Year: 2018

‘Human gene-editing scandal’: Should rogue scientist’s work be published?

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How do you handle the data of a scientist who violates all the norms of his field?

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On the one hand, you might want to learn from such a person’s work; to have a full and open dissection of everything that went wrong. Because, spoiler, there was a lot that went wrong in the case in question. But rewarding such “abhorrent” behavior, as one scientist put it, with a publication—the currency of the scientific world—would send a message that ethical rules only exist to be broken.

This is the precarious situation in which we find ourselves today, as scientists hash out the next chapter of the human gene-editing scandal that erupted two weeks ago, when the Chinese scientist He Jiankui revealed that for the last two years he has been working in secret to produce the world’s first Crispr-edited babies.

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Scientists are beginning to grapple with the very real possibility that He’s work may never be awarded publication status, along with its attendant sheen of legitimacy. And that may be the academic justice he deserves. But it also highlights an intractable tension embedded in scientific publishing: policing bad actors comes at the cost of scientific censorship.

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Never before has the academic publishing world had to contend in real time with research that nearly everyone agrees was profoundly wrong.

Read full, original post: How do you publish the work of a scientific villain?

Viewpoint: Indian scientist M.S. Swaminathan’s unscientific attack on GMO crops won’t help his country grow more food

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[In November], Indian journal Current Science published a thinly-veiled attack against the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture …. [T]he Current Science piece deserves extraordinary attention because one of its authors is M.S. Swaminathan. Swaminathan …. who spearheaded the Green Revolution in the ’60s and ’70s that raised agricultural productivity in the country dramatically, saving millions of lives.

It is, thus, worrisome that a scientist of his stature (and his radiation scientist co-author P.C. Kesavan) has now been taken in by the spurious claims of the anti-GMO movement.

First, Swaminathan and Kesavan say that recombinant DNA technology …. involves the insertion of foreign DNA at random locations in the host organism’s genome …. However ….[w]hen scientists generate new GM crops, only plants that appear to behave and grow the same as non-GMO counterparts are selected …. Even more importantly, random off-target mutations are even more common in conventional breeding techniques ….

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Today, India’s agriculture sector is facing enormous challenges …. The looming impact of climate change further threatens farm productivity, which has failed to keep up with our growing population.

Fortunately, Indian science …. has a vast breadth of agricultural and biotechnological expertise that could be harnessed to tackle these challenges …. However, the current regulatory climate makes their work nearly impossible to perform in India …. and biased academic reviews …. do nothing to help solve the problem.

Read full, original article: MS Swaminathan and his co-authors are not helping Indian farmers at a moment of crisis

Why don’t humans have fur? We have theories, but no answers

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Evolutionary theorists have put forth numerous hypotheses for why humans became the naked mole rats of the primate world. Did we adapt to semi-aquatic environments? Does bare skin help us sweat to keep cool while hunting during the heat of the day? Did we lose our fur to read each other’s emotional responses such as fuming or blushing?

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One popular idea that has gone in and out of favor since it was proposed is called the aquatic ape theory. The hypothesis suggests that human ancestors lived on the savannahs of Africa, gathering and hunting prey. But during the dry season, they would move to oases and lakesides and wade into shallow waters to collect aquatic tubers, shellfish or other food sources.

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A more widely accepted theory is that, when human ancestors moved from the cool shady forests into the savannah, they needed better thermoregulation. Losing all that fur made it possible for hominins to hunt during the day in the hot grasslands without overheating. An increase in sweat glands, many more than other primates, also kept early humans on the cool side. The development of fire and clothing meant that humans could keep cool during the day and cozy up at night.

But these are not the only possibilities, and perhaps the loss of hair is due to a combination of factors.

Read full, original post: Why Did Humans Lose Their Fur?

Childhood antibiotics use linked to higher risk of mental illness in study

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[Antibiotic] overuse can help create bacterial superbugs resistant to future antibiotics. But a new study published [December 5] in JAMA Psychiatry suggests there’s another, more subtle consequence of antibiotic use, at least in young people: a higher risk of developing serious mental illnesses.

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[Neurovirologist Robert] Yolken has speculated that changes in the gut microbiome—the living sea of bacteria that calls our digestive system home—can also harm the brain. That’s because the gut microbiome helps coordinate the gut-brain axis, an intricate communication network of hormonal and nerve signals between the gut and brain that regulates the body. And one of the most destructive ways to change the microbiome is by taking antibiotics.

