For us in the West, the ferocious debate over genetic engineering isnt a matter of life and death. We argue about the safety of Impossible Burgers and the potential risks associated with new breeding techniques like CRISPR gene editing, but nobody will go hungry or die of malnutrition pending the outcome of these arguments. Sadly, the same isnt true in the developing world.

The tragic tale of global vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and the life-saving (but still unavailable) solution known as Golden Rice has been told millions of times, 246 million according to Google. But to briefly recap: roughly 250 million people, mostly preschool children in southeast Asia, are vitamin A deficient. Between 250,000 and 500,000 of them go blind every yearand half die within 12 months of losing their sight. Genetically engineered Golden Rice, fortified with the vitamin A precursor beta carotene, could alleviate much of this suffering without otherwise harming human health or the environment, according to a mountain of studies.

So why are so many people still dying of a preventable condition?

Thats the rather frustrating part of the story science writer Ed Regis examines in his new book Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Superfood. In just over 200 pages, Regis gives a crash course on genetic engineering and explains the messy history of Golden Rice, disabusing the reader of many popular myths along the way. Environmental activist group Greenpeace, for example, is often identified in the press as the primary obstacle to releasing Golden Rice. Despite all its lobbying, however, the NGO has had a relatively minor impact on the crops development.

Instead of pointing the finger at Greenpeace, Regis says the blame lies mostly with overly cautious governments, many of which regulate GMOs as if they were biological weapons. Hoping to avoid the unintended (and so far undiscovered) consequences of growing genetically engineered crops, regulators unintentionally rob people of their eyesight and often their lives.

In a Q&A session with Genetic Literacy Project editor Cameron English, Regis offers a birds eye view of the ongoing controversy and highlights some lesser-known but still significant aspects of the Golden Rice story.

Cameron English: Golden Rice seems simple conceptually. As you point out, scientists just had to direct the plants existing biochemical machinery to synthesize beta carotene in the rice grain, as it does in the rest of the plant. Why did this prove so challenging to achieve in the lab?

For one thing, it had never been done beforerewriting a plants genes to make it express a trait that it normally did not have. Nobody was sure that it was even possible. There were different ways of accomplishing that goal, and there were a lot of technical difficulties in doing the actual hands-on lab work, and getting everything lined up correctly at the genetic level so that beta carotene would appear in the rice grain. There were incredible numbers of false starts, dead ends, and unforeseen technical problems to overcome, and it took years of trial and error for the inventors to get it all working properly. It was just a hard problem, both scientifically, in theory, and technologically, in practice.

CE: You write that Golden Rice could make VAD a thing of the past in developing Asian countries. Why is this biotech crop a better solution than alternative proposals, like distributing vitamin supplements?

Supplement programs have been tried, and of course they do some good, but the problem is that such programs require a substantial and permanent infrastructure. They require a supply chain, personnel to distribute the stuff, record keeping, and the like, plus sufficient and continuous funding to keep it all going across time. Also, there is no way to guarantee that supplements will reach every last person who needs them.

Golden Rice, by contrast, requires none of that. The seeds will be given at no cost to small landowner farmers, and the rice will be no more expensive to consumers than plain and ordinary white rice. Plus, theres the principle that Plants reproduce, pills dont. Once Golden Rice is introduced, its a system that just goes of itself. The product replaces what people already eat on a daily basis with something that could save their sight and lives in the process.

CE: Tell us the story about night blindness you recount from Catherine Prices book. Does that anecdote underscore the problem that Golden Rice could solve?

We in the rich, developed Western countries know practically nothing about [VAD]. We have virtually no experience of it because we get the micronutrients we need from ordinary foods and vitamin supplements. One of the first symptoms of vitamin A deficiency is night blindness, which means pretty much what it says. But to convey this as an actual, lived experience I quote from Catherine Prices excellent book, Vitamania, in which she describes what happens to vitamin A deficient children in poor, developing countries.

While they lead an active life during the day, they gradually withdraw and stop playing as twilight approaches. With the fall of night, they basically just sit in place and wait for help, because they have lost their sight in darkness, and their life grinds to a halt. In countries such as the Philippines, where people eat rice as a staple, at every meal, Golden Rice could prevent this from happening, and even reverse the symptoms in children already affected by VAD.

