or sample preparation,"said Tomasz Tkaczyk, associate professor, Dept. of Bioengineering, Rice Univ.,Houston, Texas."Many systems which work for point-of-care applications have quite expensive cartridges.
"Tkaczyk's co-authors on this research included Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Fellow of The Optical Society and a professor in Rice's Department of Bioengineering.
Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine. While current HIV treatments involve pills that are taken daily, the new regimens'long-lasting effects suggest that HIV treatment could be administered perhaps once or twice per year.
Rice chemist Jeffrey Hartgerink, lead author Vivek Kumar and their colleagues reported their discovery in ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering.
#CRISPR brings precise control to gene expression Researchers have demonstrated the exceptional specificity of a new way to switch sequences of the human genome on
or off without editing the underlying genetic code. Originally discovered as an antiviral system in bacteria,
CRISPR/Cas9 is one of the hottest topics in genetic research today. By engineering a version of that system,
they inactivated the cutting function of Cas9 and attached proteins that control the packaging of the genome.
By unraveling or tightly bundling these regions of the genome, they could effectively turn them on and off.
associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke Univ."Many labs across the world are using these tools on the assumption that they're getting specific effects,
These experiments show exceptional specificity, demonstrating that the technology is capable of targeting single sequences of the genome."
"The power to control the genome's switches would be especially important for studying and potentially treating human diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative conditions and diabetes,
which can be driven by mutations in control regions of the genome. The hope is that overriding one of these switches could uncover
This presents problems for gene therapy treatments and fundamental science projects where researchers want to alter the function of specific genes without causing unintended side effects.
"said Timothy Reddy, assistant professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at Duke.""Finding a change in sequence
if you're focusing on one concentrated area in the genome. But looking at how turning off one enhancer switch affects the activity
and structure of the whole genome requires more specialized techniques.""Gersbach turned to Reddy and colleague Gregory Crawford,
who all work together in adjacent laboratories and offices in Duke's Center for Genomic and Computational biology, for help with these more specialized techniques.
Reddy has focused his career on investigating how gene switches work across the human genome, how those switches differ between individuals and the implications of these insights for human traits and diseases.
Crawford, associate professor of pediatrics, has spent more than a decade developing techniques to identify control regions across the genome
change the activity of many switches across the genome simultaneously, creating thousands of off-target effects,
"By integrating genomics and genome engineering, we have developed a method to comprehensively interrogate how this genetic silencing system works
a team of bioengineers at Rice Univ. and surgeons at the Univ. of Pennsylvania have created an implant with an intricate network of blood vessels that points toward a future of growing replacement tissues and organs for transplantation.
The new study was performed by a research team led by Jordan Miller, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice,
Bioengineering graduate student Samantha Paulsen and research technician Anderson Ta worked together to develop a proof-of-concept construct small silicone gel about the size of a small candy gummy bearsing 3
a program director in NSF Division of Environmental Biology, said, abitat fragmentation has large effects,
A conventional approach to diagnosing this cancer would be to look for genetic modification of the receptor
and found that the"Akt pathway"could be activated without genetic modifications. Two proteins; Plc? 1 (pronounced"plc-gamma-1")and Grb2 (pronounced"grab-2),
Lead author Professor John Ladbury, Dean of the University of Leeds'Faculty of Biological sciences and Professor of Mechanistic Biology, said,
"There has been huge investment in sequencing the human genome with the idea that if we get all the relevant genetic information we can predict
whether you have a predisposition to cancer and, ultimately, use a precision medicine-based approach to develop a therapeutic approach.
"Dr Zahra Timsah, University Academic Fellow at the University of Leeds'School of Molecular and Cellular biology, who was the lead researcher on the study,
Measuring the levels of the proteins in patient tissues followed by database analysis of clinical information from The Cancer Genome Atlas
The researchers found that a specific genetic mutation in the M1t1 strep clone controls the shift to this invasive form a property
said lead author Mark Walker, Ph d. a Professor of Biological sciences at the University of Wollongong. n the case of the invasive strep clone,
The same genetic mutation that allows the strep bacteria to acquire plasminogen and activate it throughout the body also increases production of the bacteriophage-encoded enzyme that blocks neutrophil killing.
they apply a natural selective pressure favoring the genetic mutation. he mutation allows the bacteria not only to survive neutrophil killing,
the M1t1 strep strain lost its ability to undergo the dangerous mutation and could no longer spread to produce severe infection.
also failed to undergo the mutation to produce serious disease. The collaborative study was initiated during Prof.