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Yolken and his colleagues in Denmark looked at the medical history of all Danish residents born between 1995 and 2012, totaling just over a million children. They specifically studied children who had taken antimicrobial drugs, almost always antibiotics, for an infection sometime before the age of 18. Then they tracked their mental health history for an average of 10 years.

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Children who were hospitalized and treated for an infection were 84 percent more likely to be hospitalized for mental illness and 42 percent more likely to be given antipsychotics. But even children only prescribed antimicrobials for an infection were still 40 percent and 22 percent more likely to be hospitalized for mental illness or receive antipsychotics, respectively.

Read full, original post: Childhood Antibiotics Could Raise Risk of Mental Illness, Study Finds

CRISPR gene editing could turn wild plants into productive food crops

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TM Aunt Molly Ground Cherry Seeds

The lantern-shaped groundcherry, with its distinctive paper-thin husk, tomato-like texture and flavor akin to kiwi, seems to deserve a place in international produce markets. But Physalis pruinosa lacks key productivity traits, so its appeal remains limited.

The fruit’s lowly status may soon change, however, now that researchers in Joyce Van Eck’s laboratory at the Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) have embarked on a journey to make groundcherries more suitable for farmers and gardeners alike.

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In the lab, they’re employing the gene-editing technique CRISPR to understand how individual genes work, particularly those that might improve a plant’s growth characteristics, fruit quality and nutritional content. Though much of Van Eck’s research has focused on potato and tomato, the potential for rapid improvements in Physalis caught her interest because of the opportunity to apply lessons learned from other members of the Solanaceae plant family.

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“Dr. Van Eck’s research program puts BTI at the forefront of this new exciting technology,” said Paul Debbie, director of research at the Boyce Thompson Institute. “They are not only using this technology to improve new crops but to learn about mechanisms that plants have evolved over the millennia. This can have profound impacts on agriculture as we move into a challenging future.”

Read full, original article: A CRISPR approach to better crops

Bacon—made of mushrooms? New plant-based meat on the horizon

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Eben Bayer, cofounder and CEO of Ecovative, built his company making things out of mycelium, the root structure of a mushroom. He’s made compostable packaging and bio-based leather in conjunction with Bolt Threads. Now he’s testing bacon in hopes of using the mycelium to create plant-based “meats” that have more structure than burgers in 2019.

“The dream is to be able to do the equivalent of a steak,” he told Forbes during an interview at the Biofabricate conference in Brooklyn. “When you talk to the folks who do plant-based burgers, the goal is to do a bacon cheeseburger.

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The bacon is made entirely of mycelium, which is edible. Scientists modified its structure and added natural flavors to make it more appealing. The bacon turned out to be quite tasty, Bayer said, and sizzled on the grill like the real thing. “The holy grail in meat is structure,” he said. “We made the bacon prototype to convince ourselves. Is this crazy? Is this a bad idea? It was an unbelievable idea.”

The mycelium potentially has the right structure to be used as a scaffolding for a variety of plant-based “meats.” It could be more dense like a steak, or more crispy, like the bacon ….

Read full, original article: Bioengineered Bacon? The Entrepreneur Behind Mushroom-Root Packaging Says His Test Version Is Tasty

Your genes may affect how much you exercise and sleep

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Time spent sitting, sleeping and moving is determined in part by our genes, University of Oxford researchers have shown. In one of the most detailed projects of its kind, the scientists studied the activity of 91,105 UK Biobank participants who had previously worn an activity monitor on their wrist for a week.

The scientists taught machines to automatically identify active and sedentary life from the huge amounts of activity monitor data. They then combined this data with UK Biobank genetic information to reveal 14 genetic regions related to activity, seven new to science, they report in Nature Communications [December 10].

The work paves the way for better understanding of sleep, physical activity, and their health consequences. Further analysis of the human genetic data showed for the first time that increased physical activity causally lowers blood pressure.

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The genetic analysis also showed overlap with neurodegenerative diseases, mental health wellbeing and brain structure, showing an important role for the central nervous system with respect to physical activity and sleep.

Dr Aiden Doherty, who led the work and is based at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, said: “How and why we move isn’t all about genes, but understanding the role genes play will help improve our understanding of the causes and consequences of physical inactivity.

Read full, original post: Genes play a role in physical activity and sleep

How 100-year-old tissue samples could rewrite the Spanish flu’s deadly history

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Late one night Michael Worobey began poking around on the internet, looking for descendants of a World War I British military doctor named William Rolland. Rolland, a pathologist, had written a report in 1917, the year before the start of the Spanish flu.

