I think this is a much more accurate and precise method for doing that said biologist Alfred Roca of the University of Illinois who was involved not in the research.
Potential uses Samuel Wasser a conservation biologist at the University of Washington who did not participate in the study said the new study is a very important development
With 3. 5 billion years of research and development under her belt Mother Nature could be considered the world's most experienced biological engineer.
when it comes to dealing with biofouling or the unwanted build-up of biological material
Living nature is full of engineering marvels from the micro to the macro scale that have inspired mankind for centuries says Bharat Bhushan senior author of the study and director of the Nanoprobe Laboratory for Bio-and Nanotechnology and Biomimetics
Preventing the build up of biological matter on a ship's hull for example could increase the efficiency of the ship's movement ultimately leading to more efficient fuel usage.
Bushan's study on rice leaves and butterfly wings was titled Bioinspired rice leaf and butterfly wing surface structures combining shark skin
But in clones the trophoblast cells frequently fail perhaps a domino effect from just a few genes going wrong said Jose Cibelli a stem cell researcher at Michigan State university.
and tinker with their genes turning back time to make these single-use cells pluripotent
and there are questions about how stable the revised genomes of these cells would be over time.
what's in the nucleus. Trying to treat a mitochondrial disease by turning back the clock on an adult cell's genome would do nothing
and insert it in the place of the egg's original nucleus. Now that adult cell's genome can hum along in its new home creating stem cells without the mitochondrial defects present in its original form.
Now advances in biotechnology could enable scientists to bring extinct animals back from the grave.
In 2003 biologists brought back a Pyrenean ibex by making a clone of frozen tissues harvested from the last of these goats.
Writer and environmentalist Stewart Brand founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and his wife Ryan Phelan founder of the genetics company DNA Direct wondered
Working with Harvard biologist George Church they figured out a possible way to revive passenger pigeons.
because they no longer have fully intact genomes. But there could be another way: Using fragments of the passenger pigeon DNA scientists could synthesize the genes for certain traits and splice the genes together into the genome of a rock pigeon.
The cells containing the passenger pigeon DNA could be transformed into cells that produce eggs and sperm
But South korean biomedical engineer Insung Hwang hopes to find just a cell nucleus and produce a clone from it like Dolly the sheep.
Biologist David Ehrenfeld of Rutgers The State university of New jersey agrees de-extinction would impede conservation.
In 2011 Modern Meadow took up the challenge setting out to make ecological and economical leather and meat from bioprinters.
Modern Meadow s CEO Andras Forgacs is a pioneer in the bioprinting field cofounding the tissue printing company Organovo (NYSE:
They work with communities on a wide range of issues including synthetic biology and bionic implants.
That's happening because of increased irrigation technology crop genetics and management strategies. But in some areas of the country's plains the properties of the groundwater and soil largely dictate the irrigation techniques Scanlon said.
Prizes such as the automotive XPRIZE (vehicle efficiency) the lunar XPRIZE (space exploration) the genomics XPRIZE (genome sequencing)
In addition to providing a food source greenery offers the added benefits of converting carbon dioxide exhaled by settlers into oxygen essential for maintaining a long-term bio-regenerative life support system.
Our research at the Centre of Excellence for Postharvest Biotechnology at Nottingham University s Malaysia Campus is making these natural products into nano-forms or submicron particles to control postharvest diseases.
and appeared in the February 2014 issue of Chemical engineering Progress. Morse contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices:
or with additives Mango Materials has identified a range of applications. We are focused currently on applications where biodegradability is key says Molly Morse CEO at Mango Materials.
However we're open to all sorts of applications and are eager to bring PHA bioplastics to market.
This unique approach addresses challenges that have derailed previous attempts at PHA commercialization. Other processes use sugar as a carbon feedstock
In addition the process relies on a mixed community of wild bacteria that are obtained through natural selection rather than genetic engineering Using wild bacteria that are altered not genetically alleviates some people's concerns about genetically modified organisms.
This stands in contrast to the processes many biotech companies use that require high-purity genetically engineered cultures says Allison Pieja Director of Technology at Mango Materials.
Field studies have shown that the methane-consuming cultures grow just as well on waste biogas which includes contaminants such as sulfides as on pure methane.
and appeared in the February 2014 issue of Chemical engineering Progress. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues
Some call this activity bionics others call it biomimetics. Whatever you call it it is big business:
The term I prefer is bioinspired design and here s why. If it hadn t been for birds
I consider several bioinspired concepts. One is the work of the German engineering Claus Mattheck.
Learning from Trees is a classic on biomimetics. Mattheck s lifelong love affair with trees has led to many important innovations in engineering design.