#Spontaneous Rare Mutations Cause Half Of Autism Researchers are saying a new analysis of data on the genetics of autism spectrum disorder disputes a commonly held belief that autism results from the chance combinations
of commonly occurring gene mutations, which are otherwise harmless. They find, instead, further evidence to suggest that devastating"ultra-rare"mutations of genes that they classify as"vulnerable"play a causal role in roughly half of all autism spectrum disorder cases.
The vulnerable genes to which they refer harbor what they call an LGD, or likely gene-disruption.
These LGD mutations can occur"spontaneously"between generations and when that happens they are found in the affected child
whose first author is the quantitative biologist Ivan Iossifov, a Cold Spring Harbotr Laboratory assistant professor and on faculty at the New york Genome Center, finds that"autism genes"-i e.,
, those that, when mutated, may contribute to an ASD diagnosis-tend to have fewer mutations than most genes in the human gene pool.
This seems paradoxical but only on the surface. Iossifov explains that genes with devastating de novo LGD mutations,
when they occur in a child and give rise to autism, usually don't remain in the gene pool for more than one generation before they are,
When parents carry potentially devastating LGD mutations, these are more frequently found in the ASD-affected children than in their unaffected children,
They predicted that unaffected mothers are"carriers"of devastating mutations that are transmitted preferentially to children affected with severe ASD.
Females have unexplained an as yet factor that protects them from mutations which, when they occur in males,
said the study's senior author, Matthew Bogyo, Phd, professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology at Stanford university School of medicine.
and possibly many more, harbor C. difficile in their gut, said study co-author Justin Sonnenburg, Phd, professor of microbiology and immunology,
including a number of compounds with known biological activity. Bogyo and his associates focused on a compound called ebselen because,
However, the new production process for such complex biomimetic materials also has other potential applications.
#Rare Variant Discovered Through Deep Whole-genome Sequencing Of 1, 070 Japanese People A research group at Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (Tommo) has constructed successfully a Japanese population reference panel (1kjpn), from the genome information of 1,
070 individuals who had participated in the cohort studies*1 of the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project.
The 1kjpn was effective for imputing genotypes of the Japanese population genome wide. The data demonstrates the value of high-coverage sequencing for constructing population-specific variant panels,
"explains Alexey Sergushichev, bioinformatician and Phd student at the Department of Computer technologies at ITMO University."
and Andre Berndt, a postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering, were the lead authors on the Science paper.
and the bottom layer acts as the circuit to transport electrical signals and translate them into biochemical stimuli compatible with nerve cells.
Finally the team had to prove that the electronic signal could be recognized by a biological neuron.
a fellow professor of bioengineering at Stanford who pioneered a field that combines genetics and optics, called optogenetics.
Researchers bioengineer cells to make them sensitive to specific frequencies of light, then use light pulses to switch cells,
Optogenetics was used only as an experimental proof of concept, Bao said, and other methods of stimulating nerves are likely to be used in real prosthetic devices.
There are six types of biological sensing mechanisms in the human hand and the experiment described in Science reports success in just one of them.
Furthermore, they were able to transfer these sensory signals to the brain cells of mice in vitro using optogenetics.
since conventional light-sensitive proteins used in optogenetics do not stimulate neural spikes for sufficient durations for these digital signals to be sensed.
Tee et al. therefore engineered new optogenetic proteins able to accommodate longer intervals of stimulation. Applying these newly engineered optogenic proteins to fast-spiking interneurons of the somatosensory cortex of mice in vitro sufficiently prolonged the stimulation interval
and lung cancers,"said Dr. Nhan Tran, an Associate professor in Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN)' s Cancer and Cell biology Division,
"Scientists have spent decades trying to find biochemical similarities between placenta tissue and cancer, but we just didn't have the technology to find it,
"says the molecular biologist Prof. Dr. Susanne Schoch from the department of Neuropathology at the University of Bonn.
They say that ultra-low-power communication systems in wearable devices will transmit signals of much less power than things like MRI SCANNERS and wireless implant devices, with magnetic fields passing freely and harmlessly through biological tissue.