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[Descendent Jim] Cox just so happened to have in his possession a collection of human tissue slides that Rolland had handed down through the generations. Those slides, it turns out, could now help rewrite the history of the 1918 Spanish flu — altering our understanding of when it began and how it spread.

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A prevailing theory, outlined in historian John Barry’s 2004 best-seller “The Great Influenza,” is that the virus emerged in Haskell County, Kan., in January 1918, after having jumped into humans from another host.

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Worobey is convinced the virus responsible for the pandemic could not have jumped into humans from another host in 1918, a theory that stems from the virus’s explosive behavior once it started transmitting among people. He has already conducted research analyzing eight genes of the virus that points to a two-stage emergence of this virus.

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Might the miraculously conserved Rolland slides deliver up a century-old flu virus? Worobey is trying to keep his expectations in check. “In all likelihood, we’ll just get no result at all. That’s something to keep in perspective,” he admitted.

Read full, original post: A shot-in-the-dark email leads to a century-old family treasure — and hope of cracking a deadly flu’s secret

Can ‘speed breeding’ help Europe develop disease-resistant crops without gene editing?

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Technology first used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to grow plants in space is fast-tracking improvements in a range of crops. Scientists at the United Kingdom’s John Innes Centre, Earlham Institute and Quadram Institute, and Australia’s University of Queensland, have improved the technique.

Known as speed breeding, the technique will now work in glasshouses and small growth chambers. The ability to work at those scales enables scientists to breed disease-resistant and climate-resilient crops to feed a growing global population.

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The latest advances come at a crucial time for European crop development. They follow a decision in summer by the European Union’s Court of Justice; it ruled that crops improved using modern gene-editing techniques should be classed as genetically modified organisms.

Brande Wulff, a wheat scientist at the John Innes Centre and one of the lead authors on the speed-breeder paper, explains European crop research and breeding will become more dependent on speed breeding in light of that ruling.

“Speed breeding allows researchers to rapidly mobilize the genetic variation found in wild relatives of crops and introduce it into elite varieties that can be grown by farmers,” Wulff said. “The European Union ruling that heavily regulates gene editing means we ‘re more reliant on speed breeding to grow sturdier and more resilient crops.”

Read full, original article: Speed-breeding crops inspired by space

Why can’t we stop rogue scientists from engaging in dubious research?

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[C]an the public control science that leaves us with permanent and unenviable consequences? Recent news suggests that the answer is “not really.” There are tools that we can use to place limits on scientists and the choices they make. But none of them can fully, reliably, put the public in the driver’s seat.

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On Nov. 25, MIT Technology Review broke the story of He Jiankui, a Chinese researcher who claims to have created the first genetically edited human babies.

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You might be able to skirt the law. You may find the funding to do ethically dubious research. But will you be able to look your peers in the eyes — and keep your job — in the morning?

There are lots of different ways this system has real power. Publication in a peer-reviewed journal marks the difference between legitimacy and laughingstock. Peer review controls governmental and non-governmental funding sources. A scientist, in whatever field, who violates the codes of ethics established by his research institution or his professional organization could find himself friendless and jobless … and labless.

But He risked it anyway.

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[Y]ou could say that He is as much a product of the community of science as he is in violation of it. The mad scientist will never go away, either as trope or reality.

Read full, original post: We Have Ways To Stop Rogue Scientists. They Don’t Always Work.

 

Animal gene editing could ‘transform’ our food supply, but will ‘questionable regulations’ block innovation?

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As scientists in labs across the world create virus-resistant pigs, heat-tolerant cattle and fatter, more muscular lambs, a big question looms: Will regulation, safety concerns and public skepticism prevent these advances from becoming anything more than fascinating laboratory experiments, or will the animals transform agriculture and the food supply?

So far, gene-editing tools have jump-started research worldwide …. Now, proponents of the field say …. government action over the next year could determine whether any gene-edited food animals make it to market.

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The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees animal gene editing, announced in late October that it will issue new guidance next year to calibrate the regulation to the risk posed by the product. Sonny Perdue, the secretary of agriculture, met with food biotechnology leaders in November.

Researchers, after years of fighting public skepticism on genetically modified foods, are hopeful but not optimistic. Advocates are lining up on both sides of the issue.