The report predicted that this fascinating result will be used by bioengineers to improve engineering design. Well perhaps it will
But a simple biomechanical model applying the appropriate scaling laws would suggest that all animals should be able to run at the same absolute speed not the same relative speed.
Biodiversity Abounds: Stunning Photos of the Amazon For the project FAS uses Open Data Kit (ODK) a set of tools designed to help organizations collect
Plants genes get fine tailoring: Nature Newsafter decades of searching, plant biologists have found a way to selectively snip out one gene
and replace it with another. The method promises to be a boon to both basic research
which bind to specific sites in a genome and then cut nearby strands of DNA.
the gap can be sealed either simply in effect deleting the targeted gene or filled in with a new gene.
Zinc-finger nucleases have recently been used to create human immune cells that are resistant to HIV (see'Designer protein tackles HIV'.
says David Ow, a plant biologist at the US Department of agriculture Plant Gene expression Center in Albany, California.
Plant biologists have long been frustrated by the lack of a simple method for either deleting a specific gene from the genome or replacing it with another gene.
the fast-growing weed with a small genome favoured by many plant biologists as a model system,
has not been targeted amenable to gene replacement. To have a really good model system you need targeted gene replacement,
says Joseph Ecker, a plant biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La jolla, California.
We've been kind of limping along without it. Sporadic reports of plant gene-replacement strategies have come and gone,
but none has been versatile or efficient enough for wide-scale use. In 1997, a Nature paper reporting targeted gene disruption in Arabidopsis raised the hopes of many plant researchers3.
When that paper came out we all thought'This is it, 'says Ow. Unfortunately it didn't pan out.
complex genomes, chock full of large families of genes with very similar DNA sequences, says Vipula Shukla, a scientific group leader at Dow Agrosciences in Indianapolis, Indiana.
That makes targeting a specific gene more difficult. The challenges associated with any kind of sequence-specific modification in plants are profound,
For one of the new studies, Shukla and her colleagues at Dow Agrosciences teamed up with Sangamo Biosciences
The team has used zinc fingers to replace a gene called IPK1 with an herbicide-resistance gene.
Meanwhile, the other study1 is the work of a research team led by Daniel Voytas, a plant biologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a member of the Zinc Finger Consortium,
'Voytas's group has engineered herbicide-resistant tobacco by inserting specific mutations into a gene called Sur.
Both groups have replaced their selected genes at a frequency much higher than anyone has achieved before,
For instance, designing zinc fingers that target only one gene will probably still be a challenge,
a plant biologist at Karlsruhe University in Germany who is developing zinc-finger nucleases for use in Arabidopsis.
Shukla notes that her team was able to target IPK1 without affecting a 98%-identical gene called IPK2.
Voytas'team was also able to target their gene without hitting another gene that is 96%identical.
But Voytas adds that some of the zinc-finger nucleases the team studied did cleave both genes,
and costs could be higher for other labs. The technique could also assuage a common concern about transgenic crops.
when we create transgenic plants, we insert the transgene somewhere in the genome, and we don't know exactly where it happens to insert,
says Wilhelm Gruissem, a plant biologist at The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich. Now you can target the transgene to a specific location.
News briefing: 29 october 2009: Nature Newspolicy Events Funding Research Business The week ahead Number crunch News maker Policy Spaceflight review:
The US panel charged with reviewing NASA's human spaceflight programme issued its final report last week,
2008) mean corruption of traditional genomes is inevitable. Events Hwang convicted Disgraced South korean cloning scientist Woo Suk Hwang left Seoul Central District court on 26 october knowing that his sentence,
He was found guilty of embezzling government funds and buying human eggs in violation of the country's bioethics law,
Biotechnology continues to be funded the top sector, receiving $905 million in the third quarter a 4%decrease from the second quarter.
In another, climate policies result in a world full of forest plantations that are created solely to store the greatest possible amount of carbon, with no regard for preserving biodiversity.
when eminent biologists established influential guidelines on experiments in the budding field of genetic engineering. Despite disagreement on when  or indeed whether the technologies should be used,
But it was evident from the beginning that the much broader field of geoengineering would not yield to simple principles as quickly as had genetics.
The mandated levels of biofuel production in the United states will increase to 53 billion litres in 2011 about 8%of the country's total fuel consumption
Around 90%of the biofuel will come from conventional corn ethanol next year, with the remainder coming from biodiesel and other advanced biofuels.
however, the US Environmental protection agency pulled back the 2011 requirement for cellulosic biofuels from 946 million to 25 million litres,
and a lack of financing to scale up basic research and development (see'Biofuel blues',left). The US Department of energy has supported biofuels through research grants,
including $30 million for research into next generation biofuels announced last week, but has yet to finalize any loan guarantees for companies wanting to build pilot plants.
