeon, which disappeared for good more than a century ago.

These projects arent strictly creating pure examples of these long-gone species. Rather, scientists are inserting sections of ancient DNA code into modern relatives. In the case of the woolly mammoth, researchers are attempting to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid using the Asian elephant.

Proponents of this sort of resurrection science say its less about trying to revive extinct species than about saving those that are currently at risk of disappearing. The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

A team led by George Church out of Harvard University hopes that by transferring genes in the mammoth genome to the Asian elephant it will be able to survive in the Arctic; relevant genes might include those that code for extra fat and dense hair. That would extend the animals range into regions that are already changing due to a warming climate.

Like geoengineeringmanipulating the environment to stave off the effects of climate changebioengineering has its critics and detractors. Some react viscerally to the idea of altering natural systems in any way.

One of the main arguments revolves around the concern that introducing a genetically modified species could have unintended consequences. While no one expects a Jurassic Park scenario where genetically enhanced monsters chase Jeff Goldblum through the jungle, there is a chance that genetically tweaked traits could jump species or otherwise go off script.

Kent Redford believes fostering a conversation about the possible advantages and disadvantages of the role of synbio in conservation is important regardless of where one stands on the divide.

My mission is to make sure that the conservation community knows about these technologies and has taken a considered and informed opinion on them, and tried to influence [these] technologies for the good of biodiversityto minimize harm and to increase positive outcomes, he told Singularity Hub during a phone interview.

A conservation expert who has served at the The Nature Conservancy and Wildlife Conservation Society, Redford is the chair of an IUCN task force on synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation. He was the lead editor on an assessment report, Genetic Frontiers for Conservation, which will be presented this summer at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in France.

The opinion of the IUCN matters. Its 1,300 member organizations include governments, non-governmental organizations, business associations, and scientific and academic institutions.

Redford declined to speculate as to what sort of recommendations may come out of the IUCN meeting. He did note that the intersection of synbio and conservation remains on the periphery for many in the conservation community.

Most of my colleagues dont see why they should be paying much attention to this, he said. Some of those who are aware of these emerging technologies consider them to be relevant tools to help solve some of the intractable problems in conservation. Others believe these genetic techniques have the potential to completely ruin the natural world and the lives of poor people.

Akbari agreed that the biggest challenge for synbio in conservation isnt the technology but securing regulatory approvals and public support. I think we need time, he said. As more technologies are developed and tested with positive outcomesI believe the resistance will lessen.

While the scientific community debates the potential and the pitfalls of synbio, biodiversity will continue to decline.

A report last year by the United Nations Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services issued a number of disturbing statistics. For example, the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20 percent, mainly since 1900. And nearly 10 percent of all domesticated breeds of mammals humans have used for food and agriculture throughout history were extinct by 2016, with at least 1,000 more breeds still threatened.

I think the natural world is in serious trouble, Redford said. Whether synbio can be part of the answer to that problem remains a big question.

Image Credit: Image by RayNight from Pixabay

Read this article:
Engineering Bugs, Resurrecting Species: The Wild World of Synthetic Biology for Conservation - Singularity Hub

Manuel Berdoy, University of Oxford

UK (The Conversation) - Such is the extent of our dominion on Earth, that the answer 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.

This article is part of Lifes Big Questions The Conversations new series, co-published with BBC Future, seeks to answer our readers nagging questions about life, love, death and the universe. We work with professional researchers who have dedicated their lives to uncovering new perspectives on the questions that shape our lives.

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.

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 8.15am precisely.

The atomic bomb that rocked Hiroshima on August 6 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, it was a 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.

Advances in genomics, however, have opened the door to another key turning point. Perhaps we can avoid blowing up the world, and instead change it and ourselves slowly, perhaps beyond recognition.

The development of genetically modified crops in the 1980s quickly moved from early aspirations to improve the taste of food to a more efficient way of destroying undesirable weeds or pests.

In what some saw as the genetic equivalent of the atomic bomb, our early forays into a new technology became once again largely about killing, coupled with worries about contamination. Not that everything was rosy before that. Artificial selection, intensive farming and our exploding population growth were long destroying species quicker than we could record them.

The increasing silent springs of the 1950s and 60s caused by the destruction of farmland birds and, consequently, their song was only the tip of a deeper and more sinister iceberg. There is, in principle, nothing unnatural about extinction, which has been a recurring pattern (of sometimes massive proportions) in the evolution of our planet long before we came on the scene. But is it really what we want?

The arguments for maintaining biodiversity are usually based on survival, economics or ethics. In addition to preserving obvious key environments essential to our ecosystem and global survival, the economic argument highlights the possibility that a hitherto insignificant lichen, bacteria or reptile might hold the key to the cure of a future disease. We simply cannot afford to destroy what we do not know.

But attaching an economic value to life makes it subject to the fluctuation of markets. It is reasonable to expect that, in time, most biological solutions will be able to be synthesised, and as the market worth of many lifeforms falls, we need to scrutinise the significance of the ethical argument. Do we need nature because of its inherent value?

Perhaps the answer may come from peering over the horizon. It is somewhat of an irony that as the third millennium coincided with decrypting the human genome, perhaps the start of the fourth may be about whether it has become redundant.

Just as genetic modification may one day lead to the end of Homo sapiens naturalis (that is, humans untouched by genetic engineering), we may one day wave goodbye to the last specimen of Homo sapiens genetica. That is the last fully genetically based human living in a world increasingly less burdened by our biological form minds in a machine.

If the essence of a human, including our memories, desires and values, is somehow reflected in the pattern of the delicate neuronal connections of our brain (and why should it not?) our minds may also one day be changeable like never before.

And this brings us to the essential question that surely we must ask ourselves now: if, or rather when, we have the power to change anything, what would we not change?

After all, we may be able to transform ourselves into more rational, more efficient and stronger individuals. We may venture out further, have greater dominion over greater areas of space, and inject enough insight to bridge the gap between the issues brought about by our cultural evolution and the abilities of a brain evolved to deal with much simpler problems. We might even decide to move into a bodiless intelligence: in the end, even the pleasures of the body are located in the brain.

And then what? When the secrets of the universe are no longer hidden, what makes it worth being part of it? Where is the fun?

Gossip and sex, of course! some might say. And in effect, I would agree (although I might put it differently), as it conveys to me the fundamental need that we have to reach out and connect with others. I believe that the attributes that define our worth in this vast and changing universe are simple: empathy and love. Not power or technology, which occupy so many of our thoughts but which are merely (almost boringly) related to the age of a civilisation.

Like many a traveller, Homo sapiens may need a goal. But from the strengths that come with attaining it, one realises that ones worth (whether as an individual or a species) ultimately lies elsewhere. So I believe that the extent of our ability for empathy and love will be the yardstick by which our civilisation is judged. It may well be an important benchmark by which we will judge other civilisations that we may encounter, or indeed be judged by them.

There is something of true wonder at the basis of it all. The fact that chemicals can arise from the austere confines of an ancient molecular soup, and through the cold laws of evolution, combine into organisms that care for other lifeforms (that is, other bags of chemicals) is the true miracle.

