Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

At a 1661 meeting in London, Sir Robert Southwell was said to have produced something remarkable: the horn of a unicorn. The attendees drew a circle with the powder made from the horn and placed a spider in the middle. The arachnid quickly scurried away.

Such were the experiments carried out by the oldest scientific society in the world, the Royal Society of London. The organization has counted as its members Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and nearly 300 Nobel laureates. Adrian Tiniswood tells of the growing pains, internal conflicts and competing visions of the esteemed organization in The Royal Society & The Invention of Modern Science.

Were immediately put in the mindset of 17th-century Europeans with Tiniswoods opening words: Imagine a universe in which the sun revolved around the Earth.

That universe is what most people imagined when the Royal Society was founded in 1660. That century had seen Galileos condemnation by the Inquisition for teaching the heliocentric theory of the solar system. Protestant and Catholic theologians alike blasted the new experimental learning championed by Copernicus and Bacon.

The early members of the Royal Society, or fellows as theyre officially called, inhabited the two worlds of the popular religiosity of their day and the rigorous empiricism they pioneered. The questions the societys curator of experiments, Robert Hooke, sent to a correspondent in Iceland show the mindset of the early fellows: Would quicksilver congeal in the cold? What kind of substances were cast out of the burning mountain? How did whales breathe? Were there spirits, and if so what shape were they, and what did they say or do?

But The Royal Society isnt primarily an intellectual history. Tiniswood doesnt dwell much on the scientific advances made by the organizations luminaries. Its not a pop science book. It rather elaborates on the internal politics of the organization. Much of the work recounts how the societys scientists tried to maintain the balancing act of retaining the interest of the fellows while admitting a large number of aristocrats with little or no scientific training so the society could get the money and prestige to continue.

Tiniswood touches a little on the present day. The formerly insular organization has recently decided to have a more active engagement with the public by handing out numerous awards and grants, tackling issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and diversity within the science community. The book does, however, stick mostly to the early fellows and an expanded work would have been interesting to read.

The Royal Society shows the institutional foundation made by some of historys greatest scientists. Given the radical mission of the society in its early days and its long internal struggles, the fellows have lived their own motto, nullius in verba: take no ones word for it.

Original post:
The Book Breakdown: Fits and starts the beginnings of modern science - Frederick News Post

(Mike Blake/Reuters)

Bioethicist Jacob M. Appel wants the bioethics movement to educate your children about the policy and personal conundrums that involve medical care and health public policy. He claims that most of us give little thought to issues that may arise, such as end-of-life care and prenatal screening. Then, when an issue arises, people are unprepared to make wise and informed decisions. From, The Silent Crisis of Bioethics Illiteracy, published in Scientific American:

Change will only occur when bioethics is broadly incorporated into school curricula [at an early age] and when our nations thought leaders begin to place emphasis on the importance of reflecting meaningfully in advance upon these issues

Often merely recognizing such issues in advance is winning the greater part of the battle. Just as we teach calculus and poetry while recognizing that most students are unlikely to become mathematicians or bards, bioethics education offers a versatile skill set that can be applied to issues well outside the scientific arena. At present, bioethics is taught sporadically at various levels, but not with frequency, and even obtaining comprehensive data on its prevalence is daunting.

Is this really an appropriate field for children? Consider the issues with which bioethics grapples and whether elementary-, middle-, and high-school children have the maturity to grapple with them in a meaningful and deliberative way (not to mention, the acute potential that teachers will push their students in particular ideological directions):

Even if some students are mature enough to grapple with these issues thoughtfully, the next problem is that bioethics is extremely contentious and wholly subjective. Its not science, but focuses on questions of philosophy, morality, ideology, religion, etc.. Moreover, there is a dominant point-of-view among the most prominent voices in the field e.g., those who teach at leading universities and would presumably be tasked with writing the educational texts. These perspectives would unquestionably often stand in opposition to the moral values taught young students by their parents.

Appel is typical of the genus (if you will). He has called for paying women who plan to abort to gestate longer in their pregnancy so that more dead fetuses will be available sufficiently developed to be harvested for organs and used in experiments. He advocates mandatory termination of care for patients who are diagnosed as persistently unconscious to save resources for what he considers more important uses. He has also supported assisted suicide for the mentally ill.

Appels perspectives are not unique in bioethics. The movement went semi-berserk when President George W. Bush appointed the conservative bioethicist Leon Kass to head the Presidents Council on Bioethics one even called him an assassin for opposing human cloning research as many worked overtime to discredit the Councils work in the media.

Indeed, activists without a modifier like Catholic or pro-life before the term bioethicistare overwhelmingly very liberal politically and intensely secular in their approach. Most support an almost unlimited right to abortion, the legalization of assisted suicide, genetic engineering (once safe), and accept distinguishing between human beings and persons, that is, they deny universal human equality.

Some wish to repeal the dead donor rule that requires organ donors to be dead before their body parts are extracted an idea that admittedly remains somewhat controversial in the field. Most mainstream bioethicists deny the sanctity of human life and many think that an animal with a greater cognitive capacity has greater value than a human being with lower cognition. Add in the sectors general utilitarianish approach to health-care issues, such as supporting rationing, and the potential for propagandizing becomes clear.

With such opinions, often passionately held, how long would it be before early bioethics education devolved into rank proselytizing? But Wesley, Appel might say. the classes would be objective! Every side would be given equal and a respectful and accurate presentation.

Sure. If you believe that, you must think current sex education curricula and high school classes in social justice present all sides of those issues dispassionately and without attempt to persuade the students to particular points of view and cultural perspectives.

I have a deal for Appel: In-depth courses in bioethics should not be taught before college unless I get to write the textbooks! I promise to be objective and fairly present all sides. Honest!

Do you think he and his mainstream colleagues would approve of that deal?

