Genetically Engineering Farmed Animals

    Since the introduction of genetic engineering techniques, people have been very polarized about the whole concept. Some see solutions to global problems, while others see naught but a Brave New World in the future. Regardless of your viewpoint, practical genetic manipulation is getting closer and closer to impacting everyday life. A few major projects involving farm animals have been completed (read the details here), and are currently in the federal approval process.
    Projects like the Enviropig (I love that name); a type of pig that needs to eat less to maintain the same health and body weight while producing less, and less environmentally-damaging, waste. Another is also using pigs, causing them to change much of the fat in their bodies (and so in our pork and bacon) from omega-6 into omega-3, which is much healthier for us.
   Both have the possibility of seeing the market in just a few years, so the public reaction can't be far off. Should be interesting to see the outcome of this sure-to-be lively debate!

Dave

Biofilms for the Future

Synthetic biology isn't always a "Frankenstein-sounding" field of science, like one Los Angeles Times article puts it. While some labs like the Venter lab have synthesized and inserted a complete bacterial genome, most other labs, including those from iGEM, have much more modest and practical goals.

For example, the Groningen team is designing a way to use bacteria to create self-assembling film that repels water. By integrating a gene that produces hydrophobic proteins into bacteria, a new strain can be developed that can produce rigid biofilm. The process can be stopped with exposure to UV light.

This project can potentially be cheaper and less toxic than the expensive chemicals used to waterproof materials currently. Repelling water is an effective way to reduce bacterial and fungal growth on surfaces, as well as resisting corrosion because it keeps the surface clean and dry. Imagine: maybe in the future we can rustproof our car parts by letting bacteria do all the work for us.

Now isn't that neat?


Patrick

Revolutionary Biology

When you think of the words "biohackers" and "biopunks"its easy to think of some renegade biologist using his biological knowledge to rebel against society. However biopunk ideologies are actually quite similar to iGEM's. "A Biopunk Manifesto" advocates a necessity for more people to be "scientifically literate" and to understand biology such that they can be contributors to improving the world they live in in areas like healthcare, water quality, etc. The Biopunk Movement represents the ideological view of true open source biology. Supported with a strong community of individuals interested in biology for the sake of unraveling the secrets of biology. Aimed at making practicing biology cheaper and deinstitutionalizing biology. However promising these words sound do not reflect a plan for incorporating these ideas into regular life. 

Note: Biopunks are not associated with bioterrorism, however in an ethical stand point rising popularity of biopunks could increase the amount of bioterrorism.

If your interested in reading "A Biopunk Manifesto" click here or an article about biopunk genetic engineering

Jeremy

Synthetic Immune System?

Imagine taking a drop of your blood, dripping it into a bowl and having it travel through a network of vessels to different colonies of yeast. Each colony would act as an external biosensor for your body detecting a variety of deficiencies and possible anomalies that could be present. It is personalized medicine to the extreme, customized to your body and lifestyle. For example, if you had anaemia the yeast would monitor your iron levels in your blood and alert you if they got low. A different colony of yeast could even synthesize the needed iron for you, which would be sent back to you through the network of vessels, to be absorbed through a mouthpiece. Sound fictitious? Well that’s probably because it is. But Tuur van Balen, a designer in London has just this vision. He calls it the Synthetic Immune System. He imagines that in the future, synthetic biology could lead to a more personalized approach to medicine where we might even outsource our own metabolic actions to engineered organisms such as Yeast. He displayed his model and vision at an exhibition at the Royal College of Art in March. For more information, check out this link to his website.

Emily

Evolution in 3 days!

One of Craig Venter's competitors, Harvard's Dr. Church, made a significant announcement in the field of synthetic biology yesterday. For months now, they have been racing against the J. Craig Venter Institute to be the first to complete the project and allow it to be sold on the market. Even though the Venter Institute brought their news first, Dr. Church still believes that his product can be marketed to drug companies and sold for profit. 

The product that he has designed is a table-top mutagenesis kit able to induce up to 50 DNA sequence changes at once. This kit is similar to the standard site-directed mutagenesis kit but on a much larger scale.