Some ancients believed that God made us in his image. Perhaps they were right in a sense, as empathy and love are truly godlike features, at least among the benevolent gods.

Cherish those traits and use them now, Poppy, as they hold the solution to our ethical dilemma. It is those very attributes that should compel us to improve the wellbeing of our fellow humans without lowering the condition of what surrounds us.

Anything less will pervert (our) nature.

To get all of lifes big answers, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value evidence-based news by subscribing to our newsletter. You can send us your big questions by email at bigquestions@theconversation.com and well try to get a researcher or expert on the case.

More Lifes Big Questions:

Manuel Berdoy, Biologist, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Politics #Tech #World #Top Stories #Bywire News #Uk News & Politics #Tech #The Conversation

View post:
Have humans evolved beyond nature and do we even need it? - Bywire News

A new type of cancer cell therapy could avoid some of the serious side effects commonly associated with CAR-T treatments, and possibly offer an easier path to developing "off-the-shelf" treatments, suggest findings from a small study led by researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

The results, which were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, are from just 11 patients. Other factors, such as the use of postremission therapy, limit what conclusions can be drawn about the researchers' approach, which relies on "natural killer" cells rather than the T cells used in cellular drugs like Novartis' Kymriah.

Still, the data offer a glimpse into why Japanese drugmaker Takedaagreed last November to license the CAR NK cell therapy from MD Anderson, part of the company's broader push into cell and gene treatments. Some of the data published Wednesday was previously disclosed by the pharma.

The success of cancer immunotherapy, of which CAR-T treatments are a major part, has put T cells at the center of a now decade-long research revival in oncology.

But T cells are only one component of the body's immune system, and scientists in academia and in biotech are exploring whether other cellular defenders could be similarly recruited.

Researchers at MD Anderson have turned to natural killer cells, which by design recognize and attack cancers or other invaders. Such cells have been tested as an anti-cancer treatment before,but using genetic engineering to improve their tumor-killing properties, which the MD Anderson team has done, is a newer innovation.

"To my knowledge, this is the largest body of evidence on the use of CAR NK cells in patients with cancer," said Katayoun Rezvani, the study's corresponding author and a professor of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy at MD Anderson, in an interview.

Using NK cells derived from cord blood, Rezvani and her colleagues engineered the cells to express a receptor for a protein called CD19, commonly found on the surface of B-cell malignancies like leukemia and lymphoma. They also added a gene for interleukin-15 to boost the expansion and persistence of the infused NK cells, which without engineering would typically disappear after about two weeks.

While the CAR-T treatments Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) and Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel) also target CD19, they are made from a patient's own T cells, which are extracted and then engineered outside the body. The personalized process is time-consuming and laborious, hampering the commercial uptake of both Kymriahand Yescarta.

By using cord blood, Rezvani and her team are pursuing an allogeneic, or "off-the-shelf," approach to cell treatment something many consider to be the next step for the field.

Initial data look promising. Seven of the 11 treated patients, who had either chronic lymphocytic leukemia or non-Hodgkin lymphoma, responded to treatment, with the cancers of three going into remission.Most notably, none experienced cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity, two severe side effects that commonly occur in patients treated with CAR-T therapy.

"The lack of toxicity is very exciting here," wrote Stephan Grupp, an oncologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a leader in the CAR-T field, in comments emailed to BioPharma Dive. He was not involved with the MD Anderson study.

"We really think that this is something inherent to the biology of the natural killer cells, which means their profile of toxicity is different than that of T cells,"Rezvanisaid.

Study participants did have blood toxicities that researchers associated with the chemotherapy given prior to infusion of the CAR NK cells.

While positive, the results are limited by several factors which make drawing broader conclusions about the ultimate potential of the treatment difficult.

Five of the seven responding patients received postremission treatment, including stem cell transplants, Rituxan (rituximab) and Revlimid (lenalidomide), so researchers did not assess the duration of response to CAR NK therapy.

Additionally, a fresh CAR NK cell product was manufactured for each patient in this study, rather than using the cord blood to produce multiple therapies as would be envisioned for a true off-the-shelf product.

"I think the potential for this approach to be 'off-the-shelf' is also a little speculative at this time," wrote Grupp.

"We would need to see multiple patients treated from the same expanded product with no HLAmatching to know if 'off-the-shelf' is going to be part of the story here," he added, referring to the process by which patients are matched to donor cells.

If cord blood-derived CAR NK cells were able to be given without matching to a patient's HLA genotype, any resulting treatment could be used more widely. Nine patients were partially matched in the MD Anderson study, while the last two were treated without consideration of HLA type.

The MD Anderson researchers plan to continue enrolling patients in the study and are working with Takeda to design a larger, multi-center trial.

The drugmaker is planning to advance the treatment, which it licensed and now calls TAK-007, into pivotal studies in two types of lymphoma and CLL by 2021, with a potential filing for approval in 2023.

"Targeting CD19 was a proof of concept and now that we've demonstrated that this CAR NK approach can work and is safe we want to use this platform to target other types of cancers," said Rezvani, indicating interest in multiple myeloma and acute myeloid leukemia.

Go here to see the original:
In small study, hints of promise for 'natural killer' cell therapy - BioPharma Dive

Company founded by four pioneers of Treg cell biology and cell therapy and financed by a syndicate of leading biotech investors

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. and SEATTLE, Feb. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sonoma Biotherapeutics, a privately held company developing regulatory T cell (Treg) therapies for autoimmune and degenerative diseases, launched today in South San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA with $40 million in its Series A financing. Sonoma brings together next-generation research, development and manufacturing capabilities in cell therapy and genetic engineering with an accomplished team of executives, scientists, board members and investors with extensive experience in the fields of cell therapy and drug discovery.

"With this team and our assembled expertise and technologies, we are in an ideal position to move adoptive cell therapy beyond cancer, to establish safe, effective and long-lasting treatments for a range of conditions where current drugs and biologics are simply not good enough," said founder and CEO Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD. "As the immune system's master regulators of protecting the body against self-destruction, Treg cell therapy is perhaps the ideal means to shut down unwanted immune reactions and provide meaningful treatment for patients."

The financing involves an investor syndicate that includes Lyell Immunopharma, ARCH Venture Partners, Milky Way Ventures and 8VC. "Treg therapies have the potential to transform the treatment of autoimmune and degenerative diseases," said Robert Nelsen, managing partner and co-founder of ARCH Ventures Partners. "Sonoma Biotherapeutics has assembled the team and capabilities required to make this vision a reality for patients and their families."

The goal of Treg therapy is to restore a state of self-tolerance by halting harmful inflammatory responses in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis, along with degenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer's. Over 50 million Americans currently live with an autoimmune disease, and millions more with some form of degenerative diseases. For many, existing therapies are ineffective at controlling their disease.