Neither do I. And we shouldnt go along with his idea for the very same reason.

Go here to see the original:
Keep Bioethics out of Elementary and High Schools - National Review

A new protein that can enhance the accuracy of CRISPR gene therapy was recently developed by researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and Karolinska Institutet. This work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could potentially have a strong impact on how gene therapies are administered in the future.

CRISPR-Cas9, often referred to as just CRISPR, is a powerful gene-editing technology that has the potential to treat a myriad of genetic diseases such as beta-thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. As opposed to traditional gene therapies, which involve the introduction of healthy copies of a gene to a patient, CRISPR repairs the genetic mutation underlying a disease to restore function.

CRISPR-Cas9 was discovered in the bacterial immune system, where it is used to defend against and deactivate invading viral DNA. Cas9 is an endonuclease, or an enzyme that can selectively cut DNA. The Cas9 enzyme is complexed with a guide RNA molecule to form what is known as CRISPR-Cas9. Cas9 is often referred to as the molecular scissors, being that they cut and remove defective portions of DNA. Being that it is not perfectly precise, the enzyme will sometimes make unintended cuts in the DNA that can cause serious consequences. For this reason, enhancing the precision of the CRISPR-Cas9 system is of paramount importance.

Two versions of Cas9 are currently being used in CRISPR therapies: SpCas9 (derived from the bacteriaStreptococcus pyogenes) and SaCas9 (derived fromStaphylococcus aureus). Researchers have engineered variants of the SpCas9 enzyme to improve its precision, but these variants are too large to fit into the adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector that is often used to administer CRISPR to living organisms. SaCas9, however, is a much smaller protein that can easily fit into AAV vectors to deliver gene therapy in vivo. Being that no SaCas9 variants with enhanced precision are currently available, these CityU researchers aimed to identify a viable variant.

This recent research led to the successful engineering of SaCas9-HF, a Cas9 variant with high accuracy in genome-wide targeting in human cells and preserved efficiency. This work was led by Dr. Zheng Zongli, Assistant Professor of Department of Biomedical Sciences at CityU and the Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine of Karolinska Institutet in Hong Kong, and Dr. Shi Jiahai, Assistant Professor of Department of Biomedical Sciences at CityU.

Their work was based on a rigorous evaluation of 24 targeted human genetic locations which compared the wild-type SaCas9 to the SaCas9-HF. The new Cas9 variant was found to reduce the off-target activity by about 90% for targets with very similar sequences that are prone to errors by the wild-type enzyme. For targets that pose less of a challenge to the wild-type enzyme, SaCas9-HF made almost no detectable errors.

Our development of this new SaCas9 provides an alternative to the wild-type Cas9 toolbox, where highly precise genome editing is needed, explained Zheng. It will be particularly useful for future gene therapy using AAV vectors to deliver genome editing drug in vivo and would be compatible with the latest prime editing CRISPR platform, which can search-and-replace the targeted genes.

Dr. Shi and Dr. Zheng are the corresponding authors of this publication. The first authors are PhD student Tan Yuanyan from CityUs Department of Biomedical Sciences and Senior Research Assistant Dr. Athena H. Y. Chu from Ming Wai Lau Centre for Reparative Medicine (MWLC) at Karolinska Institutet in Hong Kong. Other members of the research team were CityUs Dr. Xiong Wenjun, Assistant Professor of Department of Biomedical Sciences, research assistant Bao Siyu (now at MWLC), PhD students Hoang Anh Duc and Firaol Tamiru Kebede, and Professor Ji Mingfang from the Zhongshan Peoples Hospital.

Read more:
Modified Protein Enhances the Accuracy of CRISPR Gene Therapy - DocWire News

Earth is great and all, but with climate change and the extremely highly likely reemergence of dinosaursdue to genetic engineering, we might need to consider inhabiting other planets. Sending out a pioneering colony of carefully-selected humansis today science fiction but, someday, it might save our species.And, if we ever actually docolonize space, were going to need to have babies up there, which might turn out to be more complicated than it is on Earth.

Im not concerned about the actual baby making part we can figure that out with practice. The part thats tricky is the fine-tuned and carefully orchestrated process of human development, particularly in the brain. Cells inmicrogravitydontgrowexactly like cells on Earth, and a whole bunch of them in a developing babys brain may not grow exactly the same either.

Thankfully, theres a researcher for that.UC San Diego scientist Alysson Muotriisusingblossoming clumps of brain cells called brain organoids to understand how neurons proliferate, form synapses, and communicate but in space.

Inlate July, Muotri and his team sent a bunch of organoids to the International Space Station. Previous research has documented the proliferation ofHeLA cells,cancer cells,bone cellsand more, but there is limited information about the gravity-free growth of early brain cells, known as neural progenitor cells, or brain organoids. Suchorganoidshave proven to be a useful model for understanding brain development, so understanding how they develop in the microgravity of space could demonstrate the ways in which human brain development might be affected if we ever become a space-faring society.

Muotri has long been intrigued by research in space, especially theNASA twins study. A while ago, he half-seriously talked about the idea of doing his own biology space study with one of his collaborators, but nothing quite came of it. He dreamed of sending organoids to space, but didnt know if it was possible. Once he met an engineer who convinced him it was feasible to actually build a device to keep organoids alive in space, he decided it was time for takeoff.

Still, he had some trouble selling others, particularly granting organizations, on the idea. Hes funding the project out of his own salary savings and gifts to the lab, with the hope that his first wave of findings will draw attention to his work and convince funding agencies that his research is valuable.

Backed by his own money, the first task was figuring out how to keep the organoids healthyat the International Space Station.