Although industry officials say that the programme's requirements for granting loans are too burdensome,
Cellulosic ethanol producers are trying to generate fuel from biomass such as leaves and branches. These feedstocks have the advantage that they are plentiful
Steve Long, a crop scientist and deputy director of the Energy Biosciences Institute in Urbana, Illinois, says companies are struggling to overcome a suite of financial,
aims to increase food security by finding genetic traits that might be suited to future climates. Samples of wild plants will now be conserved alongside existing stores of domesticated seeds (such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen.
The report examines the scientific evidence used by the FBI to accuse microbiologist Bruce Ivins of the attacks,
and helped to launch the field of proteomics. In 2005, Fenn lost a legal battle over the patent rights to Yale university in New haven, Connecticut,
Business Biotech bid On 8 december US pharmaceutical giant Johnson & johnson issued a long-awaited public offer to buy Crucell,
a biotechnology firm headquartered in Leiden, The netherlands. Johnson & johnson, in New brunswick, New jersey, offered to pay ¢ 1. 75 billion (US$2. 3 billion) for Crucell,
Nature Newspolicy Business People Research Trend watch Coming up Policy German GM CROPS The highest court in Germany has upheld a law that makes planters of genetically modified (GM CROPS liable
Patient protection US President Barack Obama has asked his bioethics commission to review the recent discovery that US government-funded scientists intentionally infected subjects with syphilis in a study in Guatemala in the 1940s (see Nature 467,645;
the European Association for Bioindustries and European Biopharmaceutical Enterprises. People Murder in Iran Majid Shahriari, an Iranian nuclear physicist, was killed
Transgenic grass skirts regulators: Nature Newswhen the US Department of agriculture (USDA) announced this month that it did not have the authority to oversee a new variety of genetically modified (GM) Kentucky bluegrass,
it exposed a serious weakness in the regulations governing GM CROPS. These are based not on a plant's GM nature
but on the techniques used for its genetic modification. With changing technologies, the department says that it lacks the authority to regulate newly created transgenic crops.
The grass, a GM variety of Poa pratensis, is still in the early stages of development by Scotts Miracle-Gro
On 1 july, secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack wrote to the company to say that the variety is not subject to the same regulations that govern other GM CROPS.
The bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens which can cause tumours on plants shuttled foreign genes into plant genomes.
Developers then used genetic control elements derived from pathogenic plant viruses such as the cauliflower mosaic virus to switch on the genes.
By revealing similar elements in plants'DNA, genome sequencing has liberated developers from having to borrow the viral sequences.
foreign genes can be fired into plant cells on metal particles shot from a'gene gun'.
The Plant Pest Act was completely inappropriate for regulating biotech crops, but the USDA jury-rigged it, says Bill Freese, science-policy analyst at the Center for Food safety in WASHINGTON DC.
to facilitate the regulation of GM CROPS. Nevertheless, Agrobacterium is still industry's tool of choice for shuttling in foreign genes,
says Johan Botterman, head of product research at Bayer Bioscience in Ghent, Belgium. The technique is established well for many crops,
and particle bombardment is less predictable, often yielding multiple, fragmented insertions of the new gene.
But Agrobacterium isn't suitable for some new techniques. Many companies are developing'mini-chromosomes'that can function in a plant cell without needing to be integrated into the plant's genome.
Last summer agribusiness giant Syngenta, based in Basel, Switzerland, conducted the first field trials of maize (corn) containing engineered mini-chromosomes,
and showed that the mini-chromosomes, which carried multiple genes for insect and herbicide resistance, were stable in the field.
I would expect that by the end of the decade, this technology will be used well by many as a way to deliver large stacks of genes to plants,
says Roger Kemble, head of technology scouting for Syngenta. Other techniques under development insert foreign genes into designated sites in the genome,
unlike the near-random scattering generated by Agrobacterium. In 2009 researchers at Dow Agrosciences in Indianapolis, Indiana,
and Sangamo Biosciences in Richmond, California, announced that they had used enzymes called zinc-finger nucleases to insert a gene for herbicide resistance at a specific site in the maize genome (V. K. Shukla et al.
Nature 459,437-441; 2009). ) Bayer is interested in harnessing other enzymes called'meganucleases'to do the same type of targeted engineering,
a strategy that Botterman says may make it possible to introduce multiple new traits into existing GM CROPS.