Now, researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany have outlined in the journal Biotechnology Letters how they looked into
At its current dimensions, it can be draped over very small objects the size of a few biological cells (1, 300 square microns in area),
The researchers found that the life of yeast could be extended by as much as 60 percent in some circumstances. his study looks at ageing in the context of the whole genome
Knowing this, they hope to understand what triggers mutations in the PRC2 gene, which has been linked to the development of lymphoma, leukaemia,
and how mutations in the gene cause disease,"said one of the team, Xin Liu, from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical centre.
and proteins that produces chromosomes inside cell nuclei -which helps it to maintain gene expression patterns that are put in place during early development.
But when the proper functioning of PRC2 is disrupted due to mutations in the PRC2 gene, it can have very serious consequences for a person health."
"Producing either too much or too little PRC2 enzyme can unexpectedly silence or activate genes, which is not good for the cell,
Kit could one day Be led by widely available Professor Jeffrey Bode of the Institute of Transformative Biomolecules at Nagoya University in Japan,
and enhancers--pieces of the genome that control gene activity--by chemically manipulating proteins that package DNA.
This web of biomolecules that supports and controls gene activity is known as the epigenome. The researchers say having the ability to steer the epigenome will help them explore the roles that particular promoters
or the risk for genetic disease and it could provide a new avenue for gene therapies and guiding stem cell differentiation.
The study appears online April 6 in Nature Biotechnology.""The epigenome is associated everything with the genome other than the actual genetic sequence,
and is just as important as our DNA in determining cell function in healthy and diseased conditions,
"said Charles Gersbach, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke.""That becomes immediately obvious when you consider that we have over 200 cell types,
"But there's also many other pieces of the genome called enhancers that aren't next to any genes at all,
"Timothy Reddy, assistant professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at Duke, has spent the better part of a decade mapping millions of these enhancers across the human genome.
An enhancer might affect a gene next door or several genes across the genome--or maybe none at all.
"There are already drugs that will affect enhancers across the whole genome, but that's like scorching the earth,"said Reddy."
and modify very specific epigenetic marks in very specific places to find out what individual enhancers are doing."
"Reddy found that specificity by teaming up with Gersbach, his neighbor within Duke's Center for Genomic and Computational biology,
and paste DNA sequences in the human genome. For this epigenome editing application, Gersbach silenced the DNA-cutting mechanism of CRISPR
Gersbach and Reddy put their artificial epigenetic agent to the test by targeting a few well-studied gene promoters and enhancers.
--or even families of genes--by targeting enhancers at distant locations in the genome--something that their previous gene activators could not do.
--if you have a mutation within a particular gene, then you have said the disease Isaac Hilton, postdoctoral fellow in the Gersbach Lab and first author of the study."
Many different variations in the genome sequence can affect your risk of disease, and this genetic variation can occur in these enhancers that Tim has identified,
where they can change the levels of gene expression. With this technology, we can explore what exactly it is that they're doing
and how it relates to disease or response to drug therapies.""Gersbach added, "Not only can you start to answer those questions,
but you might be able to use this technique for gene therapy to activate genes that have been silenced abnormally
"said Percival Zhang, a professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, which is in both the College of Agriculture and Life sciences and the College of Engineering.
Typically in biological conversions, these two sugars can only be used sequentially, not simultaneously which adds time and money to the process.
saving critical time and trips to the lab. Researchers at Mcmaster University have developed a new way to print paper biosensors,
where the work was done with biochemist Yingfu Li and graduate student Carmen Carrasquilla.""Imagine being able to clearly identify contaminated meat, vegetables or fruit.
is published in leading scientific journal PLOS Biology on Wednesday 8 april. The research indicates that drug treatments with two antibiotics can be designed to kill bacteria at dosages that would ordinarily cause rapid development of drug resistance and sustained bacterial growth,
although sequential treatments didn't suppress the rise of all drug resistance mutations in the bacteria,
#Biologists identify brain tumor weakness The study, led by researchers from the Whitehead Institute and MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, found that a subset of glioblastoma tumor cells is dependent on a particular enzyme that breaks down the amino acid glycine.
a professor of biology at MIT and member of the Whitehead Institute, is the paper's senior author.