Even on Earth, the organoids require a lot of care to ensure that they are at the proper temperature and growing conditions. For one, theyre kept in a shaker so that they are constantly suspended in a solution, without anchoring down to anything (though that wont be a problem in microgravity). But like living cells in a body, organoids require nutrients, and they also spit out waste. To support these processes, their solutions need to be changed, and the temperature and pH needs to be carefully maintained, like fish in a tank. Organoids require a lot of babysitting, and Muotri simply cant expect the astronauts to spend as much time caring for his cells as he and his students do back on Earth.

So, he collaborated withan engineering team from Kentucky that specializes in sending biological material into space.They developed a shiny red box called theSpace Tango CubeLab.

Space Tango may sound like abad 80s science fiction filmstarringAntonio Banderas, butits actually the name of the company, and the productsthey make aresomuch cooler than 80s sci-fi. The CubeLab essentially functions like a fully automated, climate-controlled mini-laboratory: it can change the media for the cells, monitor their growth, and send the data back to Earth. The astronauts just need to plug it in.

For this very first mission with the organoids, Muotri wants to see how the cells grow and proliferate. Based onprevious research,he predicts that The progenitor cells will proliferate faster and will probably generate a bigger organoid. Although a bigger brain sounds better, this might actually be a problem: if the brain and surrounding skull are too big, it might prevent birth through the birth canal. Its still speculation, but its entirely possible that maybe humans cannot have natural deliveries in space.

The other issue with faster brain development is that large brain volumes have been implicated in the development of autism spectrum disorder. In fact, having a larger brain circumference is one of the mostrobust biomarkers of autism. We dont fully understand how cell proliferation may later in life lead to intellectual problems or cognitive disability, so this gives us a model to understand that, Muotri hopes.

At the moment, we dont know much about the cellular mechanisms that microgravity could directly impact. Using genome sequencing and techniques to detectepigenetic signatures, Muotris team will look to see if the genomes of the organoids have changed. There is definitely an epigenetic signature that changes neurons in space, Muotri insists, thats what we want to figure out.

Of course, organoids cant capture brain developmentin uteroin its full complexity. However, this study could point us to important considerations before we pack our space bags. For example,itspossible that people with certain genetic backgrounds are less susceptible to the (lack of) pressures of microgravity and might fare better in space. However far-fetched, the social implications are staggering. If it turns out that some genetic backgrounds are better adapted to have babies in space, would this dictate who could become space-faring?

Lastly, Muotri would like to compare organoids generated from cells of healthypatients to those from people with Alzheimers or Parkinsons disease. In 2011, a lab down the hall from Muotris at UC San Diego showed thatneurons derived from schizophrenic patientswere different than those derived from neurotypical patients. However, similar in-the-dish research on diseases of the aging brain have been limited. Organoids closelyresembleyoung neural tissue, and it is a lot of work to keep them alive until they start to look like an aging brain. When Muotricompared neurotypical and Alzheimers organoids in Earths gravity, they were indistinguishable. However,this might not be true in space: Maybe in the microgravity of space the organoids will age faster, and we could reveal their [Alzheimers] phenotypes.

Muotri would also like to send the organoids up with even more sensors, including recording arrays that can actually measure the electrical activity of the organoids while theyre in space. Such data could provide clues about the functionality of these brain clumps, in addition to their genetic and anatomical signatures.

Muotris energy and enthusiasm for the project is palpable. But he has one big concern: when the mini-brains were sent into space, there was a 24-hour black out period during launch preparation over which the Space Tango couldnt send back data. Muotri confessed that this was his biggest worry for the mission. But, he still laughed heartily, We just have to hope that everything is going to be okay.

Ashley Juavinett, PhD is a neuroscientist, educator, and writer. She currently works as an Assistant Teaching Professor at UC San Diego, where she is developing novel approaches to teaching and mentoring folks in neuroscience. Follow her on Twitter @analog_ashley

A version of this article was originally published on Massives website as There might be some problems when we try to make babies in space and has been republished here with permission.

The rest is here:
Why making healthy babies in space should be quite the adventure - Genetic Literacy Project

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Imagine designing the perfect device for the internet of things. What functions must it have? For a start, it must be able to communicate, both with other devices and with its human overlords. It must be able to store and process information. And it must monitor its environment with a range of sensors. Finally, it will need some kind of built-in motor.

There is no shortage of devices that have many of these features. Most are based on widely available, low-cost devices such as Raspberry Pis, Arduino boards, and the like.

But another set of machines with similar functions is much more plentiful, say Raphael Kim and Stefan Poslad at Queen Mary University of London in the UK. They point out that bacteria communicate effectively and have built-in engines and sensors, as well as powerful information storage and processing architecture.

And that raises an interesting possibility, they say. Why not use bacteria to create a biological version of the internet of things? Today, in a call to action, they lay out some of the thinking and the technologies that could make this possible.

The way bacteria store and process information is an emerging area of research, much of it focused on the bacterial workhorse Escherichia coli. These (and other) bacteria store information in ring-shaped DNA structures called plasmids, which they transmit from one organism to the next in a process called conjugation.

Last year, Federico Tavella at the University of Padua in Italy and colleagues built a circuit in which one strain of immotile E. coli transmitted a simple Hello world message to a motile strain, which carried the information to another location.

This kind of information transmission occurs all the time in the bacterial world, creating a fantastically complex network. But Tavella and cos proof-of-principle experiment shows how it can be exploited to create a kind of bio-internet, say Kim and Poslad.

E. coli make a perfect medium for this network. They are motilethey have a built-in engine in the form of waving, thread-like appendages called flagella, which generate thrust. They have receptors in their cell walls that sense aspects of their environmenttemperature, light, chemicals, etc. They store information in DNA and process it using ribosomes. And they are tiny, allowing them to exist in environments that human-made technologies have trouble accessing.