-or under-regulating GM plants, says Roger Beachy, a plant biologist at Washington University in St louis, Missouri,
"It s the capital of biodiversity. But mining is already beginning to encroach on these areas,
global pandemics and/or deliberate biological attacks? To further improve preparedness, we must continue to invest in the best public health monitoring systems that can be built.
but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and Solar energy development, economic growth,
Animals engineered with pinpoint accuracytwo genetically engineered farm animals reported today illustrate how far from Frankenstein s stitched-together monster animal biotechnology has come.
And in pigs, scientists have used an enzyme called a TALEN2 to scramble a gene that would normally help remove cholesterol.
RNA interference (RNAI) and TALENS are more accurate at targeting the gene in question than are earlier genetic engineering techniques.
They tried replacing the gene encoding beta-lactoglobulin with a defective form, but this proved nearly impossible
because the techniques available to introduce foreign genes into animal genomes were not precise, and misplaced genes failed to express themselves correctly.
In 2006, scientists at Agresearch in Hamilton, New zealand began to experiment with molecules that interfere with the MESSENGER RNA go-between that enables translation of a gene into protein.
In mice, they discovered a short chunk of RNA, called a microrna, that targeted beta-lactoglobulin MESSENGER RNA directly to prevent its translation.
They inserted DNA encoding a version of this microrna into the genome to create genetically modified cow embryos that they hoped would grow into cows without the allergen in their milk.
says Stefan Wagner, a molecular biologist at Agresearch. That's why it has taken so long to succeed in making an allergen-free cow,
but each TALEN targets a specific DNA sequence in the genome and cuts it. As the body repairs the break
mutations are introduced often that render the targeted gene nonfunctional.""The TALEN technology is staggeringly easy, quick,
and leaves no mark in the genome, says Bruce Whitelaw, a molecular biologist at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh in the United kingdom,
His team used TALENS to disrupt genes encoding low-density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors. Without these receptor proteins to remove cholesterol-containing LDLS from the blood,
but the technique makes genetic engineering less costly and more efficient.""I d be exaggerating if
says Heiner Niemann, a bioengineer at the Institute of Farm animal Genetics in Neustadt, Germany. The excitement surrounding these technological advances is bittersweet, however.
"The current climate for animal biotech is not very good, and therefore, we are nowhere near getting this to the consumer
cio Lula da Silva, described his country s biofuel boom in March 2007. Back then, Brazil was the poster child of ethanol fuel,
Biofuels are falling from grace around the world as critics charge that devoting millions of hectares of agricultural land to fuel crops is driving up food prices
and that the climate benefits of biofuels are modest at best. But the fall has been hardest in Brazil,
leaving biofuels less competitive. On the very night that current President Dilma Rousseff gave the closing speech of the Rio+20 conference in June the final agreement
says Luiz Horta, a bioenergy researcher at the Federal University of Itajub ¡.Meanwhile, the government has tried to stimulate the economy with tax breaks on the sale of new cars.
Now, Brazil hopes to tap into a new biofuel source: second-generation ethanol, produced from the tough cellulose in plant stalks.
In December last year, the Brazilian Development Bank launched a 1-billion-real (US$481-million) credit line to stimulate research and development in cellulosic biofuels and other advanced sugar-cane technologies.
The Brazilian Agricultural Research Company (EMBRAPA) is also throwing its weight behind bioenergy. Its president, Maur  cio Lopes, a geneticist who took office in October,
has promised to build up research on biomass technology and double EMBRAPA s funding for that area,
which today stands at a modest 24 million real per year.""I want to believe that the current state of the ethanol sector is a temporary blip,
Donald Boesch A biological oceanographer, Boesch is currently president of the Center for Environmental science at the University of Maryland in Cambridge,
But even Monsanto, the agricultural biotechnology giant in St louis, Missouri, was surprised by the furore that followed
when it patented a method for engineering transgenic crops to produce sterile seed, forcing farmers to buy new seed for each planting.
If Bowman wins and observers say that is not out of the question the decision could make it harder for biotech firms to enforce patents on engineered organisms,
Indeed, some synthetic biology companies, concerned about policing illegal, copycat proliferation of their technology, are already working on terminator-like safeguards.
but bypassed the company by purchasing seed for a late-season crop from a grain elevator known to contain Monsanto s transgenic seed.
biotechnology firms are bracing themselves for clarifications of patents on self-replicating inventions. Without that protection, companies say,
or a cell culture or a transgenic animal and using it to generate thousands more to sell again at a fraction of the original price."
says Hans Sauer, deputy general counsel for intellectual property at the Biotechnology industry Organization, a lobby group in WASHINGTON DC.
Early patents on gene-use restriction technologies later rebranded as terminator technology by activists opposed to them described a genetic modification that switched on production of a toxin that would kill off developing plant embryos.