Tregs have a clear role in many of these conditions. These cells' natural ability to migrate to inflamed tissues and control harmful immune responses make them ideal for treating a range of conditions. In addition, the ability to engineer Treg cells to target specific disease-causing antigens reduces the potential for unwanted systemic effects. The role of Tregs in tissue maintenance and repair offers the potential for effective, durable and restorative treatments.

Sonoma Biotherapeutics is co-founded by four of the foundational scientists in the Treg field:

Collectively, the founding team brings expertise and proprietary methodologies across the Treg drug discovery and development process, including selection, manipulation, editing, regulation and translation for clinical use. Together, Drs. Bluestone and Tang have pioneered adoptive Treg cell therapy in some of its first clinical uses in type 1 diabetes, lupus and organ transplantation. Drs. Rudensky and Ramsdell co-discovered FOXP3, a critical transcription factor for Treg development and function, and in 2017 were awarded the Crafoord Prize by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for their landmark studies. They are complemented by an experienced senior management team and seasoned board of directors.

"The Sonoma Biotherapeutics leadership are responsible for a significant portion of our understanding of the nature of Treg cells, their role in disease and their potential for use as a cell therapy," said Dr. Rick Klausner, CEO of Lyell Immunopharma and newly appointed Chair of the Sonoma Biotherapeutics Board of Directors. "Perhaps more importantly, they understand the requirements of a successful cell therapeutic and the corresponding challenges in defining the pathway to market. We look forward to a strong partnership between Lyell and Sonoma Biotherapeutics."

In this regard, Sonoma Biotherapeutics has entered into a strategic partnership with Lyell that provides both parties with access to technologies and know-how to enhance the durability, stability and specificity of cell therapies in their respective indications of focus. This partnership will further enable Sonoma's rapid translation of Treg therapies from target identification and discovery, through preclinical and clinical development.

Senior Management Team

Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, Founder, CEO & PresidentFred Ramsdell, PhD, Founder & CSOPeter DiLaura, Chief Business & Strategy OfficerJoshua Beilke, MBA, PhD, VP Translational Development

Board of Directors

Rick Klausner, MD (Chair) Founder & CEO, Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.Maggie Wilderotter CEO, Grand Reserve Inn; former board member, Juno TherapeuticsToni Hoover, PhD Director, Strategy, Planning and Management for Global Health, Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationTerry Rosen, PhD CEO, Arcus BiosciencesDavid Moskowitz, PhD Principal, 8VC (observer)Jeffrey Bluestone, PhD, CEO & President, Sonoma Biotherapeutics

About Sonoma Biotherapeutics

Sonoma Biotherapeutics is a privately held, San Francisco and Seattle-based company leading the development of adoptive Treg therapies cell for autoimmune and degenerative diseases. Using next generation genome editing and target-specific cell therapy, Sonoma is focused on developing its best-in-class platform across the entire spectrum of Treg cell therapeutic capabilities. Founded by pioneers in Treg biology and cell therapy, the company brings together leading expertise and proprietary methodologies for the discovery and development of disease modifying and curative therapies.

Contact: media@sonomabio.com

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sonoma-biotherapeutics-launches-with-40-million-in-series-a-funding-to-advance-regulatory-t-cell-therapy-in-autoimmune-and-degenerative-diseases-300999810.html

SOURCE Sonoma Biotherapeutics

See original here:
Sonoma Biotherapeutics launches with $40 million in Series A funding to advance regulatory T cell therapy in autoimmune and degenerative diseases -...

Following the spread of the coronavirus in China and other countries, several writers in the Arab press wrote that this virus and others, such as the SARS and swine flu viruses, were deliberately created and spread by the U.S. in order to make a profit by selling vaccines against these diseases. Others wrote that the virus was part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases.

Coronavirus sparks war between the U.S. and China (source: baladnaelyoum.com, February 2, 2020)

The following are translated excerpts from some of these articles:

Saudi Writer: It's No Coincidence That The Coronavirus Has Skipped Over Israel And The U.S.

In Saudi daily Al-Watan, writer Sa'ud Al-Shehry claimed that the coronavirus was a plot by American and Israeli drug companies aimed at increasing their profits. He wrote: "A 'wonder' virus was discovered yesterday in China; tomorrow it will be discovered in Egypt, but it will not be discovered either today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow in the U.S. or Israel, nor in poor countries such as Burundi or the Comoro Islands

"The corona[virus] is a known virus, and we know that it was discovered in 1960 and that it causes ordinary respiratory diseases. Its symptoms are like those of any other virus: coughing, congestion, and perhaps also diarrhea and fever. [Therefore,] it is strange to hear that the World Health Organization is saying that 'this is a virus first discovered in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, in a camel...'

"And here is something else that's strange: As soon as Egypt announced, a few years ago, that it would rely on poultry [raised in the country], and that it would even export [poultry] abroad that is, that it no longer needed poultry from the U.S., France, and so on [suddenly] there appeared, from underneath the ground, the avian flu virus with the aim of nipping [Egypt's economic] awakening in the bud. Helpless, the world searched for a serum [i.e. vaccine] for this miserable avian [flu] virus. Out of the blue, like a miracle, Merck Sharp appeared like an innocent lamb, with the longed-for medicine in its hand, as if it knew nothing and as if one of its managers, Donald Rumsfeld, knew nothing and thought that the world too knew nothing. And maybe [the world] really did not know that this Donald Rumsfeld had served as [U.S.] secretary of defense for five years, into 2006. This secret member of the army brought the 'hidden' serum in the form of [the antiviral medication] Tamiflu, and thus he and his company raked in tens of billions of dollars from this miserable swine flu. The question is, what is the [U.S.] Department of Defense's connection to medical treatments?!

"Even before this, the same thing was done in China when in 2003 [the country] announced that it had [the [world's] largest dollar reserves [and] they [the Americans] introduced coronavirus' cousin, SARS, into [the country] [along with] the [vaccine] serum, [saying] 'We are the only ones who have this and you'll pay for it.' There was also the anthrax experiment, with the same company, Merck Sharp, and the same fraud and roundabout methods and it happened also with the swine flu, when Novartis and many other companies made $6 billion from this.

"Dear reader, when you read these scenarios, you will surely agree that behind the [outbreak of] corona[virus] there is a plan of deceit aimed at making a profit, and nothing more. The whole thing is a virus industry, a world of tiny creatures viruses and genetic engineering that culminate in the manufacture of a virus that is transferred to wealthy countries that can buy the [vaccine] serum. It is transferred through food, beverages, animals, the air, or perhaps via cosmetics and other means that don't come to mind. At the same time, the appropriate [vaccine] serum is being prepared for this virus, and it is held until the people need it badly because of the severity of the disease [caused by] this virus, which is genetically engineered. Then the patient grasps at any straw and pays all his money to buy this artificial treatment that was created at the same time as the virus [itself].

"And perhaps, dear reader, you will look at the statistics on the rate of contagion with the corona[virus] worldwide, and you will learn that the Gulf states hold the first places [in this list], followed by European countries, and you will never find [in these statistics] [either] the U.S. or Israel. This is a question mark that I leave for you to hypothesize about. You will also not find [the virus] in a poor country. I will solve the riddle [of why this is so], but don't tell a soul it is because [a poor country] cannot pay the price of the serum.

