DNA – Page 8 – Impact Lab

Agriculture, Biotech, DNA, Farming, Food

With Personal Food Computers, nerd farmers are finding the best way to grow

November 28, 2018

I’m Caleb Harper, principal investigator and director of the Open Agriculture initiative at the MIT Media Lab. Kent Larson courtesy of MIT Media Lab

In his book Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, Barry Estabrook details how grocery store tomatoes are both less nutritious and delicious than those grown decades ago. Industrial farming now grows crops for yield, sacrificing taste and vitamins for an easy-to-harvest, shippable product. It’s why apples at your local supermarket are probably about a year old. Caleb Harper, a principal research scientist at MIT and director of the OpenAg Initiative, wants to use technology to grow food that’s healthier, tastier, and more sustainable.

“Growing for nutrition and growing for flavor, it’s not really something anyone does,” he told Digital Trends at the recent ReThink Food conference in Napa, California.

Continue reading… “With Personal Food Computers, nerd farmers are finding the best way to grow”

Biotech, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, new technology, Parenting

Same-sex mouse parents give birth via gene editing

October 21, 2018

Scientists delivered pups with genetic material from two moms and two dads. But only pups with two moms survived to have babies themselves.

BIRDS DO IT, bees do it—even laboratory mice do it. But with science in the mix, actually creating new life may not always require a male and a female.

Using gene editing and stem cells, researchers in China have helped mice of the same sex bear pups. While this feat has been accomplished before with mouse moms, the new study marks the first time that pups from pairs of male mice were also carried to full term.

The technology is far from ready for the leap to humans. Though mice pups born from two females appeared healthy and bore their own young, pups with two papas died soon after birth. Of the 12 born, just two survived more than 48 hours.

Continue reading… “Same-sex mouse parents give birth via gene editing”

Analysis, DNA, Genes

Height, bone density, and more can be predicted using new DNA analysis algorithm

October 13, 2018

A new computer model could accurately predict a person’s height to within one inch just by analyzing their DNA

AI-driven diagnostic tools are undeniably on the precipice of revolutionizing how doctors treat and manage patients. The ability for machine-learning algorithms to crunch immense volumes of patient data and find patterns not visible to the eyes of human clinicians is revealing new ways to predict everything from breast cancer risk to a person’s chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Now, a team of scientists from Michigan State University claims to have built a computer algorithm that can analyze a person’s complete genome and accurately predict how tall they are with only around a one-inch (2.5-cm) margin of error. The machine-learning system was trained on a dataset of nearly 500,000 adults.

Continue reading… “Height, bone density, and more can be predicted using new DNA analysis algorithm”

brains, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

Building a better brain-in-a-dish, faster and cheaper

October 5, 2018

UC San Diego researchers develop new protocol for creating human cortical organoids, mini-brains derived directly from primary cells that can be used to better explore and understand the real thing.

Writing in the current online issue of the journal Stem Cells and Development , researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe development of a rapid, cost-effective method to create human cortical organoids directly from primary cells.

Continue reading… “Building a better brain-in-a-dish, faster and cheaper”

Analysis, Children, DNA

In the 23 and Me era, kids of sperm donors are finding each other

October 1, 2018

Imaging discovering you have a half-sibling you’ve never met—or dozens of them. Customers of genetic-information services are uncovering family secrets, and then using social networks to make connections..

When you use 23andMe’s DNA Relatives feature, you get a message cautioning you that the information you’re about to see could be unexpected. For Danny-J Johnson, that couldn’t have been more of an understatement.

Continue reading… “In the 23 and Me era, kids of sperm donors are finding each other”

Biotech, DNA, Genes, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists just made human egg cells from human blood for the first time

September 29, 2018

It’s the first step toward being able to mass produce human eggs using other people’s body tissues or blood.

Scientists in Japan have used human blood to successfully create immature human egg cells in a lab for the first time, according to new research published Thursday in Science. The work is a major breakthrough in stem cell research and may lead the way to babies that can be created in a lab using the body tissues or blood of their relatives.

Mitinori Saitou, a biologist at Kyoto University who contributed to this pioneering research, managed to produce mouse eggs and sperm from stem cells back in 2012 and used them to breed healthy baby mice. It was the first time that eggs were created from embryonic stem cells.