“We’re at this inflection point in society, where gene editing is really taking off, and now is the time we could have a more sustained public conversation about how we want it used in our world and how we don’t want it to be used,” said Jennifer Kuzma, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University.

Read full, original article: Gene-edited farm animals are coming. Will we eat them?

M.S. Swaminathan, ‘father of India’s Green Revolution,’ says he’s not opposed to GMO crops

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An iconic Indian agricultural scientist is distancing himself from a recent editorial he co-authored that is critical of genetically modified (GM) crops, and has sparked furious debate among the nation’s researchers.

Geneticist Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, 93, has been dubbed the father of India’s Green Revolution, which in the 1960s and 1970s delivered new, high-yield crop varieties to the nation’s farmers ….

Researchers took notice when, [in November], Swaminathan published an editorial in Current Science with Parthasarathy Chenna Kesavan, a researcher at the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, India, which Swaminathan leads. The article questions the sustainability, safety, and regulation of GM crops ….

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The editorial …. sparked furious pushback from some Indian scientists. The editorial is “severely flawed” and makes “extraordinary generalizations,” wrote Krishnaswamy VijayRaghavan, the principal scientific adviser to the Government of India, in a letter to Swaminathan.

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Swaminathan was taken aback by the ferocity of the dissent and what he views as personal attacks not grounded in evidence, he tells ScienceInsider …. His views of GM crops are more nuanced than the editorial suggests ….  For example, creating GM crops able to resist drought or high heat could be useful for dealing with threats like climate change, he says. But engineering crops to resist insects and fungi might be less promising over the long term …. because the crops can lose resistance as the pests evolve.

Read full, original article: Under fire for GM crops article, an iconic Indian scientist clarifies his views

Augmented memory: This researcher wants to record every minute of his life

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If we are nothing more than the sum of our memories and our experiences, how much of ourselves do we lose through forgetting?

Perhaps this natural amnesia is a good thing for keeping us all sane, but it’s also optional. This is what Neo Mohsenvand from MIT Media Lab aims to prove with his research project called Mnemo. The ambitious goal of the project is to record as much data about Mohsenvand as possible; throughout most of the day, he goes about his normal activities with a fisheye camera lens and a microphone attached to his chest.

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He dreams of an augmented memory that’s seamlessly integrated into a person, perhaps via more subtle wearable technology like augmented reality glasses, or even neural implants.

That way, short-term memory loss could be mitigated: if you can’t remember where you were an hour ago, you could just cue up that particular memory and work backwards. Combine it with image recognition software, and it’s more powerful still: you’d be able to remember where you put your keys, or when you last saw somebody.

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Systems like Mnemo may not really hold the secret key to digital immortality, or a perfectly examined life. But if it can help those that need it most to remember who they are.

Read full, original post: Are We Made of Memories? A Researcher’s Quest to Record His Life

Controversial treatment: Can we treat drug addiction with heroin?

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As overdose deaths have broken records year after year in the U.S., a group of researchers has looked around the world for new treatment options to try and has landed on a counterintuitive method. A new comprehensive report concludes that it’s time for Americans to earnestly pilot and study “heroin-assisted treatment,” a controversial approach that involves patients who are severely addicted to the drug injecting medical-grade heroin in a supervised setting.

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“This isn’t legalizing heroin or just giving it away,” says Beau Kilmer, the lead author of the 93-page report. “These are people who have been using for quite some time and they’ve tried other treatments and are still injecting. The big takeaway from the research is that this approach stabilizes their lives.”

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Double-blind, randomized controlled trials are considered the strongest way to test a drug’s effectiveness, and by analyzing 10 randomized trials comparing injectable heroin with other treatments like methadone, [the Rand Corporation] found that the injectable option consistently reduced illicit-drug use and improved treatment retention, all while improving physical and mental health. Rand wrote in one of the key insights of its report that heroin-assisted treatment has the ability to reduce criminal activity among patients.

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It seems unlikely that prescribing heroin to America’s young addicted people would ever fly. But experts all agree that one way or the other, they need saving.

Read full, original post: The Strongest Evidence Yet for a Highly Controversial Addiction Treatment

‘Smart farming’: Researchers aim to turn bees into ‘tiny drones’ that monitor plant health

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[A] research team at the University of Washington has found a way to make bumblebees act like tiny drones. The group has developed a platform for sensing, computing, and wireless communication devices that’s small enough to piggyback on the insects.