"Finally, rest assured that your country will pay a high price. Rest assured [also] that this is an 'ordinary' disease and not highly contagious only when [people] gather in large crowds. Long live Saudi Arabia and be strong and healthy."[1]

Syrian Writer: The Coronavirus Epidemic Is An Artificial Crisis Intended ToUndermine China's Economy

Hussein Saqer, a columnist for the Syrian daily Al-Thawra, made similar claims in a February 3, 2020 column, saying that the coronavirus was part of a commercial-biological-psychological war waged by the U.S. against China. He wrote: "From Ebola, zika, SARS, avian flu and swine flu, through anthrax and mad cow disease to the corona[virus] [all these] deadly viruses were manufactured by the U.S. and threaten to annihilate the peoples of the world. [The U.S.] has turned biological warfare into a new type of war, by means of which it intends to change the rules of play and shift the conflict with the peoples [of the world] away from the conventional path. What was reportedly said recently by the Finnish Minister of Health and Social Affairs was not fake news of the kind that features in counter-propaganda and in the tabloids. It was an authentic video with sound and image...[2] [The Finnish minister] said that the U.S. was acting to reduce the population of the world by two thirds in a way that would not cause it any losses. In fact, [the U.S.] would earn billions after forcing the World Health Organization to designate these diseases as deadly plagues so that [getting] the vaccine would be obligatory rather than voluntary, especially for the most vulnerable populations that constitute the next generation: pregnant women and children.

"The announcement of the Finnish minister firmly proves that the U.S. has a schedule for manufacturing viruses of this kind, and that the coronavirus is [another] link in the chain of deadly biological [agents] that it means to use, after mad cow disease, avian flu and the other diseases mentioned above. It embarked on this path of war after losing the commercial and financial competition, so as to punish and crush the economies of the countries that surpass it [economically],and after acting to strengthen the pharmaceutical companies owned by [its] Congressmen and ministers and placing [these companies] at the service of the vaccine industry. The World Health Organization, for its part, is willing to market the disease and the treatment together, according to the instructions of the White House, using the so-called 'good news' about new vaccines discovered for these diseases.

"The discourse, then, currently revolves around an artificial crisis of a new sort, which was created by the U.S., just like the many [other] crises it invents for its own benefit. After American economic advisors began to fear [that the U.S. would be unable] to compete with China or even match it, they came up with the virus, so as to preoccupy the Chinese officials on the one hand, and market [American] medicines and increase the panic among the Chinese people, on the other. This is therefore a war that has commercial, biological and psychological [aspects] simultaneously, and it is far removed from the conventional kind of confrontation."[3]

Egyptian Writer: The U.S. Spread The Virus To Harm China's Economy And Reputation

On the Egyptian news website Vetogate.com, Egyptian journalist Ahmad Rif'at explained why the U.S. chose the Chinese city of Wuhan as the epicenter of the disease: "American factories are the first to manufacture every kind of virus and bacteria, from the virulent smallpox virus and the bubonic plague virus to all the viruses we saw in the recent years, such as mad cow disease and swine flu. Wuhan, the city that has now been struck by the corona [disease], is an industrial town, but it is nevertheless the eighth-richest city in China, after Shanghai, Guangzhou

Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin and Hong Kong, which are the country's major cities. Its place at the bottom of the list [of China's major cities] is what makes it a suitable [site] for an American crime... for it is not a focus of attention, and the level of healthcare there is surely lower than in the larger and more important cities.

"All that is needed in order to let a virus spread quickly is to release it from some bag, using an ordinary syringe or in any other way. But the really interesting fact is the large number of Americans who were staying in Wuhan and decided to leave it immediately and quickly, [as was shown] on American news channels, among them a CNN reporter, even though none of them contracted [the disease]! We don't know what that [CNN reporter] was doing there. Did he come to report on the events? If so, why did he leave so dramatically? Did he come there before [the outbreak of the epidemic]? [If so,] what caused him to go there before the coronavirus crisis began?...

"This war is not only intended to worry China, trouble it and cause it to spend billions of dollars on emergency measures and medicines which, by the way, will be manufactured by an Israeli company... The U.S. wants to inform the world, and especially China itself, as part of a propaganda war targeting [China's] prestige and status, that [China] is still a backward country whose citizens eat bat soup and which exports diseases and epidemics to the rest of the world!"[4]

[1] Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), February 2, 2020.

[2] The reference is apparently to Finnish physician and conspiracy theorist Rauni-Leena Luukanen-Kilde, who claimed that the swine flu epidemic was a hoax created by Big Pharma in order to market the vaccine, which is actually poisonous and threatens to depopulate the world.

[3] Al-Thawra (Syria), February 3, 2020.

[4] Vetogate.com, January 27, 2020.

See the original post:
Arab Writers: The Coronavirus Is Part Of Biological Warfare Waged By The U.S. Against China - Middle East Media Research Institute

Future Market Insights has announced the addition of the "DNA Synthesis Market: Global Industry Analysis 2012 - 2016 and Opportunity Assessment; 2017 - 2027" report to their offering

This press release was orginally distributed by SBWire

Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/06/2020 -- DNA synthesis is the natural creation of nucleic acid strands through the process of DNA replication. Artificially, they are synthesized using genetic engineering and enzyme chemistry in the laboratory to be used for various applications such as therapeutic, diagnostics as well as academic and industrial research. DNA synthesis services provided by different companies varies greatly by the cost of per base pair, error rates, lengths, throughput, etc. DNA synthesis market further includes the oligonucleotide synthesis and gene synthesis which has various end users such as agricultural science, food science, antibody discovery, immunology, cancer research, infectious disease, synthetic biology. Market for the therapeutic applications is mostly distributed only among the biopharmaceutical industries which is driven by their continuous research in the respective domain.

The market for DNA synthesis got the surge form Human Genome Project leading to several advancements in the technological processes for production and reduces the time of production which made possible the synthesis of high throughput custom nucleotides. Nowadays, it is possible to do the customizations and get the required sequence online and at required time. The commercial availability of DNA synthesis machines has also a great impact in the synthesis services market.

Download Sample Copy@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-5900

DNA Synthesis Market: Drivers & Restraints

Growing number of research & developments in the field of genomics and next generation sequencing supports the market growth of DNA synthesis services over the globe. The growing numbers of mergers and collaborations by the market players also strengthening the market growth. Along with this, the developments in the synthetic biology segment promotes the market progression of DNA synthesis services. A robust growth in the oligonucleotide therapeutic segment as antisense oligos, siRNAs, miRNA inhibitors and mimics also supports the market growth of DNA synthesis for the commercial end. However, cuts in the federal fundings for the research purpose, stringent regulatory requirements in the therapeutic applications for DNA also limits the market to expand across the globe.