Continue reading… “Scientists just made human egg cells from human blood for the first time”

Biotech, cutting edge, DNA, Medical Breakthrough

Scientists grow full-sized, beating humanity hearts from stem cells

September 25, 2018

It’s the closest we’ve come to growing transplantable hearts in the lab.

Of the 4,000 Americans waiting for heart transplants, only 2,500 will receive new hearts in the next year. Even for those lucky enough to get a transplant, the biggest risk is the their bodies will reject the new heart and launch a massive immune reaction against the foreign cells. To combat the problems of organ shortage and decrease the chance that a patient’s body will reject it, researchers have been working to create synthetic organs from patients’ own cells. Now a team of scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School has gotten one step closer, using adult skin cells to regenerate functional human heart tissue, according to a study published recently in the journal Circulation Research.

Continue reading… “Scientists grow full-sized, beating humanity hearts from stem cells”

Breakthrough Thinking, DNA, Programming, Science & Technology News

Why DNA is The most exciting programming language today

September 23, 2018

When Sean Parker was young, he cofounded Napster and changed the way we listen to music. In his twenties, he helped jump-start Facebook and changed the way we interact with each other. Now, at age 38, he’s set on changing something else: the way we treat disease. The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, which he founded in 2016, has dedicated $250 million toward using new technologies like Crispr to teach the human body to vanquish cancer. Alex Marson is a scientist building the tools to do just that. His research at UC San Francisco and the Parker Institute rejiggers the DNA of T cells—your immune system’s sentinels—to better recognize and attack malignant mutineers. Parker and Marson sat down to talk about Crispr, genome editing, and the most exciting coding language today: DNA. —Megan Molteni

Continue reading… “Why DNA is The most exciting programming language today”

Biotech, DNA, Healthcare, Medical Breakthrough

CRISPR halted muscular dystrophy in dogs. Are humans next?

September 11, 2018

ABOUT TEN YEARS ago, British veterinarians discovered an unlucky family of King Charles Spaniels whose male pups sometimes came down with a mysterious set of maladies before their first birthday. They grew clumsy and weak, and they often choked on their own tongues. To blame was a mutation on their X chromosomes, in a gene that codes for a shock-absorbing muscle protein called dystrophin. When researchers at the Royal Veterinary College realized the puppers had a canine version of the most common fatal genetic disease in children—Duchenne muscular dystrophy—they began breeding the sick spaniels with beagles to start a canine colony in the hopes of one day finding a cure.

Today, scientists report they’ve halted the progression of the disease in some of those doggy descendants using the gene editing tool known as Crispr.

Continue reading… “CRISPR halted muscular dystrophy in dogs. Are humans next?”

Analysis, DNA, Food, Science & Technology News

Nestlé is using DNA to create personalized diets in Japan

September 11, 2018

The world’s largest food company is experimenting with people’s DNA to build and sell personalized nutrition plans that, it says, will extend lifespans and keep people healthy.

Nestlé is rolling out these new products in Japan first. Some 100,000 people are taking part in a company program there that gives consumers a kit to collect their DNA at home. The program also encourages them to use an app to post pictures of what they’re eating. Nestlé then recommends dietary changes and supplies specialized supplements that can be sprinkled on or mixed into a variety of food products, including teas, according to Bloomberg.

Continue reading… “Nestlé is using DNA to create personalized diets in Japan”

Biotech, Breakthrough Thinking, DNA, Medicine, Nanotechnology

Genetically engineered bacteria paint microscopic masterpieces

September 3, 2018

Scientists have used genetically engineered bacteria to recreate a masterpiece at a microscopic scale. By engineering E. coli bacteria to respond to light, they’ve guided the bacteria like tiny drones toward patterns that depict Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s not artistic recognition they’re after. Rather, the researchers want to show that these engineered organisms may someday be used as “microbricks” and living propellors.

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Biotech, DNA, Medical Breakthrough, Medicine

The future of medicine may land within five to 10 years, CRISPR inventor says

August 28, 2018

A pioneer of the Crispr gene-editing technology that’s taken Wall Street by storm says the field is probably five to 10 years away from having an approved therapy for patients.

Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who runs the Doudna Lab at the University of California at Berkeley, says major questions remain about the safety and effectiveness of experimental therapies that aim to disrupt or repair defective genes. But she’s optimistic about their prospects.

Continue reading… “The future of medicine may land within five to 10 years, CRISPR inventor says”