Matthew Vander Heiden, the Eisen and Chang Career development Associate professor of Biology and a member of the Koch Institute, also contributed to the research,
is a key mediator of oxidative damage and cell death in biological systems. The way cell death occurs
which cause apoptosis, where cells are prompted to die through natural mechanisms that can result in treatment resistance.
was led by Eric Pei-Yu Chiou, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and of bioengineering at the Henry Samueli School of engineering and Applied science.
and Dr. Marcus Horwitz, professor of medicine and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. The research was supported by a University of California Discovery Biotechnology Award, the National institutes of health, Nanocav and the National Science Foundation n
#New understanding of electromagnetism could enable'antennas on a chip'A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have unravelled one of the mysteries of electromagnetism,
appear in the current issue of ACS Chemical Biology.""These are reported the first small-molecule Hur inhibitors that competitively disrupt Hur-RNA binding
"said Liang Xu, associate professor of molecular biosciences and corresponding author of the paper. The results hold promise for treating a broad array of cancers in people.
and involved the collaboration of chemists, cancer biologists, computer modeling experts, biochemists and biophysicists at KU--notably the labs of Xu, Jeffrey Aub in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Jon Tunge in the Department of chemistry.
Every once in a while, however, a pro-growth-hormone molecule docks at a receptor on the surface, setting off a cascade of biochemical events inside the cell."
#Likely genetic source of muscle weakness found in six previously undiagnosed children Scientists at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN),
or likely genetic source, of each child's symptoms, according to a study published April 8 in the journal Molecular genetics & Genomic Medicine."
"said Dr. Lisa Baumbach-Reardon, an Associate professor of TGEN's Integrated Cancer Genomics Division and the study's senior author.
or mutation, in the CACNA1S gene for a child with severe muscle weakness in addition to ophthalmoplegia,
In another closely related case, TGEN's genetic testing found a pathogenic variant in the RYR1 gene in a case of calcium channel myopathy.
"Without this type of deep genetic analysis, we might never have discovered the source of each of these children's disease,
or disease-causing mutation, in the COL6A3 gene, or likely pathogenic variants in the COL6A6 gene.
requiring personalized medical treatment beginning with genetic diagnosis through sequencing like we perform at TGEN.""Dr. Hunter said."
The relationships between the mothers'genetics, the composition of her breast milk and the development of her infant's gut microbiota.
The relationships between the mothers'genetics, the composition of her breast milk and the development of her infant's gut microbiota.
"What this work does show us is that the mother's genotype matters, and that it influences the breast milk,
The relationship between human genetics, breast milk and Bifidobacterium appears to have developed throughout mammalian evolution. Development of a healthy gut microbiota can have a lifelong effect on health
The International space station is an international science laboratory in low Earth orbit where astronauts conduct scientific research in biology, human biology, astronomy, meteorology and other fields in a gravity-free environment.
The structure of the light-driven ion pump KR2 may provide a blueprint for new optogenetic tools In 2013,
belongs to a group of light-sensitive proteins that have become the basis of the research field of optogenetics.
which is a feature that so far had been missing in the toolkit of optogenetics. However, until now neither the exact atomic structure nor the ion transport mechanism had been known--which is an important prerequisite for utilizing KR2
This challenge awakened the interest of a team of structural biologists headed by Prof. Valentin Gordeliy
Gordeliys team changed the structure by swapping specific amino acids at the site in question through targeted mutations.
but also one of the mutations seemed to turn KR2 into a light-driven potassium pump--the first of its kind.
To accurately prove this observation the team performed a series of electrophysiological experiments with the purified protein in collaboration with Ernst Bamberg at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main,
who is an expert on membrane proteins and one of the founders of optogenetics. For potential optogenetic application, this result is especially interesting,
says Bamberg:""In neurons, transporting potassium ions from the cell is the natural mechanism of deactivation.
inhibition of apoptosis (programmed cell death) normally eliminates transformed cells; acceleration of uncontrolled division of cancer cells; formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis),
"said Renny Franceschi, U-M professor of dentistry, biological chemistry and biomedical engineering. Franceschi and colleagues recently discovered a biomarker that they believe achieves this differentiation.
Associate professor Voss said the study revealed that the proteins tightly regulated Hox gene expression in early embryonic development."
and correctly timing Hox gene expression, ensuring the genes were activated at the right time and in the right place,
She said the research also showed that significantly reducing Hox gene expression still allowed normal development,
"says Cesar Castro, MD, of the MGH Cancer Center and Center for Systems Biology, co-lead author of the report."
"The emerging genomic and biological data for various cancers, which can be essential to choosing the most appropriate therapy,
"says Ralph Weissleder, MD, Phd, director of the MGH Center for Systems Biology (CSB) and co-senior author of the paper."
