New Florence. New Renaissance.

Bringing the Woolly Mammoth back to life?

Software entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who is known for his penchant for emerging technologies, has announced the launch of Colossal, a bioscience and genetics company. The organisation has been co-founded by Dr. George Church, a world-renowned geneticist and biotech entrepreneur, that will focus on the area of species de-extinction.

Working towards this goal, Colossal will be employing CRISPR technology and creating a “practical, working model of de-extinction”, a press release said. The revolutionary gene-editing technology will be used towards projects aimed at fighting the ill effects of climate change and aiding the restoration of extinct ecosystems.

With this, the company will be breaking new ground and will be the pioneer in applying advanced gene-editing techniques to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra, to begin with. The website of the organisation says that it will be “bringing back the woolly mammoth within the next 5 years”.

Gadgets 360

New experiments on the ISS

Wired discusses some of the experiments planned on the International Space Station as we plan a return to moon and beyond. They were sent on the Grumman CRS-16 mission on August 10. 

"Made in Space sent the first 3D printer into orbit aboard the ISS five years ago. Now, Redwire (which acquired Made in Space last year) is sending hardware and ingredients to try printing slabs of building material made from a simulated lunar sediment called JSC-1A. Its printer head is roughly the size of a sourdough loaf, and it attaches to the existing printer, a wide metal box that opens from the front like a futuristic microwave oven. Black cylindrical pellets of fake regolith, made of volcanic basalt, feed the printer, which will extrude (presumably) tough slabs. Redwire engineers know their machine can heat, bind, and squeeze out the simulant on Earth. But they have never tested its performance in microgravity."

and

"There are currently no FDA-approved drugs to treat sarcopenia, but Huang wants to accelerate the process of finding one. Her team developed an experiment that simulates the muscle atrophy seen in sarcopenia faster by using muscle cells that are stunted by microgravity. That speed is key, she says, to more quickly screen drugs for their efficacy treating the condition—it’d be like hitting fast forward on a test of whether a fertilizer helps a tree grow in poor soil. In their experiment, first, they’ll be confirming that microgravity stymies muscle cells. Then, they’ll test whether two chemicals that have been shown to aid muscle formation in previous lab studies can counteract that effect."

100 is the new 60

Peter Diamandis covers the " rewiring the biology of aging." - gene therapy, AI applied to patient data and many other advancements

"For the first time in history, leading scientists and entrepreneurs believe there’s a way to slow aging -- and maybe even reverse it.

The latest research on longevity suggests there is no reason that people born today can’t live to at least 120 years old... perhaps even to 150 and beyond."

Video on how we learn about aging from mice

Crispr food

What makes this greenhouse different—what makes it arguably an epicenter of a revolution in plant biology that may forever change not just the future of the tomato but the future of many crops—is that 90 percent of the tomato plants in the building had been genetically altered using the wizardly new gene-editing tool known as Crispr/Cas-9. ­Lippman and Joyce Van Eck, his longtime collaborator at the Boyce Thompson Institute in Ithaca, New York, are part of a small army of researchers using gene editing to turn the tomato into the laboratory mouse of plant science. In this greenhouse, Crispr is a verb, every plant is an experiment, and mutant isn’t a dirty word.

Wired

 

The botanist’s last stand

As the top botanist at Hawaii’s Plant Extinction Prevention Program (PEPP), Perlman deals exclusively in plants with 50 or fewer individuals left—in many cases, much fewer, maybe two or three. Of the 238 species currently on that list, 82 are on Kauai; Perlman literally hangs off cliffs and jumps from helicopters to reach them.

Without him, rare Hawaiian plants die out forever. With him, they at least have a shot. Though now, due to forces beyond Perlman’s control, even that slim hope of survival is in jeopardy. Looming budget cuts threaten to make this the final chapter not only in the history of many native Hawaiian species, but in the program designed to keep them alive.

Quartz

The video below follows another botanist in Hawaii

The Gene Machine

But what’s truly remarkable is that her work represents just one front of a broad revolution in genetics sparked by the technique called CRISPR-Cas9. Just four years old, this discovery is transforming research into how to treat disease, what we eat and how we’ll generate electricity, fuel our cars and even save endangered species. Experts believe that CRISPR can be used to reprogram the cells not just in humans but also in plants, insects–practically any piece of DNA on the planet. On June 2, a scientist at MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute announced the development of a related CRISPR technique that can edit RNA, which is responsible for regulation and expression of genes. If DNA is the genetic alphabet, RNA spells actual words. In plain terms, that means the already vast possibilities for CRISPR got even bigger.

Time (sub required)

 

GM Mosquitoes

Austin Burt, a professor of evolutionary genetics at Imperial College and the developer of the technology, didn’t set out to commit mosquito genocide. “Our target is malaria, not mosquitoes,” he says. “Mosquitoes are a means to an end.” But once unleashed, Burt’s mosquitoes have no kill switch. They will carry out their mission until there are no females left. To some experts, it’s a small sacrifice. But others worry about the implications of leaving a biological niche empty.

That concern is part of what drove Anthony James, a molecular biologist at the University of California, Irvine, to take a different tack. He’s working to make mosquitoes incapable of carrying malaria and, eventually, other pathogens like Zika. This technique leaves the mosquitoes in place while disarming them. “Nobody likes mosquitoes, but you can live with them if they are not giving you disease,” he says. “Better to fix the ones you have than deal with whoever comes along next.”

Time (sub required)

 

 

Sweet smelling gene

They compared a number of varieties of roses, some exuding lots of scent and others producing none. They found that a protein called nudix hydrolase RhNUDX1 in the cytoplasm of petal cells was present in scent-producing flowers and absent in those with no smell. It turns out that the gene responsible for building the protein was turned on in scented flowers and turned off in the others. The group was able to conclude that RhNUDX1 encodes a key part of the pathway that produces the small volatile molecules, called monoterpenes, which make up 70 percent of some rose cultivars’ smell.

“We saw that every time this gene was expressed highly, the rose was making these monoterpene molecules,” she said. “We were really surprised about this.”

Along with the possibility of modifying the plant to make the smell-producing gene work again, the team’s work can also be used as a marker for breeders to tell them which cultivars will produce scented roses before they even grow flower buds.

Txchnologist

Google’s Baseline Study

Called Baseline Study, the project will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people—and later thousands more—to create what the company hopes will be the fullest picture of what a healthy human being should be.

The project will collect anonymous genetic and molecular information from 175 people. Getty Images

The early-stage project is run by Andrew Conrad, a 50-year-old molecular biologist who pioneered cheap, high-volume tests for HIV in blood-plasma donations.

Dr. Conrad joined Google X—the company's research arm—in March 2013, and he has built a team of about 70-to-100 experts from fields including physiology, biochemistry, optics, imaging and molecular biology.

WSJ

 

Family trees and healthcare

Cleveland Clinic tested the program in 2012 and now provides MyFamily to a growing number of patients, including many of its own employees, in its primary-care practices and some cancer programs. The clinic is discussing licensing the program to other providers and is also making a brief version of the MyFamily questionnaire and tips available free online to the public at clevelandclinic.org/family.

Other health-history gathering tools are also available online, including My Family Health Portrait developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Surgeon General's office, and Does It Run in the Family? from the nonprofit Genetic Alliance'sfamilyhealthhistory.org website.

WSJ

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