E. coli are relatively easy to manipulate and engineer as well. The grassroots movement of DIY biology is making biotechnology tools cheaper and more easily available. The Amino Lab, for example, is a genetic engineering kit for schoolchildren, allowing them to reprogram E. coli to glow in the dark, among other things.

This kind of biohacking is becoming relatively common and shows the remarkable potential of a bio-internet of things. Kim and Poslad talk about a wide range of possibilities. Bacteria could be programmed and deployed in different surroundings, such as the sea and smart cities, to sense for toxins and pollutants, gather data, and undertake bioremediation processes, they say.

Bacteria could even be reprogrammed to treat diseases. Harbouring DNA that encode useful hormones, for instance, the bacteria can swim to a chosen destination within the human body, [and] produce and release the hormones when triggered by the microbes internal sensor, they suggest.

Of course, there are various downsides. While genetic engineering makes possible all kinds of amusing experiments, darker possibilities give biosecurity experts sleepless nights. Its not hard to imagine bacteria acting as vectors for various nasty diseases, for example.

Its also easy to lose bacteria. One thing they do not have is the equivalent of GPS. So tracking them is hard. Indeed, it can be almost impossible to track the information they transmit once it is released into the wild.

And therein lies one of the problems with a biological internet of things. The conventional internet is a way of starting with a message at one point in space and re-creating it at another point chosen by the sender. It allows humans, and increasingly devices, to communicate with each other across the planet.

Kim and Poslads bio-internet, on the other hand, offers a way of creating and releasing a message but little in the way of controlling where it ends up. The bionetwork created by bacterial conjugation is so mind-bogglingly vast that information can spread more or less anywhere. Biologists have observed the process of conjugation transferring genetic material from bacteria to yeast, to plants, and even to mammalian cells.

Evolution plays a role too. All living things are subject to its forces. No matter how benign a bacterium might seem, the process of evolution can wreak havoc via mutation and selection, with outcomes that are impossible to predict.

Then there is the problem of bad actors influencing this network. The conventional internet has attracted more than its fair share of individuals who release malware for nefarious purposes. The interest they might have in a biological internet of things is the stuff of nightmares.

Kim and Poslad acknowledge some of these issues, saying that creating a bacteria-based network presents fresh ethical issues. Such challenges offer a rich area for discussion on the wider implication of bacteria driven Internet of Things systems, they conclude with some understatement.

Thats a discussion worth having sooner rather than later.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1910.01974 : The Thing with E. coli: Highlighting Opportunities and Challenges of Integrating Bacteria in IoT and HCI

Read more from the original source:
The scientists who are creating a bio-internet of things - MIT Technology Review

Enter the simulated journey into the personified mind of 'Technology'.

Artist AlanJames Burns has announced the launch of an exciting immersive VR experience, Silicon Synapse, a Virtual Reality and psycho-acoustic installation in the historic Carnegie Library, Swords, Fingal from November 13 to December 15 2019.

Silicon Synapse is an immersive Virtual Reality and psycho-acoustic experience that will take you on a simulated journey into the personified mind of 'Technology'. Listening to the inner dialogue of 'Technology's' mind as it replays both sides of a lovers' quarrel. 'Technology' and its life partner 'Nature' argue about the sustainability of their relationship and their future as a couple. Silicon Synapse explores evolution, genetic engineering and transhumanism. Each viewer is engulfed by a conscious dream-like realm, as they travel through intense listening and visual experiences.

You can experience Silicon Synapse within the repurposed historic setting of the Carnegie Library, in Swords, Co. Dublin. This library was once a place of knowledge and learning, shaping the minds and synapses of thousands. Now you have the chance to enter through the remnant doors of this library, and into the imagined mind of the silicon technology, which has largely replaced it.

Created by AlanJames Burns, Silicon Synapse is a collaboration with Writer Sue Rainsford, Artist Jason Dunne and Composer Michael Riordan. The artwork is jointly commissioned by the Fingal County Council Arts Office, as well as the European Commission's SciArt programme, and is funded by the Arts Council of Ireland's Open Call Award. Silicon Synapse is a part of the Fingal Arts Office's 8 year strategy leading to the development of the Swords Cultural Quarter Project. It is concurrently exhibited at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Milan, Italy as part of Resonances: Big Data 2019 Festival.

Tickets are available now from http://www.siliconsynapse.net.

More:
Artist AlanJames Burns to launch immersive VR experience in Swords - hotpress.com

The following was adapted from a speech delivered at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October.

Frankfurt, the financial hub of Europe, is home to one of the biggest stock exchanges in the world, where everything is about quick deals and quick money. It is home, too, to a book fair, which also happens to be one of the biggest in the world, and where everything, likewise, is about buying and selling, though the trade is in booksalbeit only the newest ones, which appear in their hundreds of thousands each year. On the occasion of the fair, it is worth thinking about one of literatures most important characteristics: its slowness.

Im not thinking of how long it takes to read a book but of how long its effects can be felt, and of the strange phenomenon that even literature written in other times, on the basis of assumptions radically different to our own and, occasionally, hugely alien to us, can continue to speak to usand, not only that, but can tell us something about who we are, something that we would not have seen otherwise, or would have seen differently.

Some sixty years before the birth of Christ, Lucretius wrote his only known work, On the Nature of Things, a didactic poem about how the world is made of atoms. The atomic reality that Lucretius describes is not an isolated phenomenonit is not a separate realm of electrons and nuclei, electromagnetic fields, particles and waves. In Lucretius poem, the atomic dimension exists side by side with the world as we see it every day, with its grassy plains and rivers, its bridges and buildings, its cows and goats, its birds and its sky. Lucretius knew that the two domains are sides of the same coin, that the one does not exist without the other. There is little doubt in my mind that the world today would look different if the progress of science had been anchored in our human reality instead of losing sight of it, for in that recognition lies an obligation and an unceasing correction: we are no greater than the forestwe are no greater even than the tree. And we are made of the same constituents.