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Potential applications for what the researchers call “living Internet of Things platforms” might include smart farming to measure plant health. For example, moisture and humidity sensors could assist with precision irrigation, and temperature sensors can detect whether growing conditions are optimal for specific crops ….

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“We wanted to leverage nature’s best flying machines,” says Shyam Gollakota, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, who led the research. “Insects can feed themselves—we don’t need to keep recharging their batteries. Fats and sugars can store much more energy for their weight than batteries.”

Read full, original article: Scientists Outfit Bees With Wireless Sensors to Create a “Living IoT Platform”

While AquaBounty’s GMO salmon remains blocked in US, Argentina exempts the company’s sustainable gene-edited tilapia from regulation

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Transgenic salmon producer AquaBounty and its majority owner, Intrexon, [December 18] announced that their jointly developed gene-edited line of tilapia, FLT 01, has been exempted from GM regulation in Argentina.

In a press release, the companies said this line of tilapia enables more sustainable production through improvements in fillet yield, growth and feed conversion efficiency, enabling the tilapia to grow to market weight in less time, while also consuming less feed than conventional varieties.

The engineered tilapia were developed using gene editing techniques but, unlike AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage salmon, do not contain any foreign DNA or a new combination of genetic material that would warrant their regulation as genetically modified in Argentina.

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“We are pleased with Argentina’s leadership in establishing a transparent and predictable process for the advancement of products developed with gene editing techniques and see this as a critical development for companies seeking to bring highly innovative solutions to the global market using powerful and highly precise genetic tools,” [ said Intrexon chief operating officer Thomas Bostick.]

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According to AquaBounty and Intrexon, the jointly developed tilapia demonstrates a significant improvement in fillet yield of 70%, a growth rate improvement of 16% and a feed conversion rate improvement of 14%, offering promise to producers to shorten the time to harvest ….

Read full, original article: AquaBounty gets Argentina go-ahead for edited tilapia

Here’s what DNA testing companies are doing with all that genetic data

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In the past couple of years, genetic-testing companies like Ancestry and 23andMe have become popular for finding out family history and DNA information. They make for great gifts for family members and it’s a very attractive pitch to see “where you came from.” However, do you know where that information is being used and stored?

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When you sign up to share your DNA with Ancestry, you opt-in for “informed consent research.” However, you have the ability to opt out of this when you first agree to the service.

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Law enforcement can also obtain your DNA data with a court order. In fact, they recently caught The Golden State Killer by comparing online stored DNA after 32 years at large.

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All of this collected data means is that your privacy could be at risk when it comes to your genetic makeup information. Leaks are common in the data world and a DNA leak would be much worse than a credit leak because simply, you cannot change your DNA. If leaked, this data could cause people to be genetically discriminated against by employers, insurance companies, banks, etc.

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If you are uncomfortable with your DNA being sold to drug research or the possibility of a data leak, you can delete your DNA test results. Both sites have a step-by-step on deleting the data on their website.

Read full, original post: How DNA Companies Like Ancestry And 23andMe Are Using Your Genetic Data

New ‘nanotweezers’ can pull material from living cells without causing harm

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Scientists at the Imperial College London have revealed their creation of a set of nanotweezers that can work on the molecular level to extract subcellular components from cells, all while not harming the host cell whatsoever.

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The first step was to make a pair of nanopipettes out of quartz using the process of laser pulling to slowly strip away layers. Then nanoelectrodes were made at the tips of these microscopic pipettes by depositing chemically modified carbon to form a conductive surface. The distance between these two nanoelectrodes is on the order of 10 nanometers. And since human cells are on average the size of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of micrometers, this nanotweezer scale is far below that. When a voltage is expressed across them, the two electrodes create an attractive force, pulling molecules in their direction.

Particles can then be trapped and moved via these tweezers, including being removed entirely from the cell.

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The scientists have noted that the nanotweezers may also be modified with different techniques beyond just molecular-level extrication. Scanning and observation components could be attached and inserted into a living cell and produce data on any variety of cellular behavior. The limits of what we can use such a device for are only the limits we choose to restrict ourselves to.

Read full, original post: Nanotweezers allow for extraction of single molecules from living cells

Video: Kenya to begin planting yield-boosting GMO cotton by spring 2020

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Cotton farmers in Kenya are set to start planting genetically modified cotton by May 2020, a year later than expected, as the government insists on the crop undergoing two seasons of the national performance trials before giving farmers the nod to start growing it on commercial basis.

Original video: Cotton farmers set to start planting GMO cotton by May 2020

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