More information can be found here


-Chris

Bio-Art by Osaka

In 2009, the Osaka iGEM team developed a set of "bio-art" tools. They created colour palettes and a signalling system between bacterial cells that produced some pretty awesome artwork when plated on soft agar.

There was a wide array of colours produced, ranging from red, green, cyan, yellow, and orange fluorescent proteins, as well as red, orange, yellow, black, brown, and purple pigments. With this, they created flower-patterned petri dishes, glowing cocktail glasses, and even an 8-bit Mario replica!

Here are some of the many art pieces the team has created.

This just goes to show that with enough creativity, the sky really is the limit for synthetic biology. Who knows? Maybe in the future we'll be using bacteria as an art medium.

Patrick

Biobricks = Legos

The “biobrick” concept of iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machine) give genetic engineering a more playful dimension in an interesting way. For example, undergraduate teams can combine compatible parts to create a useful system. Just as we play with legos and let our imagination take its course, and learn about shapes and compatibility through the project, biobricks let our curiosity become reality, and learn more about the biological systems, compatibility of different genes and much more. iGEM has the potential to teach students molecular biology in a much more interesting and interactive method. An undergraduate student, Dev Vyas, of the University of Calgary says that he likes the biobrick concept of iGEM because it allows him to “understand the biological concepts visually in a way that is more comprehensible and creative.”

Raida

Bacterial Bandage

In 2009, the Denmark team designed E. coli such that it produced a chemical called RIP (RNA III-inhibiting-peptide). This chemical breaks down the ability of S. aureus to communicate with each other. This process is called quorum quenching. The E. coli they designed quenches the communication between S. aureus cells and therefore inhibits them from spreading and also increases the chance of antibiotics working.

For more information click here

Himika

Synthetic Biologist collaborate with Cancer Researchers!

A current article posted on the NCI Cancer suggest that cancer researchers recognize the potential that synthetic biologist. Especially the efforts to engineer bacterial cells that selectively target cancer cells by Dr. Chris Anderson (who is also the supervisor for UC Berkley's team). The interest that the Division of Cancer Biology has with Synthetic Biology is its application through the combination of various fields including biology, engineering, chemistry and physics which they hope will offer new insights into ongoing cancer research.

Heres the video of Dr. Jerry Li the program director in NCI’s Division of Cancer Biology (DCB) and his colleague Dr. Daniel Gallahan discuss the potentials of synthetic biology.



Original article can be found on:
http://www.cancer.gov/ncicancerbulletin/071310/page4

Jeremy

How do you define an organism?

Despite being defined in high school biology textbooks everywhere, this is a question the National Research Council (NRC) is currently asking. They are particularly interested in the context of their Select Agent list, which designates dangerous organisms with the potential to be used as weapons. This was generally clear-cut before; Bacillus anthracis (the cause of anthrax) was Bacillus anthracis, it was dangerous and controlled, and Bacillus subtlis (causes no disease) was different and benign. But these days, where synthesizing DNA is becoming cheaper and widespread, that distinction may not hold. What if someone were to take a non-controlled organism, and give it some toxin genes from a controlled organism? If this organism looks like the benign one, but causes disease like the controlled one, which is it? Should we be defining an organism based on its DNA sequence? Read the full story here.

Genetically Engineered Clock Powered by Quorum Sensing

Researchers at the University of San Diego have been working on the creation of a bacterial clock. Their system relies on the bacterial communication system known as quorum sensing. In nature, microorganisms such as E coli use pheromone-like molecules called autoinducers to communicate and monitor their population density. The researchers made use of the autoinducer AHL and three different engineered circuits using the LuxI promoter.

One circuit consists of the luxI promoter with the luxI gene downtream. The luxI gene product is involved in the synthesis of AHL, which when bound to luxR, which is constitutively produced, activates the lux I promoter. The other two circuits use the same promoter, but with GFP and aiia downstream. Aiia is a molecule that degrades AHL. When a limited number of cells are present, these promoters are not activated. The cells produce AHL naturally, but not enough to cause activation. When the population recahes a certain level, 'quorum', however, there is enough AHL present that all of the luxI promters are activated and there is a burst of GFP expression. This occurs until enough aiia is also produced that it can degrade all fo the AHL. With not enough AHL present, the luxI promoters are all turned off and the cycle can start again. The result of their system is that they have a population of bacteria that glow green at intervals, a type of visual genetically engineered clock. The researchers hope that this will eventually lead the way to genetic sensors able to pulse differently dependent on different environmental conditions such as the presence of certain toxins.