Lucretius poem was long forgotten. But when, eventually, it was rediscovered, in the early fifteenth century, it marked a significant prelude to the dawning Renaissance, and, not only may it still be read todayit continues to speak to us, telling us things we have forgotten, or things we perhaps never truly understood.

Literature works slowly not just in history but also in the individual reader. I remember the first time I read the Danish poet Inger Christensen and, in particular, her long poem alphabet. This was in the mid-nineties, some twenty-five years ago now. alphabet is a list of things occurring in the world; in Susanna Nieds English translation, it begins like this:

apricot trees exist, apricot trees existbracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,citrus trees; cicadas exist;cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;killers exist, and doves, and doves;haze, dioxin, and days; daysexist, days and death; and poemsexist; poems, days, death

At the time, twenty-five years ago, I found this poem beautifulthere came from it a very special kind of existential glow. But it did no more than flame up for me in the moment. Then, a few years ago, it resurfaced in my mind. I dont know why. But I read it again, and it had taken on new meaning. Firstly, I sensed a grief in its evocation of objects, animals and plants, as if somehow a shadow were now hanging over them. It could have been the knowledge that at some point we are to die and leave them behind, but it could also have been the knowledge that they might die and leave us behind. There are many animal species we no longer can take for granted.

Secondly, I was now aware of how the poem formally intertwines culture and nature. The entities listed in the poem do not occur randomly but are structured, in two waysalphabetically, and according to the principles of the so-called Fibonacci sequence in mathematics, whereby each number is the sum of the two preceding ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. This pattern occurs throughout the natural world, in the genealogy of bees, in the branching of trees and flowers, in petal numbers, pine cones, pineapples, and sunflowers. This underlying structure, to which nature itself is at once oblivious and obedient, belongs quite as much to mysticism as to mathematics. In the words that the poem isolates, calling forth their singular entities and phenomena, the world becomes at once familiar and alien to us, at once sensuous and abstract, comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time.

Christensen is clearly related to Lucretius. The word that Lucretius used for atom is the same word he used for letter of the alphabet. This was also true of the first of the Greeks to write of the atom: they, too, employed the term for letter of the alphabet. Lucretius repeatedly compares atoms with letters; just as the same few letters may be combined in endless ways to express everything between heaven and earth, the same few atoms may be combined to create heaven and earth and everything in between.

Science and literature alike are readers of the world. And, sooner or later, both lead us to the unreadable, the boundary at which the unintelligible begins. In one of her essays, Inger Christensen writes that that boundary, between intelligible and unintelligible, exists within us; science, she writes, conducts the conversation between readability and unreadability using terms such as chaos theory, fractals, and superstrings only because to use the word God would seem overbearing.

Everything exists side by side. Atoms, letters of the alphabet, literature, science, the world. And insight and destruction.

The world in whose midst we now stand, with its skyscrapers and cars, its airports and its banks, also emerged slowly, and, if we were to pinpoint its beginnings, the great upheavals that occurred in Europe around the time of the rediscovery of Lucretius book would be key. The Italian scholar and humanist Poggio Bracciolini unearthed On the Nature of Things in January, 1417. He most likely found the book, perhaps the only copy then in existence, in the German monastery of Fulda, no more than a hundred kilometres from Frankfurt. Some thirty years later, around 1450, Gutenberg developed the printing press. That, too, happened in this region, in Mainz, only forty kilometres from here. Also around this time, the legend of Faust, the learned vagabond who sold his soul to the Devil, took shape in Germany. The roots of the Frankfurt Book Fair go back to that same periodthe first one took place in 1454.

It remains unclear quite how the legend of Faust emerged, but history does make mention of a real Johann Faust, who matches the description, and who is said to have been born twenty-six years after that first book fair, in 1480, at a place called Knittlingen, not a hundred and fifty kilometres from Frankfurt. He is described as a learned charlatan purporting to be skilled in magic, and he appears to have wandered the region with sojourns at its various universities. We know he was in Wrzburg in 1506, a hundred and ten kilometres from Frankfurt, and in Kreuznach in 1507, a hundred and thirty kilometres from here. And we know, too, that in 1509 he was awarded a degree from the University of Heidelberg, only ninety kilometres from here. So we can by no means rule out that Faust, too, attended the book fair at Frankfurt.

Another historical candidate is a certain Johann Fust, who lived from 1400 until 1466. Fust was a goldsmith and a business partner of Gutenbergs, in Mainz, forty kilometres from Frankfurt.

But what about the Devil? Where was he?

If nothing else, we know that he was once in Wartburg, two hundred kilometres from here. In the early fifteen-twenties, the Devil was seen there by a monk who, late one night, sat immersed in his work, translating the Bible into German. The monk called himself Junker Jrg, though his real name was Martin Luther, and he was so enraged at the Devil for interrupting him in his labors that he hurled an ink pot at him.

Here then, in this strangely hybrid world of superstition and rational thought, magic and science, witch burnings and book printing, the reality we now inhabit was founded. The invention of the printing press made it possible to accumulate and disseminate knowledge on a scale hitherto unseen. Here began the slow separation of science from religion which so radically altered our view of the world and ourselves that today we can scarcely believe that anything was ever any different.

So what was the Devil doing there, in the foundation of what was to become the world as we know it?

It can be held, of course, that the Faust legend is a Protestant formation narrative: the tale emerged at the time of the Reformation, and Fausts sin is not necessarily that he seeks knowledge but that he does so while removing himself from God. And, to Goethe, who also hailed from Frankfurt, Fausts sin was secular: he sought knowledge without knowing love.

But its hard to ignore the thought that where man strives for knowledge, the Devil will never be far away. It was the Devil, in the shape of a serpent, who enticed Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge, leading to man being banished from Paradise, and it was the Devil whom Faust evoked in his efforts to penetrate the secrets of nature.

