If synthetic biologists think like scientists, they may miss their eureka moment Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline, but paradoxically it is not particularly new. Since the mid-1970s we have been developing ways of instructing pieces of biology to perform useful tasks in an ever more efficient and sustainable way. Much of this has found its expression in industrial biotechnology, manufacturing things like drugs, enzymes and proteins. You could conceive of synthetic biology as writing little DNA programs that instruct cell behaviour, like a little genetic app. We borrow the cell’s machinery, its metabolism, and run the app. First base In first-generation biotech, the instructions were very simple, such as, “make drug”. Now most of it is manufactured by genetically modified yeast. Click to enlarge Contemporary first-generation biotech has become very good at instructions like, “make lots of drug” or “make lots of enzyme”. One that is hypothesised is to reprogramme bacteria that could be introduced into the body. The known unknowns
DNA Hard Drive Could Store Data For Millions Of Years Inspired by fossilized bones, researchers say they’ve found a way to preserve data in the form of DNA encased in silica. The findings, published in Angewandte Chemie this week, could lead to a way of preserving digital information permanently, or for a few millennia. Compared to ancient scrolls that have survived for thousands of years, the information written on servers and hard drives will last for a surprisingly short amount of time: 50 years or so. The latest development in long-term, error-free DNA storage comes from an ETH Zurich team led by Robert Grass. The team encoded Switzerland's Federal Charter of 1291 and “The Methods of Mechanical Theorems” by Archimedes in DNA (that’s about 83 kilobytes of data). To simulate data-destroying conditions over hundreds of years, they stored the DNA sheathed in glass at 60 to 70 degrees Celsius for up to a month. Additionally, to help keep errors low, the team also developed an algorithm to correct mistakes in the data.
Space Station research shows that hardy little space travelers could colonize Mars In the movies, humans often fear invaders from Mars. These days, scientists are more concerned about invaders to Mars, in the form of micro-organisms from Earth. Three recent scientific papers examined the risks of interplanetary exchange of organisms using research from the International Space Station. All three, Survival of Rock-Colonizing Organisms After 1.5 Years in Outer Space, Resistance of Bacterial Endospores to Outer Space for Planetary Protection Purposes and Survival of Bacillus pumilus Spores for a Prolonged Period of Time in Real Space Conditions, have appeared in Astrobiology Journal. Organisms hitching a ride on a spacecraft have the potential to contaminate other celestial bodies, making it difficult for scientists to determine whether a life form existed on another planet or was introduced there by explorers. So it's important to know what types of micro-organisms from Earth can survive on a spacecraft or landing vehicle.
Bio-inspired transparent synthetic materials could protect cars and people A Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image of the region surrounding an indentation the researchers made in a piece of shell from Placuna placenta. The image shows the localization of damage to the area immediately surrounding the stress. (Credit: Ling Li and James C. Weaver) MIT researchers have analyzed the shells of a sea creature, the mollusk Placuna placenta to determine exactly why they are so resistant to penetration and damage — even though they are 99 percent calcite, a weak, brittle mineral. The properties of this natural armor make it a promising template for the development of bio-inspired synthetic materials for both commercial and military applications — such as windows and windshields, eye and face protection for soldiers, and blast shields, says Christine Ortiz, the MIT Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. How natural exoskeletons withstand attacks Broken windshield (credit: Daniel Ramirez/Wikimedia Commons) Abstract of Nature Materials paper
Stanford engineers invent radical ‘high-rise’ 3D chips A four-layer prototype high-rise chip built by Stanford engineers. The bottom and top layers are logic transistors. Sandwiched between them are two layers of memory. The vertical tubes are nanoscale electronic “elevators” that connect logic and memory, allowing them to work together efficiently. (Credit: Max Shulaker, Stanford) Stanford engineers have build 3D “high-rise” chips that could leapfrog the performance of the single-story logic and memory chips on today’s circuit cards, which are subject to frequent traffic jams between logic and memory. The Stanford approach would attempt to end these jams by building layers of logic atop layers of memory to create a tightly interconnected high-rise chip. The work is led by Subhasish Mitra, a Stanford associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science, and H. “This research is at an early stage, but our design and fabrication techniques are scalable,” Mitra said. Overcoming silicon heat RRAM memory Interconnected layers
JEWSNEWS » Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD Why French Kids Don’t Have ADHD By Marylin Wedge The children grow up in families in which the rules are well-understood, and a clear family hierarchy is firmly in place. In French families, as Druckerman describes them, parents are firmly in charge of their kids—instead of the American family style, in which the situation is all too often vice versa. In the United States, at least 9% of school-aged children have been diagnosed with ADHD, and are taking pharmaceutical medications. In France, the percentage of kids diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than .5%. Is ADHD a biological-neurological disorder? French child psychiatrists, on the other hand, view ADHD as a medical condition that has psycho-social and situational causes. For rest of this article click Link
Scientists Engineer First Bone Marrow-On-A-Chip Scientists from Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have described a method for producing a device which closely mimics the composition and architecture of actual bone marrow. This bone marrow-on-a-chip is the first of its kind and adds to the growing repertoire of organs-on-a-chip that this institute has developed. The study has been published in Nature Methods. This new device could have numerous important applications in medicine. At the forefront of this pioneering technology is Don Ingber, Founding Director of the Wyss Institute. This new device, however, may finally allow scientists to move away from a dependence on in vivo models. In order to make these devices in the past, scientists combined numerous different cell types from a particular organ on a microfluidic chip and supplied it with nutrients whilst removing waste products. If you'd like to find out more, check out this video from the Wyss Institute:
Can We Make the Hardware Necessary for Artificial Intelligence? My POV is hardware driven, I do electronic design. I don’t present myself as “an authority” on Artificial Intelligence, much less “an authority” on sentient artificial intelligence, until they are Real Things, there is no such thing as an authority in that field. That said, if the hardware doesn’t exist to support sentient AI, doesn’t matter how wonderful the software is.