DNA Synthesis Market: Segmentation -

Segmentation by Service Type:

-Oligonucleotide Synthesis -Gene Synthesis

Segmentation by Application:

-Research and Development -Diagnosis-Therapeutics

Segmentation by End User

-Biopharmaceutical Companies-Academic and Research Institutes-Contract Research Organizations

Download Table of Contents@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-5900

DNA Synthesis Market: Overview

Companies involved in the DNA synthesis services market are involved in continuous updation of their manufacturing technologies for high throughput synthesis with cost control. Recently, Twist biosciences also gathered $82 million investment from Illumina for developing a new technology platform for synthesizing DNA on silicon. These market players are also focusing on their brand improvement and market penetration by focusing on their sales force, geographical expansion as well as expansion of manufacturing facilities.

Moreover, synthetic DNA costs are anticipated to decrease owing to the introduction of advanced technology. Intensifying competition in the synthetic biology services also leads to price reduction per base pair. However, the multi-billion dollar PCR industry constantly supports the market growth of DNA synthesis services. With the increasing outsourcing services for the life science research activities, the market has huge potential of growth opportunities. The availability of research funds also had a great impact in the DNA synthesis market size and growth rate in different regions over the globe.

DNA Synthesis Market: Region-wise Outlook

Geographically, North America leads the market for DNA synthesis services owing to the high requirement in the academic research as well as biopharmaceutical industries for research and therapeutic production. This is followed by the Western Europe region supported by the high availability of research fundings in universities and commercial availability of therapeutic drugs made of DNA active pharmaceutical ingredients. Eastern Europe region shares a low market share and slow growth rate comparatively to other regions over the forecast period. Asia Pacific region represents the significant growth rate in the DNA synthesis market with highest market growth in research applications. Recent trends shows China to be leading the market in the region in terms of market size as well as growth rate. Latin America and Middle East & Africa has been observed the least market share over the forecast period.

Download Segment-wise Analysis@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/checkout/5900

DNA Synthesis Market Treatment Market: Key Players

Some of the players in the DNA Synthesis market includes -

-Bioneer Corporation-IBA GmbH-Eurofins Scientific-Integrated DNA Technologies Inc.-LGC Biosearch Technologies-Eton Bioscience Inc.-GenScript Biotech Corporation-Eurogentec-Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.-Quintara Biosciences

For more information on this press release visit: http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/dna-synthesis-market-report-with-executive-summary-introduction-sizing-analysis-and-forecast-to-2027-1274866.htm

Visit link:
DNA Synthesis Market Report with Executive Summary, Introduction, Sizing, Analysis and Forecast to 2027 - Press Release - Digital Journal

The market is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 17. 2% from 2018-2025. The growth of the genome editing market is primarily attributed to the rise in the production of genetically modified crops and rising prevalence of the genetic diseases.

New York, Jan. 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "North America Genome Editing Market to 2025 - Regional Analysis and Forecasts by Technology, Application End User, and Country" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05774528/?utm_source=GNW However, the stringent regulatory framework and limitations in genome editing are likely to pose a negative impact on the market growth.

On the other hand, emerging markets for precision and regenerative medicines is likely to have a positive impact on the growth of the North America genome editing market in the coming years.The genome editing has proved itself to be the most promising way of feeding the fast growing population across the world.The changes in the climatic conditions due to the global warming and others conditions such as droughts floods are witnessed more across the world.

Therefore, the feeding the rising population is question among the people across the world.Due to the genome editing the concerns are being reduced to a great level, the two types of the genetically modified crops are widely grown.

Firstly, these crops are altered in a ways that they are not affected by the herbicide glyphosate.Secondly, crops are produced to protect themselves from the insecticides.

The advantages of the genetically modified crops includes diseases resistance, improvement of the photosynthesis, improvement of the nutrition, and more. The genetic modification helps to enhance the productivity without hampering the health of the crops. In addition, for the genetically modified crops the limited resources are required and it require less or no pesticides for its growth. The time required for the growth of the genetically modified crops is less, therefore these are highly preferred crops in the western world. The demand for the genetically modified crops is rising in the eastern region due to the benefits offered by these crops.According to the International Service For The Acquisition Of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), 2017 statistics, 19 developing countries have planted 53% which is approximately to 100.6 million hectares of the global biotech hectares, whereas the 5 industrial countries have took the 47% which is near about 89.2 million hectares share. The trend of growing genetically modified crop is expected to grow in the coming future.In 2017, the CRISPR segment segment held a largest market share of 53.6% of the genome editing market, by technology. This segment is also expected to dominate the market in 2025 owing to the simple, fast and accurate property of the CRISPR. Moreover, the TALENs segment is anticipated to witness the significant growth rate of 17.1% during the forecast period, 2018 to 2025 owing to the properties provided by the TALENs the market for it is expected to rise in the coming near future.North America genome editing market, based on application was segmented into genetic engineering, cell line engineering and others. The cell line engineering segment is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 18.0% during the forecast period. Moreover, the genetic engineering segment is expected to grow at the significant rate during the coming years owing to its sub segments such as animal genetic engineering and plant genetic engineering that are being carried out extensively. In 2017, the biotechnology & pharmaceutical companies segment held a largest market share of 61.2% of the genome editing market, by end user. This segment is also expected to dominate the market in 2025 owing to the advantages of the CRISPR, the companies have enhanced their research and development for the drug discoveries that can treat various diseases. Hence, the market is likely to propel in the coming years.Some of the major primary and secondary sources for genome editing included in the report are, Contract Research Organizations (CRO), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Abu Dhabi Fund for Development (ADFD), Ministry of Science and Technology (MST), International Service For The Acquisition Of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and others.Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05774528/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

__________________________

Story continues

Clare: clare@reportlinker.comUS: (339)-368-6001Intl: +1 339-368-6001

The rest is here:
The North America genome editing market is expected to reach US$ 4,148.1 Mn in 2025 from US$ 1,234.5 Mn in 2017 - Yahoo Finance

On a daily basis, we interact with hundreds or thousands of materials that range in complexity from the water we drink to the OLED screens on our smartphones. The development of new materials can be linked to nearly every major advance in human history, and breakthroughs made by material scientists have profoundly affected our society and daily lives from transportation to how we receive information.

Some of the most expensive materials on this list are naturally occurring, while others, such as two-dimensional materials, have been developed in laboratories and are on the cutting edge of scientific progress.

Human epochs are defined by the materials that enabled advancement, First the Stone Age, then bronze, then iron, then steel, then plastics, and now were firmly in the semiconductor age, said Alex Kozen, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. I expect the next great advance in materials to be biological materials, where genetic engineering could be used to create organisms that provide better nutrition, grow structural materials and much more.

The following is a list of some of the most expensive materials used today in manufacturing, tech products, research, and other applications. They include precious metals, compounds, rare earth elements, and ultra-thin two-dimensional materials.

Click here to see the most expensive materials on Earth

The cost of different materials is determined by several factors, including supply and demand, mining costs, raw materials costs, how rare or abundant a material is, purity of the material, engineering costs whether it is a complex material to produce among many other factors. The materials on this list are not meant to represent a complete list of every expensive material. The materials on our list were selected in part because they are used commonly in industry and research.

