StemCells Therapy

ST.

A team of UCLA researchers has found a genetic engineering technique that suppresses the HIV virus in mice, an encouraging step toward potentially fighting the disease in humans, researchers said.

A forum critical of UC Berkeleys plans to ramp up genetic engineering research at a planned massive new second campus of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Richmond drew a capacity crowd to the David Brower Center Thursday night. One speaker after another ripped into the potential consequences of the universitys grandiose plans, including the human and environmental devastation certain to be wrought on Africa and Latin America.

So far, conventional solutions to global warming — new government policies and changes in individual behavior — haven't delivered. And more radical options, such as pumping sulfur into the atmosphere to counteract warming, pose a great deal of risk.

A plan by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to merge its energy labs into a major new research facility in Richmond where scientists would work to develop biofuels through genetic engineering came under fire Wednesday by activists who fear that dangerous new microbes would be created there. And even if the venture succeeds in transforming plants into biofuels by altering the genes of microbes, the activists argued, the Richmond lab could become an unregulated front for corporate interests and turn millions of acres of croplands used to grow food in underdeveloped countries into huge plantations for energy production

A plan by Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to merge its energy labs into a major new research facility in Richmond where scientists would work to develop biofuels through genetic engineering came under fire Wednesday by activists who fear that dangerous new microbes would be created there. And even if the venture succeeds in transforming plants into biofuels by altering the genes of microbes, the activists argued, the Richmond lab could become an unregulated front for corporate interests and turn millions of acres of croplands used to grow food in underdeveloped countries into huge plantations for energy production

Public release date: 28-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News New Rochelle, NY — Online romance scams, a new form of cybercrime, is under-reported and increasing, and has victimized an estimated 230,000 people in England, costing them nearly $60 billion a year, according to an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online at the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website at www.liebertpub.com/cyber.

Public release date: 28-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News New Rochelle, NY — A novel method for printing human cells onto surfaces in defined patterns can help advance research on tissue engineering and regeneration, as described in an article in Tissue Engineering, Part C, Methods, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free online at the Tissue Engineering website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ten)

Appistry, Inc., the world’s best company at solving complex, data intensive problems, today announced that the Ayrris/BIO genomic cloud service and on-premise appliance meet all HIPAA compliant standards.

Dublin – Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/01d4e5c9/from_genes_to_geno) has announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd’s new book “From Genes to Genomes: Concepts and Applications of DNA Technology, 3rd Edition” to their offering. Rapid advances in a collection of techniques referred to as gene technology, genetic engineering, recombinant DNA technology and gene cloning have pushed molecular biology to the forefront of the biological sciences.

– Human genome and mouse studies identify new precise genetic links Newswise Working with genetically engineered mice and the genomes of thousands of people with schizophrenia, researchers at Johns Hopkins say they now better understand how both nature and nurture can affect ones risks for schizophrenia and abnormal brain development in general. The researchers reported in the March 2 issue of Cell that defects in a schizophrenia-risk genes and environmental stress right after birth together can lead to abnormal brain development and raise the likelihood of developing schizophrenia by nearly one and half times

Public release date: 25-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6042 Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 619-525-6268 (March 23-28, San Diego Press Center) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society SAN DIEGO, March 25, 2012 Just as aspiring authors often read hundreds of books before starting their own, scientists are using decades of knowledge garnered from sequencing or “reading” the genetic codes of thousands of living things to now start writing new volumes in the library of life. J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., one of the most renowned of those scientists, described the construction of the first synthetic cell and many new applications of this work today at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society, which is underway this week.

Public release date: 21-Mar-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Vicki Cohn vcohn@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 x2156 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News New Rochelle, NY, March 21, 2012Healthy individuals who carry a gene variation linked to an increased risk of autism have structural differences in their brains that may help explain how the gene affects brain function and increases vulnerability for autism. The results of this innovative brain imaging study are described in an article in the groundbreaking neuroscience journal Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc (http://wwwliebertpub.com). The article is available free online at the Brain Connectivity (http://www.liebertpub.com/brain) website

Murray Close / Lionsgate / Everett Collection Peacekeepers escort Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in a scene from “The Hunger Games.” By Alan Boyle The technological divide between the rulers and the ruled is at the heart of “The Hunger Games”: While the good guys struggle to survive, the bad guys employ fictional gee-whiz technologies inspired by real-life frontiers. And just as in real life, technology gets tripped up by unintended consequences.

In a guest post at Scientific American’s Lab Rat blog, iGEM-UANL team member Miguel Angel Loera Snchez discusses what he calls the “mainstream fronts of synthetic biology.” These five fronts DNA synthesis, biological parts standardization, genetic code expansion, synthetic genetic circuits, and metabolic engineering have helped synthetic biology become “a fast growing and productive field,” Snchez says. While much work remains to be done, the field “is attracting many smart and active young minds from different disciplines,” he adds, leading him to believe that “the growth and innovation rate will likely increase in the years to come.” Meanwhile, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’s Synthetic Biology Project seeks to assess the societal impacts of advances in the field through a new public survey. The survey asks participants a variety of questions to investigate the ethical, legal, and social implications of synthetic biology research

This is a guest post from M. A. Loera Snchez from the iGEM team UANL 2012.

Green revolution:Fast-track breeding is beginning to develop crops that can produce more and healthier food without controversial genetic engineering. In Zambia during the current planting season, a corn crop will go into the fields that begins the process of rapidly boosting vitamin A content by as much ten-fold helping to address a nutritional deficiency that causes 250,000-500,000 children to go blind annually, most of them in Africa and Asia

By Matt Jones NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) An international advocacy coalition today called for a moratorium on the development of new synthetic organisms for commercial use while new international regulations for governing the synthetic biology sector are created to protect the environment and people from unknown perils. The coalition said today that synbio represents “extreme genetic engineering.” It said there currently is little or no governance over synthetic organisms, and private companies cannot be trusted to self-regulate and protect people and the environment from risk and harm. “We are calling for a global moratorium on the release and commercial use of synthetic organisms until we have established a public interest research agenda, examined alternatives, developed the proper regulations, and put into place rigorous biosafety measures,” Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, said in a statement today

Genetically engineered microbes that might one day churn out biofuels, clean up toxic waste or generate new medicines need to be proved safe before they are released into the environment, a coalition of 111 environmental and social justice groups said Tuesday.

15-12-2011 21:52 By: Shelby Hill and Alexis Odell www.youtube.com