A Blow to the Head Turned This Ordinary Guy into a Math Genius Image: Math genius Jason Padgett says that a blow to the back of the head made him see the world in a completely different way. The drawing he made here is a visualization of Hawking radiation, which is emitted from a micro black hole. It took him nine months to complete. 12 years ago, Jason Padgett was a simple 30 year old man from Anchorage, Alaska when he left the university to work in the furniture shop of his father. Padgett, who today is 43 year old, wrote about the experience that changed his life in the autobiographical book “Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel“, which has just released in the U.S. and Britain. In the bathroom faucet, for example, he could observe “vertical lines coming out of the running water.” “I watch the cream stirred into the brew. Although Padgett had never previously been inclined to painting, he began designing fractals with excellent details, devoting weeks to complete each fractal.
Biodegradable Plastic Option From Shrimp Shells From the depths of the oceans to stomachs of whales waste plastics are out of control. Now there is a new entry in the quest for an alternative that won't require us to get more responsible about littering, although vegetarians may have very mixed feelings. Plastic waste is a classic tragedy of the commons problem. Even if we were able to get 90% of the people who currently dump products without thinking to mend their ways, the rest would still end up destroying marine life the rest of us love, just a little more slowly. Twenty years ago there were hopes that starch or cellulose-based plastics would solve the problem. So the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering went looking for a different bioplastic base. The Institute's substitute for plastic bags is a product made by combining chitosan with a protein from silk, which has been named Shrilk. Photo Gallery
A New Circuit Board Mimics Billions of Brain Synapses at Once The human brain is a pretty sweet organ to have working for us. It's fun to think that, as we push harder and harder into the computing future, we just have this biological thing as a default: the fastest processor(s), the most intelligent AI, and I/O capabilities to put your Oculus Rift to shame and really any future Oculus Rift as well. And it was free! OK, sort of free, anyhow: the upkeep can be intense, and if you have to send it in for repairs, well, good luck. Scientists and computer engineers recognized a long time ago that successfully emulating the brain would win computing. To put the relative limits of technological computing into perspective, consider that the cortex of a mere mouse brain operates 9,000 times faster than the fastest computer simulation of that cortex. The board, the product of a team based at Stanford University, consists of 16 custom-designed "Neurocore" chips combined into one board about the size of an iPad known as the Neurogrid.
Semi-synthetic organism: Scientists create first living organism that transmits added letters in DNA 'alphabet' Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have engineered a bacterium whose genetic material includes an added pair of DNA "letters," or bases, not found in nature. The cells of this unique bacterium can replicate the unnatural DNA bases more or less normally, for as long as the molecular building blocks are supplied. "Life on Earth in all its diversity is encoded by only two pairs of DNA bases, A-T and C-G, and what we've made is an organism that stably contains those two plus a third, unnatural pair of bases," said TSRI Associate Professor Floyd E. Romesberg, who led the research team. "This shows that other solutions to storing information are possible and, of course, takes us closer to an expanded-DNA biology that will have many exciting applications -- from new medicines to new kinds of nanotechnology." The report on the achievement appears May 7, 2014, in an advance online publication of the journal Nature. Many Challenges The task hasn't been a simple one.
Two New Letters for the DNA Alphabet Scientists keep getting better at rewriting the book of life. Adding, deleting, and splicing genes has become routine, and some researchers are now even designing DNA for creatures. While many are hard at work rearranging letters on the page, a new experiment is redefining the concept of synthetic biology by writing new letters. As they reported today in the journal Nature, a team of biologists led by Floyd Romesberg at the Scripps Research Institute have expanded the genetic alphabet of DNA—the As, Cs, Gs, and Ts that write the book of life—to include two new letters. “This is a very major accomplishment in our efforts to inch towards a synthetic biology," says Steven Benner, a synthetic biologist at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution who was not involved in the study. With a Little Help From My Fungus The history of these new letters—which the scientists call X and Y—can be traced back to 1998 when Rosmeberg and his colleagues first tinkered with the idea. Credit: Synthorx