With all our technological advances, from the printing press to the airplane and the nuclear-power station, there seems to follow a shadow, unseen and yet perceptible, for the consequences of these advances manifest themselves before our eyes. Karl Benz, who, in 1885, built the first motorcar in a workshop in Mannheim, only eighty kilometres from Frankfurt, could hardly have realized that, in the future, his machinewhich would join places and people together, opening cultures to each other and increasing the radius of human life so considerablywould claim the lives of one and a quarter million people each year, in car crashes. Nor could he have known that carbon-dioxide emissions from cars would be a cause of global warming, rising sea levels, burning forests, growing desert areas, and the extinction of animal species.

This phenomenon, whereby the well-intended action of the one spirals into uncontrollable evil when the one becomes the many, is referred to by French philosopher Michel Serres as the original sin. Diabolically, although each of us may wish only good, by our collective deeds we end up committing evil.

The Devil is associated with transgression; he is its very figure. And, since the endeavor to wrestle from nature its innermost secrets is a transgression, Faust must accordingly seek the Devils help.

The Devil exists to us because transgression puts us at peril. The insight is as old as culture itself. And Faust was as relevant in the fifteen-hundreds as he was in the eighteen-hundreds, when Goethe wrote about him, and in the nineteen-forties, when Thomas Mann wrote about him in his novel Doctor Faustus. Doctor Faustus begins with a scene which, when I read it for the first time, at the age of nineteen, etched itself into my memory. Two young lads, with the oddly sounding names Serenus Zeitblom and Adrian Leverkhn, grow up together in the depths of Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, and, at the beginning of the novel, Adrians father performs for them some scientific demonstrations. These concern how dead, inanimate matter may behave as if it were alive. Adrian, who will later sell his soul to the Devil, is amused by his fathers reverence of the mysteries of nature and shakes with laughter, whereas Serenus is aghast.

I dont know why that scene etched itself into my memory at the time, when I was nineteen, but I do know why I keep coming back to it: there, in that room, the living and the dead, the authentic and the inauthentic, alchemy and science, the Devil and modernity, all came together. And none of the elements present in that room has become any less significant to us since Mann brought them together, in the nineteen-forties; rather, they have become consolidated, for, since then, the atom has been split, and we have isolated and analyzed DNA, and now ventured into genetic engineering. The scientific opportunities this presents are hugeplants may be improved, food production increased, organs may be grown, even new life created. Man, we could say, has at last become like God. But, in one ancient text, nearly three thousand years old, we can read about what happened to someone else who wanted to become like God:

For thou hast said in thine heartI will ascend into heaven,I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;I will be like the most High.Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell,to the sides of the pit.

Or, to use the words of perhaps the greatest German poet of them all, Friedrich Hlderlin, born a hundred and sixty kilometres from Frankfurt: Nothing makes with greater certainty the earth into a hell, than mans wanting to make it his heaven. Yet the mutual proximity of insight and destruction tells us nothing of the sequence of these things, and the same Hlderlin wrote something else, which is equally true, in one of his unworldly and exquisite poems: But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.

Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken.

Excerpt from:
The Slowness of Literature and the Shadow of Knowledge - The New Yorker

OPINION: Recently, there has been a shift in society's view of genetic modification and its potential applications in the fight against climate change. This has led to a call for changes in our current policies from farmers and MPs alike.However, due to the Green Party's current stance on this topic, New Zealand is unable to utilise genetic modification for anything that is not laboratory-based.

I am a member of the Emerging Scientists for Climate Action society, which involves students from universities all over New Zealand. We are writing an open letter to the Greens to encourage them to review their stance on genetic modification and the current laws and regulations around genetic engineering. Our overarching goal to tackle climate change aligns with the Greens, and they are in a position to make positive change. We have 155signatures from emerging scientists (aged under 30) in support.

Genetic modification is a controversial topic, and there is much misunderstandingabout its techniques and applications.Genetic modification (aka genetic engineering) uses gene editing technologies and knowledge of genetics to make changes in an organism for a specific outcome. For example, a plant could be genetically modified to grow bigger to produce a higher yield. There are many gene-editing techniques that can be utilised, which further adds to the misconceptions around its applications. There is warranted concern over the long-term impacts of manipulating organisms at the molecular level, however, does this mean that we should disregard genetic modification altogether?

READ MORE:* New Zealand's anti-science GMO laws need to change to tackle climate change* Gene-editing risks are still too great to warrant a change in the law* Time for a grown-up conversation about gene editing

Our laws and regulations around genetic modification were established in 2001 and fall under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. That lawregulates research and release of all living things that do not already exist in New Zealand, including those that are genetically modified. However, these regulations have not accounted for the rapid advances in gene editing technology over the last decade, leaving New Zealand behind in the biotechnological sector. The calls for law changes come from all over New Zealand, including government agents such as Professor Juliet Gerrard, the Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor. Current legal and regulatory frameworks are struggling to keep up with current technologies.

The focus on genetic modification has largely been on food production, such as pesticide-resistant crops and increased growth for higher crop yields. But the scope of genetic engineering expands far beyond this. Genetic engineering techniques have many benefits,including to mitigate the effects of climate change. For example, there has been research into genetically modifying plants to sequester more carbon from the environment, which would assist with lowering rising temperatures.

SUPPLIED

Deborah PaullPostgraduate student - Masters of Science in Microbiology, at the University of Canterbury.

I have been working on projects involving genetic modification, specifically, around genetically modifying milk proteins to reduce the allergenicity. The goal is to produce these proteins through a cellular-agriculture based system that can produce milk products in a more sustainable fashion in comparison to current methods. When discussing this project with people within the dairy industry, the overall remark is that it's a great idea but it will never be produced in New Zealand. It is disheartening to see that the potential benefits of using technology such as this to address climate change hasn't been considered due to our laws.