For more details, check out this article published in Nature :

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7279/pdf/nature08753.pdf

Emily

Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention Update

Last week the U.S. State Department Released an unclassified version of the report "Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Committees". The report can be viewed here.

The compliance of certain countries with the Biological and Toxins Weapons Convention (BTWC) is covered in a section of this report. This report addresses the activity of nine state parties of the BTWC, China, Cuba, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia. Also, biological weapon activity of Egypt, Syria, and Taiwan was evaluated. Egypt and Syria are signed but not ratified members of the treaty.

In this report, Egypt, India, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, and Taiwan were all found to be in full compliance with the BTWC, although not all of the countries being evaluated were found to be in full compliance. If Syria was ratified, it would be in violation of the treaty as it maintains the stance that Syria is "entitled to defend itself by acquiring its own chemical and biological deterrent". Available information leads to the belief that North Korea may still consider the use of chemical and biological weapon. In previous reports, the U.S. has expressed the worry that North Korea may have biological weapons agents weaponized in violation of the treaty.

China, Cuba, Iran, and Russia were not in violation of the convention, but were found to be engaging in dual-use research initiatives. Although the activities engaged in by these countries are not prohibited by the BTWC, dual-use research by China included "identifying factors that enhance the virulence, toxicity, or antibiotic resistance of pathogens, including through the use of genetic engineering." Iran has failed to address or resolve issues regarding it's compliance with the BTWC, and, according to this report, is "conducting research involving BW-related pathogens and genetic engineering, and developing mechanisms that could be used to deliver biological agents". It is unclear whether Russia has made efforts to change inherited weapons programs from it's time as the Soviet Union, although it recognizes the offensive nature of those programs.

"Playing God", a meaningless phrase?

The recent accomplishments of the Venter lab have caused a lot of controversies in the public eye, one of which is the perspective that humans should not be "playing god" with research pertaining to synthetic life. The Ethical Perspective News at the University of Oxford has an interesting article with a very different viewpoint.

Read the full article here.


Dev

"Impossible? Think Twice!" says Escherichia coli

The process of simple manipulation of genes by Geneticists 40 years ago has gradually evolved into the exciting field of Science known as Synthetic Biology. Just recently, researchers at South San Francisco-based biotech company LS9 Inc. introduced a gene usually found in algea, which naturally produces hydrocarbon, into the genome of E.coli bacteria. Further manipulating its metabolism, the E.coli bacteria was designed to deliver "100 times more fuel than the algae did."

With the vast amount of opportunity that Synthetic Biology delivers, it can now easily be expected, to manipulate the genome of E.coli bacterium to produce a "diesel-like mixture of hydrocarbons" in the future. Does this mean mankind can slowly become less dependent on non-renewable resources like Oil? So far, with the potential of Synthetic Biology, it sure seems so.

Read the full article here.

**Raida

Presidential Panel Update

Two of the leading researchers in the field spoke out, yesterday, on their opinions on the potential for the industry of synthetic biology and how they felt that it should be regulated.

Both Craig Venter (J. Craig Venter Institute) and George Church (Harvard University professor) both believe that government regulation is necessary in order to maintain safety within synthetic biology as it continues to develop. President Obama ordered that a commission be put together to study if there was any need for regulation for the field and to determine the degree of danger the field presented to the public.

“If you have a speed limit but no one enforcing it, you’ll have people speeding. You need to proactively set up a radar system and surveil it.’’ Church said, in a statement encouraging preliminary action that would be preventative in nature. This mentality is similar to that of the medical field where "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". Allison Snow, a professor from Ohio State University, said that the environmental aspects would have to be monitored as well so accidental releases of toxins and bacteria could be minimized.

The panel was called for after the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they had "created synthetic life". Yesterday was the first day of two that the panel will convene and discuss the merits and possible dangers of the field.

The article containing more information can be found here.

Chris