His lab's investigation of the gene began at the prompting of co-author Sally Camper, the James V. Neel Professor and Chair of the Department of Human genetics in the U-M Medical school.
and offer them more aggressive treatment after their operation increases',says Per-Henrik Edqvist, researcher at Uppsala University's Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology,
since Swedish biotech company Atlas Antibodies has shown interest in commercialising our findings, 'says Per-Henrik Edqvist.
which an anti-HIV drug induces lethal mutations in the virus's genetic material. The findings from the University of Chicago and the Massachusetts institute of technology could bolster efforts to develop the next generation of antiviral treatments.
and influenza using a strategy called lethal mutagenesis. This strategy seeks to extinguish viruses by forcing their already high mutation rates above an intolerable threshold.
If viruses experience too many mutations, they can't properly manage their genetic material.""They can't replicate
and so are eliminated quickly,"said Andrei Tokmakoff, the Henry G. Gale Distinguished Service Professor in Chemistry at UCHICAGO."
"In order to make this work, you need a stealth mutagen. You need something sneaky, something that the virus isn't going to recognize as a problem."
Toxicology, and Biological engineering. Essigmann is cofounder of a pharmaceutical company that is developing mutagenic inhibitors of HIV."
and therefore lead to genetic mutations,"said the study's lead author, Sam Peng, who completed his doctorate at MIT in 2014.
But biochemical experiments and clinical trials have shown that KP1212 induces mutations by pairing with adenine.
and non-protonated forms facilitated the viral mutation rate. Even in the absence of the protonated form, the virus still mutated, just at a lower rate."
and this protonated form induces even higher mutation rates, reaching approximately 50 percent, "Peng said.
Tokmakoff's biological research involves proteins, not DNA. But together their research teams were able to fruitfully undertake one of the first 2d infrared spectroscopic studies of the therapeutic mechanism of an antiviral drug."
the most common building block today for biosynthesis."We believe our system is a revolutionary leap forward in the field of artificial photosynthesis,
"Our system represents an emerging alliance between the fields of materials sciences and biology, where opportunities to make new functional devices can mix
"says Michelle Chang, an expert in biosynthesis."For example, the morphology of the nanowire array protects the bacteria like Easter eggs buried in tall grass
#Genetics overlap found between Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular risk factors The findings are published in current online issue of Circulation."
"The researchers used summary statistics from genome-wide association studies of more than 200,000 individuals, looking for overlap in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPS) associated with clinically diagnosed AD and CRP and the three components of total cholesterol:
DNA sequence or chromosome--linked to increased AD risk. The researchers next conducted a meta-analysis of these 55 variants across four independent AD study cohorts,
encompassing almost 145,000 persons with AD and healthy controls, revealing two genome-wide significant variants on chromosomes 4 and 10.
a senior co-author and professor of biological psychiatry at the University of Oslo in Norway."
a Curators Professor of Animal Science and a professor of biochemistry, and his colleagues, says these new stem cells can help advance research on preeclampsia and a number of other areas of the human reproductive process."
They also added two other drugs that temporarily inhibited key biochemical pathways associated with the pluripotent state of the stem cells.
meaning that all the cells in the culture are quite similar to each other in the way they express their genetic information."
Researchers from Imperial College London who led the study are now developing a gene therapy designed to boost the infection-fighting cells
By screening mice with genetic mutations, the Imperial team discovered a strain of mice that produced 10 times as many cytotoxic T cells
The researchers now aim to develop a gene therapy designed to improve immunity by boosting the production of LEM.
Professor Philip Ashton-Rickardt from the Section of Immunobiology in the Department of Medicine at Imperial, who led the study,
who led the research from the Centre for Biochemical Pharmacology, based within Queen Mary University of London William Harvey Research Institute,
however, are far greater as they can help explaining the biological mechanisms of widespread human diseases involving altered immune and inflammatory responses.
Dr Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at The Wellcome Trust, said: he discovery of a protein that could boost the immune response to not only cancer,
Patients with BRAF mutations had similar outcomes for each of the therapies. The combination therapy also induced effects that continued well after the last administration of the therapy.
and associate professor in the Department of Genetics & Genome Sciences at the Case Western Reserve School of medicine."
and human OPCS in our laboratory,"said Fadi Najm, MBA, the first author of the study and Research Scientist in the Department of Genetics & Genome Sciences at the Case Western Reserve School of medicine."
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