But it is now 2019, and we have advanced our technology and understanding of genetics in ways we couldn't have imagined. A new generation of emerging scientists has new values and ethical drives, especially focused on preserving our planet for future generations. To mitigate the effects of climate change, we need new and optimised technologies, such as genetic engineering. This is a practical action that could be implemented through highly controlled policy.

It is time to reframe the conversation around genetic modificationIf we hope to reach the carbon neutral targets set in the UN by 2050 while meeting the demands of the increasing population in a sustainable fashion, this is a conversation that we need to have now. The Royal Society has started this discussion, identifying the cultural values involved with using genetic engineering technologies but emphasisinghow New Zealand needs to shift its current view of this technology.

The goal is not to be carelessly modifying organisms for the benefit of a few -it is to utilise knowledge and technology so that as a country we can take a step forward. New Zealand is a world leader in green agricultural technologies. As a forward-thinking country, let's break the stigma surrounding genetic modification and create a better future for ourselves and the generations to come.

DeborahPaullis studying for aMasters of Science in Microbiologyat the University of Canterbury.

Read the rest here:
Time to break the stigma on genetic modification, for the sake of the climate - Stuff.co.nz

October 31stwill mark the 37th anniversary of one of biotechnologys most significant milestones -- the approval by the FDA of human insulin synthesized in genetically engineered bacteria.It launched a revolutionary new era in pharmaceutical development, and as the FDA medical reviewer of the product and the head of the evaluation team, I had a front-row seat.

The saga is remarkable in several ways, not least of which is that although both the drugmakers and regulators were exploring unknown territory, the development of the drug and its regulatory review progressed smoothly and rapidly.

Insulin in crude form was first produced in 1922 by Canadian researchers Frederick Banting and Charles Best, which lifted the death sentence that had previously been imposed on diabetics. By the end of that year drug company, Eli Lilly and Company had devised a method for much higher purification. Over the next half-century or so, the purified insulins obtained from pig or cow pancreases, which differ slightly in chemical composition from human insulin, were constantly improved in purity and formulated in ways that refined their performance.

During the early 1970s, as the supply of animal pancreases declined and the prevalence of insulin-requiring diabetes grew, there were widespread fears of possible future shortages of insulin.Fortuitously, around the same time, a new and powerful tool recombinant DNA technology, also known as genetic modification, genetic engineering, or gene-splicing became available and offered the promise of unlimited amounts of insulin that was identical to the molecule produced by humans.

The seminal molecular genetic engineering experiment wasreported in a 1973 research articleby academic scientists Stanley Cohen, Herbert Boyer and their collaborators. They isolated a ringlet of DNA called a plasmid from a bacterium, used certain enzymes to splice a gene from another bacterium into that plasmid, and then introduced the resulting recombinant, or chimeric, DNA intoE. colibacteria.

When these now recombinant bacteria reproduced, the plasmids containing the foreign DNA were likewise propagated and produced amplified amounts of the functional recombinant DNA. And because DNA contains the genetic code that directs the synthesis of proteins, this new methodology promised the ability to induce genetically modified bacteria (or other cells) to synthesize desired proteins in large amounts.

The scientists at Lilly immediately saw the promise of this technology for the production of unlimited quantities of human insulin in bacteria. After obtaining from startup Genentech, Inc., the recombinantE. colibacteria that contained the genetic blueprint for and that synthesized human insulin, they developed processes for the large-scale cultivation of the organism (in huge fermenters similar to those that make wine or beer) and for the purification and formulation of the insulin.

Insulins had long been Lillys flagship products, and the companys expertise was evident in the purification, laboratory testing and clinical trials of human insulin. The companys scientists painstakingly verified that their product was extremely pure and identical to pancreatic human insulin (which differs slightly in chemical composition from beef and pork insulin).

Lilly began clinical trials of its human insulin in July 1980. The product performed superbly. There were no systematic problems with treating naive patients (who had never before received injections of insulin) or those switched from animal to human insulin. A small number of patients who had had adverse reactions of some kind to the animal insulins tolerated the human insulin well.

The dossier that provided evidence of safety and efficacy was submitted in May 1982 to the FDA, where I was the medical reviewer and head of the evaluation team. Over many years the FDA had had prodigious experience with insulins and also with drugs derived from various microorganisms, so it was decided that no fundamentally new regulatory paradigms were necessary to evaluate the recombinant human insulin.

In other words, recombinant DNA techniques were viewed as an extension, or refinement, of long-used and familiar methods for making drugs. That proved to be a historic, precedent-setting decision.

Based on my teams exhaustive review of Lillys data, which were obtained from pre-clinical testing in animals and clinical trials in thousands of diabetics, FDA granted marketing approval for human insulin in October 1982. The review and approval took only five months when the agencys average approval time for new drugs was 30.5 months.

In retrospect, that rapid approval was particularly remarkable for a drug that was produced with a revolutionary new technology, and that after approval would be available in pharmacies nationwide to millions of American diabetics.

The back story, however, is revealing. My team and I were ready to recommend approvalafterfour months review. But when I took the packet to my supervisor, he said, Four months? No way! If anything goes wrong with this product down the road, people will say we rushed it, and well be toast. Thats the bureaucratic mind-set. I dont know how long he would have delayed it, but when he went on vacation a month later, I took the packet to his boss, the division director, and he signed off.

That anecdote illustrates Milton Friedmans observation that to understand the motivation of an individual or organization, you need to follow the self-interest. A large part of regulators self-interest lies in staying out of trouble. One way to do that, my supervisor understood, is not to approve in record time products that might experience unanticipated problems, even if it is the right thing to do.