To compile our list, we used various scientific journals, the Defense Logistics Agencys list of Strategic Materials, the USGSs Mineral Commodities Summary 2019, and prices were estimated from various suppliers websites.

Go here to read the rest:
The Most Expensive Materials on Earth - 24/7 Wall St.

The impending need to feed almost 10 billion people by 2050 is fuelling innovation in the agri-food sector.

Vertical farming is one such example. Tipped to play an increasingly important role in global agriculture, plant factories as they are otherwise termed are vertically-stacked, fully controlled environments used to produce food.

The technology has been praised for its potential to help societies meet elevated demand for food, without the need for additional farmland.

Analysts appear similarly persuaded. According to Global Market Insights, the vertical farming market is expected to expand by 25% by 2024, to reach a value of 11.4bn.

However, feeding growing populations with vertical farms, and using the same seeds and plants used in conventional agriculture today to do so, demonstrates a lag in innovation, suggests Aberystwyth Universitys Professor Huw Jones.

Vertical farming technologies are advancing, and fast. Today, it is possible to automate a number of processes in urban agriculture, including the sowing of seeds, and monitoring of LED lighting.

Climate including temperature, humidity, and CO levels can also be controlled externally, and machine learning can be leveraged to help save electricity and water use.

In order to get the most out of urban agriculture innovations, plant technology will have to similarly advance, said the professor of translational genomics for plant breeding at the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum last week in London. The kinds of plants that we are going to ultimately have in [plant factories] are not going to be the same kind of plants that we have in soil.

We have huge innovation in hydroponic vertical farming, the professor continued, but we are still using the old seeds. What we are lacking, therefore, is the plant architecture itself, he stressed.

Professor Jones does predict this will change, but it will require gene editing to do so.

Greater understanding of DNA sequencing and genome editing, alongside reduced costs in gene sequencing, has helped to encourage interest in plant technology, he explained.

Plant-specific transcription factors, for example, have garnered much attention in food science. Transcription factors are genes that control the transcription of other genes in fruit and vegetable colour, texture, and aroma, we were told.

As a result, scientists can alter the colour of tomatoes, or the smell of fruits, he continued. We can make completely new fruits by harnessing these genes that control genes [with] these MYB transcription factors.

In vertical farming, gene sequencing could also help bridge the technology gap between vertical farming and plant architecture.There is a lot of research underpinned by the understanding of the gene sequence. We understand how to change the internode length of these sorts of plants. [We know] how to change the fruiting patterns, so that we can make plants that are much more suitable to those kinds of new agricultures.

In Europe, the scientific community regularly voices its support of genetic technologies. Both conventional genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetic editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas have been praised for their potential to help develop more robust crops in the face of climate change.

Genetic editing using CRISPR/Cas technology involves removing part of the genetic code, as opposed to GMO methods, which uses genetic engineering to insert new code.

However, EU regulation has put Europe out of step with the rest of the world, argued Professor Jones, particularly in countries where very simple genome editing falls outside of their GMO legislation.

Here, the professor is referring to the European Court of Justices (ECJ) July 2018 ruling. According to its decision, crops obtained by mutagenesis are classified as GMOs in Europe, as the techniques and methods of mutagenesis alter the genetic material of a plant in a way that does not occur naturally.

Describing this legislation as too heavily politicised to onboard biotechnology, Professor Jones suggested the UKs impending departure from the EU could present an opportunity for the sector.

This is an area that the UK, post-Brexit, could look at to really rationalise the regulation of mutation breeding, he said. That has always been outside the GMO scope. And to think about simple genome editing where that is synonymous with old mutation breeding techniques and also to exclude that.

In the case that such editing, which in the future may fall outside of GMO legislation, produces a novel food, the professor agreed it should be categorised by novel foods legislation.

In any case, Professor Jones is convinced that over the next ten years, there will be significant innovation in food biotechnology. Some of which, wont fall neatly into novel food or biotechnology regulations. So, I think we have some interesting times ahead to see how these things are going to be regulated.

Continued here:
Vertical farms of the future require genetically edited plants, says scientist - FoodNavigator.com

As the labour market rapidly changes, new, nearly real-time data and metrics give us better insight than ever before into what the jobs of the future will look like.

The kinds of jobs emerging in the global economy span a wide range of professions and skills, reflecting the opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels to take advantage of emerging jobs and the new economy. Identifying emerging jobs and the skills that they require provides valuable insights to inform training investments, and paves the way for a Reskilling Revolution, as individuals seek new skills to keep pace with change.

But for all of the opportunities that the new economy will bring, there are stark skills gaps and gender gaps that must be addressed. If we dont, they will continue to widen in the future.

Here are five things we can learn from this new data:

Not every emerging job requires hard tech skills, but every emerging job does require basic tech skills such as digital literacy, web development or graphic design. Three of the jobs in the World Economic Forum's Jobs of Tomorrow report cloud, engineering and data clusters, which are also among the fastest-growing overall require disruptive tech skills like artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, or cloud computing. Because technologies like AI are so pervasive, many roles in areas like sales and marketing will require a basic understanding of AI.

These disruptive tech skills are in high demand across the board. Blockchain, cloud computing, analytical reasoning and AI are among the most in-demand tech skills we see on LinkedIn.

While they arent growing as quickly as tech-dominated jobs, new sales, content production and HR roles are also emerging as a complement to the rapidly growing tech industry. Our research shows talent acquisition specialists, customer success specialists and social media assistants among the fastest growing professions all roles that rely on more diverse skills sets, especially soft skills.

Share of skills clusters by selected professional cluster

Image: World Economic Forum

Demand for soft skills is likely to continue to increase as automation becomes more widespread. Our latest Global Talent Trends Report shows that HR professionals are identifying the demand for soft skills as the most important trend globally. Skills like creativity, persuasion, and collaboration which all top our list of most in-demand soft skills are all virtually impossible to automate, which means if you have these skills youll be even more valuable to organizations in the future.

While the data reflects a diversity of opportunities for workers of all backgrounds and educational levels, further analysis shows a worrying imbalance in those obtaining the latest skills. In our ongoing research on gender with the World Economic Forum, we found that the largest gender gaps among emerging jobs are in roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills, with the share of women represented across cloud, engineering and data jobs below 30% (for cloud computing its as low as 12%). Its critical to close this gap because these disruptive tech skills will have an outsized impact on the direction of society and the economy.

While there is certainly room to improve gender parity by embracing greater diversity in hiring and more inclusive managerial practices, our data suggests that those gains, while important, will not be sufficient to achieve parity.

We have to think creatively about ways to fill these emerging skills and roles so that we prevent these gaps from intensifying in the future. Our research to understand these issues has uncovered some very achievable, scalable solutions.

Firstly, taking advantage of existing and adjacent talent can make a massive contribution to the rapid expansion of talent pipelines. Our research reveals that training and up-skilling near AI talent could double the pipeline of AI talent in Europe.