One tactic would be to switch off the transgene of interest in seeds, so that they could grow into new plants
Another approach is to place the transgene under the control of a switch that must be activated by a proprietary chemical.
That is the strategy of Ginkgo Bioworks, a four-year-old synthetic biology company in Boston, Massachusetts, that develops made-to-order microbes to churn out marketable chemicals.
what Kelly calls a gene-guard technology: a genetic tweak that makes production of the desired chemical dependent on a proprietary additive,
supplied by Ginkgo, in its fermentation medium. The approach could even be used in nanotechnology, by making engineered nanobots that are dependent on a proprietary raw material.
Patents owned by Monsanto required the insertion of three different genes into the plant genome.
says Brett Lund, former head of intellectual property for the biofuels group of Syngenta, an agri-giant headquartered in Basel, Switzerland."
Nobel laureate dies Fran §ois Jacob, a Nobel-prizewinning French biologist, died on 19 april aged 92.
or Medicine for his work on gene expression and how it is controlled. While working at the Pasteur institute in Paris, he identified regulatory proteins that bind to DNA,
found that investment in biotechnology and medical devices fell by 28 %and investment in clean technology declined by 35%relative to the previous quarter.
a salmon breeding and biotechnology company on the Queen Charlotte Islands in Canada, is disputing the legality of a search of its offices by the government agency Environment Canada last month.
the resurgence of measles and antimicrobial resistance are discussed all at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
In 1999, they finally produced a tasty variety that contained the Vf defence gene, bred in from an unappetizing relative.
Even armed with modern breeding techniques and 15 Â known defence genes in the apple family
but growing pool of academics and companies hoping to taking advantage of the latest approaches in genetic engineering,
Schouten argues that his product should not be regulated in the same way as genetically modified (GM CROPS that are engineered with bacterial or VIRAL DNA.
that have so far been ignored by biotechnology giants.""There are any number of companies exploring new techniques to produce crops that don t trigger regulatory oversight,
The regulation of GM CROPS in the United states is based on laws that were not tailor-made for the technology.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the branch of the agriculture department responsible for overseeing GM CROPS,
has stuck so far to a strict interpretation of a 1957 law designed to protect agriculture against plant pests that was coopted in 1986 to regulate GM CROPS.
At that time, GM CROPS were engineered nearly always using Agrobacterium tumefaciens a bacterial pest that can insert DNA into plant genomes.
In 2011, APHIS regulators announced that a herbicide-tolerant Kentucky bluegrass would not fall under their purview,
instead used a gene gun to fire DNA-coated gold particles into plant cells. Some of that DNA is incorporated then into the genome.
For Greg Jaffe, director of biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public interest a consumer advocacy group in Washington  DC, the news highlighted the shortcomings of the US regulatory system for GM  crops."
"The whole system is a fiction, he says. And some are starting to test the regulation-free waters.
Dennis Gray, a developmental biologist at the University of Florida in Apopka is trying to use genes from grape varieties to engineer a wine grape that is resistant to Pierce s disease a condition caused by a bacterium that has made it difficult to grow wine grapes in the state.
He says that the lack of regulation is encouraging researchers like him to pursue such small-market crops."
Sally  Mackenzie, a plant biologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, contacted APHIS about the high-yield offspring of a transgenic sorghum grass plant
even though these offspring no longer contain the engineered gene. Mackenzie thinks that the transgene triggered an epigenetic change:
it altered the plant s gene expression by changing the pattern of chemical groups added to its DNA rather than changing the DNA sequence itself.
In 2012, APHIS regulators invited Mackenzie to the organization s headquarters in Riverdale, Maryland, and questioned her about this hypothesis. APHIS eventually notified her that it would not regulate her plants a decision that Mackenzie says has accelerated her research
such as zinc-finger nucleases enzymes that precisely target a region of the plant genome. In 2010, APHIS told Dow Agrosciences of Indianapolis, Indiana,
Jennifer Kuzma, a policy analyst at North carolina State university in Raleigh, says that a lack of regulation for the latest approaches could fuel public suspicions about GM CROPS."
"The flip side is that they are so powerful you can engineer multiple genes at one time.
He notes that Agrobacterium inserts genes more efficiently than the gene-gun method. Although zinc-fingers are appealing for their specificity
in spite of the fact that the genes he introduced came from other apples. This was used because he Agrobacterium to insert the genes it did not matter to regulators that no trace of Agrobacterium DNA remained in his plants.
Schouten is perplexed. If he had used a gene gun, he would have inserted DNA haphazardly and in a manner more likely to damage other sites in the genome yet this remains the unregulated method."
"To me, this is a very strange system, he says
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