The Humulin approval had significant effects. A New York Timesarticlementioned my prediction that the speedy approval was a major step forward in the scientific and commercial viability of recombinant DNA technology. We have now come of age, I said, and potential investors and entrepreneurs agreed. Seeing that biopharmaceuticals would compete with other medicines on a level playing field, the biotechnology industry was on the fast track.

Scores of genetically engineered drugs have been approved over the years, but the rapidity of the human insulin approval proved to be an anomaly. Even with a toolbox of improved technologies available to both the FDA and industry, bringing a new drug to market on average now takes 10-12 years and costs, on average, over$2.5 billion.Regulators are highly risk-averse, few new drugs are approved without convening extramural advisory committees, and decisions are sometimes hijacked by political forces exerted on the FDA.

Other FDA-regulated biotech sectors have fared worse.Incomprehensibly, the FDAdeclined to grant Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) statusto two proteins that would be life-saving as additives to oral rehydration solution administered to children with diarrhea.

In addition, FDA officials have made a horrendousmessof the regulation of genetically engineered animals, which FDA chose to regulate as new animal drugs, including a grotesquely prolonged, 20-plus year review of a faster-growing Atlantic salmon, and genetically engineered mosquitoes to control mosquitoes that carry viral diseases.(It took FDA more than five years to realize that the latter were actually pesticides which are outside the Agencys purview -- and that jurisdiction should, therefore, be turfed to EPA.)As a result, the entire biotech sector of genetically engineered animals is moribund.

Its too bad that government regulation hasnt aged as gracefully as genetic engineering technology itself.

See more here:
Record-Time FDA Approval of Human Insulin In 1982: When Genetic Engineering Came of Age - American Council on Science and Health

With everything youve been hearing about genetic engineering over the years, starting with the idea of genetically-modified fruits and vegetables all the way through gene editing in humans, youve heard a lot about why itshouldnt be done. But what are the positives? And what might happen if gene editing goes mainstream and available to (gulp) everyone? A new Netflix docuseries examines that issue.

Opening Shot: At night, we see a large cage full of barking dogs, likely pit bulls. The location is Mendenhall, Mississippi.

The Gist: The dogs are owned by Paul Ishee, an oil field tech who breeds dogs on the side. He collects sperm from the dogs (in just the way youd expect) because he wants to genetically engineer a better dog. How does he do that? Via CRISPR, a small protein that can be injected via a bacteria into an organism to edit its DNA. One of the big features with CRISPR, which was perfected only a few years ago, is that the protein is easily obtainable. So genetic modifications can be done in expensive labs by trained scientists or by biohackers in their garages.

Unnatural Selection, a docuseries produced and directed by Leeor Kaufman and Joe Egender, examines the new frontier of genetic engineering, and what ethical stumbling blocks there are to adapting gene editing on a wider basis.

The filmmakers interview a mixture of scientists and biohackers, some of whom are both. Dr. Jennifer Doudna, widely regarded as the inventor of the CRISPR method, seems to be in the middle of the debate; she knows how powerful using CRISPR can be when it comes to curing genetic-based diseases and other conditions, but is wary of people who want to use it to engineer superior organisms. Biohackers like Dr. Josiah Zayner, a biophysicist who used to work for NASA, is in favor of the democratization of genetic engineering, sending $140 CRISPR kits to people via Priority Mail. One of those people is Ishee, who wants to make a glowing dog as his first experiment, just to prove that the engineering worked.

Others, such as Dr. Kevin Esvelt, an evolutionary engineer at MIT, want to put genetic engineering into practice by modifying mice to be immune to the bite of Lyme-carrying ticks and then releasing them to breed on a small island in Marthas Vineyard. What will the consequences of that be? Even Esvelt really doesnt know for sure. And thats the problem, and where the ethical issues take hold. Sending genetically modified mice, dogs, or humans into the world may introduce unintended consequences, or might be deadly in the wrong hands. But are people who think its dangerous just being alarmist?

Our Take: Genetic engineering and all of its advantages and ethical quandaries is a complex topic to cover, and in the first part of their four-part docuseries, Kaufman and Egender try to lay out the issue in as balanced a way as possible. But what we got during the feature-length (70-minute) first episode was more of a sense of fear than one of wonder.

Why? Because, while the filmmakers are giving biohackers like Ishee and Dr. Zayner as much time as the more legit scientists, it doesnt help matters when you see Dr. Zayner concocting CRISPR samples in his kitchen or see Ishee looking at YouTube videos of glowing mice and luminescent monkeys for inspiration.

But then we see Jackson Kennedy, a boy from New Jersey who is autistic and was born with poor vision, and we become hopeful again. His parents got genetic testing for him that showed that hes missing a gene that would help him see. And hes going to go for treatment that fixes that gene, which should restore his sight if it works. This is where genetic engineering could make a huge positive impact on the world. But, whether the filmmakers intended it this way or not, there seems to be a whole lot scarier ways the use of CRISPR could go haywire, which makes us as cautious as the anti-engineering activists they interview for the first episode.

Sleeper Star: When Jasons mother talked about how he wanted to be an astronaut and how heartbroken he was when he heard that astronauts need 20-20 vision, it almost broke our hearts. While his story will be a through-line through the limited series, were disappointed that there isnt a documentary just about him.

Most Pilot-y Line: There are actually two scenes of Ishee collecting sperm from his dogs. Yuck.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Were wondering how much of what were going to see during the rest ofUnnatural Selection will be more crackpots and less of the positive stuff like Jasons treatment. If its the former, wed likely end up skipping it.

Your Call:

Joel Keller(@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesnt kid himself: hes a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon,VanityFair.com,Playboy.com, FastCompany.com,RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

StreamUnnatural Selection On Netflix

The rest is here:
Stream It Or Skip It: 'Unnatural Selection' On Netflix, A Docuseries About The Ethics And Ease Of Editing DNA - Decider