Opportunities by selected professional cluster and occupation, 2014-2019

Image: World Economic Forum

Taking a similar approach with the gender gap, weve found that sub-groups of disruptive tech skills where women have higher representation genetic engineering, data science, nanotechnology and human-computer interaction could expand the pipeline of talent for the broader set of tech roles that rely heavily on disruptive tech skills.

While both of these approaches can help us make meaningful progress, closing the skills and gender gaps depends on a lot more than just making sure talent has the right skills. Its a simple truth that who you know matters, so we also have to close the network gap the advantage some people have over others based purely on who they know.

Our research on the network gap shows that living in a high-income neighbourhood, going to a top school and working at a top company can lead to a 12x advantage in accessing opportunities. This means that two people with the exact same skills, but who were born into different neighbourhoods, may be worlds apart when it comes to the opportunities afforded them.

All of these new metrics and insights can help us pinpoint the skills and jobs of the future, but its going to take more than data to ensure that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is an equitable one. If we are going to make meaningful change, we need businesses and political leaders to re-evaluate the norms through which we shape policy, make hiring decisions and ultimately level the playing field for those who face barriers to opportunity.

As we convene at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Im asking leaders to join us in making progress towards closing these gaps. It will create better, more innovative businesses, stronger economies and ultimately help create fairer societies.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Allen Blue, Co-Founder and Vice President, Product Management, LinkedIn

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

See the original post:
5 things we know about the jobs of the future - World Economic Forum

In co-founding Ginkgo Bioworks, Reshma Shetty has helped enable the entire synthetic biology ... [+] industry while inspiring a generation of new biological engineers. Heres what she told me about starting a biotech company.

Dr. Reshma Shetty is no stranger within the synthetic biology community. In 2008 she co-founded Ginkgo Bioworksa company youll definitely hear about if you havent alreadyalong with fellow MIT grad students Austin Che, Barry Canton, and Jason Kelly, and their graduate adviser, Professor Tom Knight. They started with a simple but revolutionary goal: help people design and build organisms. A decade later, Ginkgo achieved unicorn statusa private company valued at over $1 billionand it finds itself at the fore of the synthetic biology revolution with customers seeking to build organisms for use in fields as diverse as health, food, agriculture, cosmetics and materials.

Shetty has been through the whole journey and has been a major influence in the synthetic biology community. She had a major role in the first International Genetic Engineering Machine (iGEM) Competition with her co-founders. In 2008, she was named one of Eight People Inventing the Future by Forbes and, in 2011, one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company.

Shetty is an upbeat talker. If theres any stress or jadedness from navigating a company from birth to unicorn over a decade, it doesnt show. There is a sincere enthusiasm in her voice, especially when we discuss the science. When I caught up with her a few weeks back, one of things I wanted to know was: what do you do when you realize youre riding a biotech unicorn?

What was the moment when you realized that Ginkgo was going to be big?

It was when we closed our Series B financing. It was a $45 million round or roughly speaking, so that was more dollars dumped into our bank account at one instance than we ever had before.

My thought was, well pretty serious people withserious capital are choosing to take a bet on us.

This was confirmed for her in 2017 when Bayer chose to work with Ginkgo on engineering biologicals for agriculture, proving the intrinsic value of their platform and cementing Ginkgo as a platform company.

It proved three things at the time. One, that engineered microbes in the environment could be a thing, that [they] could be a product category. There are serious people taking serious bets that we're going to be able to release engineered microbes in the future. Two, that Ginkgos platform had value even in areas that we hadn't previously been in. Three, it proved to the world that Ginkgo was really a platform company, that we weren't simply going after a few products in the industrial biotech market.

It wasnt easy sailing for Gingko from the start though. Right after the company was founded, the global economy took a nosedive.

I think we incorporated in July of 2008 and, like literally, within the next month or two, the fiscal crisis hit, says Shetty.

In many ways this was not the ideal time to be starting a business and looking for investment, leading to creative thinking in getting the company going.

What did you learn in those early days that biotech companies could benefit from?

At the time everybody said that the way to start a biotech start-up is to go raise money immediately because you need some amount of money to be able to start a lab and get going. The thing I had to learn and realize was that no, actually, it is possible. If you're creative enough, savvy enough and patient enough, then you can in fact bootstrap even a biotech start-up.

Shetty stresses the importance of having the space to figure out their technology platform and business model and ask themselves how to take it forward. Having Knight and his wealth of experience on the team certainly helped.

Tom always said Oh, its a good idea to bootstrap in the early years regardless, based on his prior experience starting companies. But circumstances certainly reinforced that and I think that was really helpful that we spent the first few years bootstrapping the company.

Was it natural having your former advisor on the team?

Yeah, very natural. Tom, hes a pretty low-key guy, but he's also been very ahead of his time when it comes to thinking about the technology and technology trends. Early on it was great because Tom has started and run a company before and there were some obvious pitfalls that he could help us avoid and talk a bit about options.

And your other co-founders, what is it about them that makes them special?

I think probably for me the biggest thing is that we've now been working together for almost 20 years, says Shetty, referencing their time at MIT in the years before Ginkgo.

And even now, if I'm struggling with something or I'm trying to dig through how to solve a problem, I would want to talk to Tom, Barry, Austin, and Jason. I always come away having learned something or clarified my thinking or somehow changed how I was approaching a problem. To me, that is the real hallmark of excellence.

Despite all those shared experiences, they still learn from one another and solve problems together. Shetty considers her colleagues to be mentors too, saying shes benefitted from them as much as from her supervisors through the years.

Anybody can be a mentor, she says.

They are all engineers at heart, so the most exciting things for the Ginkgo team are around potentially world-changing technologies that can jump quickly from dream to reality.

What are the engineering challenges youre most excited about these days?

Bayer and Ginkgo, through our joint venture in Joyn, are going after nitrogen fixation. It has long been a dream of folks. Could we reduce fertilizer usage by using biological nitrogen fixation instead?

This project has been close to Shetty since her academic days, but therapeutics and Ginkgos collaboration with Synlogic, who develop bacteria as living medicines, has also piqued her interest.

There's all these areas of metabolism that lead to devastating diseases and the idea that you could engineer microbes to basically treat them is a cool idea!

Is there any particular problem youd like to solve through engineering biology?

How do you think about leveraging biology to make a positive impact on the environment? That's one I think has been on our wish list for a while.

Enabling the future of synthetic biology is a big part of how Ginkgo operates, even since the early days. The founders were involved in establishing iGEM and their platform is well suited to collaborative efforts.

How do you see Ginkgos role to give back and enable the next generation of synthetic biology?

I think one thing that has been a longstanding ask from folks in the community is how are we going to open up our cell programming platform to more people? Early on, that seemed crazy to even think about, she says, citing the skill set required to use and build it. I think we've come a long way since then so we can say actually maybe we get started thinking about opening up the platform to more folks.

Shetty says initial collaborations like Joyn, (Ginkgo spin-out) Motif, and Synlogic mean they can learn how to open their platform better. Relationships with accelerators like YCombinator and Petri are the next steps. They acknowledge that opening their platform will only benefit and accelerate biological engineering.

Our conversation then moves onto a more human element of running a company, a reminder that its never all about the science.

Do you have any mistakes or regrets in how youve done things?

The biggest regret I have is actually not thinking consciously about diversity and inclusion issues earlier in Ginkgos history. We started thinking about them seriously in about 2015 or so, when we were still relatively small, about 30 people. But we could have thought about diversity and inclusion even earlier.

Shetty reveals its easier to change the balance in a company when its just a handful of people.

Can we be doing better on diversity as a whole?

I would say that synthetic biology as a field has always been pretty good in that it thought about issues outside of just the science and engineering itself. I think the field always fosters that broader perspective. So I think it's been more natural and more normal to think about diversity and inclusion issues in the synthetic biology community as a result, says Shetty, We're by no means beyond reproach but there's more of a willingness to talk about these issues and really try to take proactive steps.

Do you have any advice for those starting a company?

The thing I like to tell people is that, if you're going to start a company, don't do it for the money. There are a lot of easier ways to make money in the world. Start a company because you think a company is really the best way to go tackle a problem that you're passionate about.

Any final thoughts?

I think that we've come a long way in terms of our ability to engineer biology, but we still have a long way to go. Fundamentally, biology is still not yet a predictable engineering discipline and its important to remember that. Because its still not yet predictable, we have to iterate through different designs and search for a functional design whenever we're trying to engineer a GMO. We have more work to yet do to bring down the cost of doing genetic engineering so that we can explore more and more of design space.

Follow me on twitter at @johncumbers and @synbiobeta. Subscribe to my weekly newsletters in synthetic biology and space settlement.

Thank you to David Kirk and Kevin Costa for additional research and reporting in this article. Im the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about including Ginkgo Bioworks are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest heres the full list of SynBioBeta sponsors.

Read more from the original source:
An Interview with Ginkgo Bioworks Reshma Shetty On Co-Founding Synthetic Biologys First Unicorn - Forbes

A little while ago, we covered the idea ofusing photovoltaic materials to drive enzymatic reactionsin order to produce specific chemicals. The concept is being considered mostly because doing the same reaction in a cell is often horribly inefficient, because everything else in the cell is trying to regulate the enzymes, trying to use the products, trying to convert the byproducts into something toxic, or up to something even more annoying. But in many cases, these reactions rely on chemicals that are only made by cells, leaving some researchers to suspect it still might be easier to use living things in the end.

A new paper in Nature Catalysis may support or contradict this argument, depending on your perspective. In the end, the authors of the new paper re-engineer standard brewers yeast to produce molecules that can be used as fuel for internal combustion engines. The full catalog of changes they have to make is a bit mind-numbing, and most achieve a small, incremental increase in production. The end result is a large step forward toward biofuel production, but the effort involved is intimidating.

Read original post

See original here:
Re-engineering yeast to create biofuel appears possible, 'but the effort involved is intimidating' - Genetic Literacy Project

The legendary Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), which tracks issues related to technology and global security, has issued a terrifying warning: We are less than two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday clock. Its very bad news, representing the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced.

What makes this moment so perilous? The scientists statement includes warnings over the cyber-weaponization of information, the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) in making military decisions, the destruction of treaties meant to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, the abandonment of global agreements to limit climate chaos, the spread of genetic engineering and synthetic biology technologies, and more. It does not account for the escalated likelihood of atomic reactor disasters, but based on at least one BAS publication, it should.

Since 1947, this prestigious band of elite scientists and global thinkers has been putting out a clock meant to time the peril of a global apocalypse. First issued at the dawn of the Cold War, it has mostly focused on the dangers of atomic warfare. Its countdown to Armageddon has been set as far away as 17 minutes from midnight, a hypothetical time of human extinction. That relatively optimistic assessment came in 1991, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the definitive end of the Cold War.

Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from Truthout.

In 2018, the BAS set it at two minutes, the closest to catastrophe it had ever been. They repeated that estimate in 2019. But this years announcement has taken us inside the two-minute warning with a hair-raising litany of likely lethal catastrophes set to occur within 100 theoretical seconds.

Donald Trump is mentioned only once by name, in conjunction with his decision to trash the Paris Accords on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. The scientists urge whoever wins the 2020 election to reinstate the U.S. commitment limiting carbon and other climate-destroying emissions. The BAS also cites Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro for his decision to allow the destruction of the Amazon, with huge impacts on climate.

The BAS strives to maintain a non-partisan image. But Trumps presence in the White House clearly hangs over any assessment of humankinds survivability. The specter of his finger on the nuclear, ecological and financial buttons for the next four years hangs over humankind like a pall but goes otherwise unmentioned in this Doomsday assessment.

Also unmentioned is the question of more than 450 atomic power reactors worldwide. A small but vocal outlier coterie has argued that nuclear energy combats global warming by emitting less carbon that coal burners. But the Bulletin recently enshrined a major assessment by the esteemed Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, warning that commercial reactors pose a serious threat to human survival on this planet.

Published in August 2019, The false promise of nuclear power in an age of climate change argues that the 450 atomic reactors now deteriorating worldwide pose an existential threat to our survival. Writing with Professor Naomi Oreskes, Lifton warns that atomic energy is expensive and poses grave dangers to our physical and psychological well-being. Citing costs of nuclear juice at $100 per megawatt-hour versus $50 for solar and $30-40 for onshore wind, the authors say that the industry suffers from a negative learning curve, driving nuke costs constantly higher while those for renewables head consistently down.

Citing the unsolved problem of radioactive waste management, the BAS article warns of the ongoing impacts of major disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl (and potentially more to come), whose fallout kills humans and does untold damage to the global ecology. Lipton and Oreskes say we need to free ourselves from the false hope that a technology designed for ultimate destruction can lead to our salvation. They favor making renewable energies integral to the American way of life.

In addition to nuclear and climate issues, the 2020 Doomsday assessment emphasizes some relatively new concerns. In the last year, it says, many governments used cyber-enabled disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in institutions and among nations, undermining domestic and international efforts to foster peace and protect the planet.

By attacking both science and the fabric of international peace accords, some global leaders have created a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later.

That situation includes AI and hypersonic warfare, both escalating at a frenzied pace. Now used in ultra-fast attacks, AI is dangerously vulnerable to hacking and manipulation while making kill decisions without human supervision. In nuclear command and control systems, the BAS warns, research and experience have demonstrated the vulnerability of these systems to hacking and manipulation.

This is an absolutely terrifying brew. The spread of disinformation, the contempt for science and expert opinion, the undermining of global agreements on arms control, and climate change are all deadly. Add in the new world of AI and hyper-sonic warfare, then pile on autocrats like Trump and Bolsonaro, and finish with the certainty of more disasters from 450 crumbling, obsolete atomic reactors.

All in all, its small wonder the Bulletin has taken us past the two-minute warning. It will clearly take every ounce of our activist strength to save our species from the final whistle.

Read more from the original source:
Trump's Presidency Brings Us Closer to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock - Truthout