CE: You point out that Greenpeace struggled with a moral dilemma before forcefully coming out against Golden Rice. Tells about that situation.

In 2001, the year after the Golden Rice protype was announced in Science, a Greenpeace official by the name of Benedikt Haerlin visited Ingo Potrykus, the co-inventor, at his home in Switzerland. Haerlin discussed whether or not to make the provitamin A rice an exception to Greenpeaces otherwise absolute and rigid opposition to any and all genetically engineered foods. He had initially acknowledged that there was a moral difference between GMOs that were merely agriculturally superiorin being pesticide- or herbicide-resistant, for exampleand a GMO that was so nutritionally beneficial that it actually had the potential to save peoples lives and sight.

But apparently that distinction made no difference because in the end both Haerlin himself and Greenpeace as an organization soon took the view that Golden Rice had to be opposed, even stopped, no matter what its possible health benefits might be.

CE: Greenpeace also claimed that poverty and insufficiently diverse diet were the root causes of vitamin A deficiency. Therefore, they said, developing biofortified crops was misguided. That sounds like a reasonable argument, so whats wrong with Greenpeaces analysis here?

This is like arguing that until we find a cure for cancer we should not treat patients by means of surgery, chemotherapy or radiation therapy. This is totally illogical on the face of it. And the same is true of the argument that since poverty is the cause of the problem that therefore the only solution is to eradicate it. Everyones in favor of eradicating poverty, but there are things we can do in the interim while advancing that far-off and utopian goal, which arguably will take some time to accomplish. Biofortified Golden Rice, along with supplementation and a more diverse diet, can help prevent vitamin A deficiency. If a solution, or a set of solutions, is available, lets implement them while also striving to reduce poverty. Both can be done together, you dont have to choose between one and the other.

CE: Many people believe that Greenpeace and other anti-GMO groups are the main roadblock to getting Golden Rice into the hands of farmers. But you write that the activists dont deserve that much credit. What else has kept Golden Rice off the market?

Greenpeaces long history of anti-GMO rhetoric, diatribes, street demonstrations, protests, dressing up in monster crop costumes, and all the rest of it actually did nothing to halt research and development of Golden Rice. There are two reasons why it took 20 years to bring Golden Rice to the point where it won approval for release in four countries: Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. The first is that it takes a long time to breed increasingly higher concentrations of beta carotene (or any other valuable trait) into new strains of rice (or any other plant). Plant breeding is not like a chemistry experiment that you can repeat immediately as many times as you want. Rather, plant growth is an inherently slow and glacial process that cant be [sped] up meaningfully except under certain special laboratory conditions that are expensive and hard to foster and sustain.

The second reason is the retarding force of government regulations on GMO crop development. Those regulations, which cover plant breeding, experimentation, and field trials, among other things, are so oppressively burdensome and costly that they make compliance inordinately time-consuming and expensive.

CE: Whats the Cartagena Protocol and how has it affected the development of Golden Rice?

The Cartagena Protocol was an international agreement, sponsored and developed by the United Nations, which aimed to ensure the safe handling, transport and use of living modified organisms (LMOs) resulting from modern biotechnology that may have adverse effects on biological diversity, taking into account also risks to human health.

On the face of it, this precautionary approach is plausible, even innocuous. In actual practice, the protocol amounts to a sweeping set of guidelines, requirements, and procedures pertaining to GMOs that were legally binding on the nations that were parties to the agreement, coupled with a set of mechanisms to enforce and ensure compliance. These oppressive and stifling rules and regulations soon turned into a nightmare for GMO developers, and did more than anything else to slow down the progress of Golden Rice.

Ingo Potrykus, the co-inventor of Golden Rice, has estimated that adherence to government regulations on GMOs resulting from the Cartagena Protocol and the precautionary principle, caused a delay of up to ten years in the development of the final product. That is a tragedy, caused by the very governments that are supposed to protect our health, but in this case did the opposite.

CE: Once a prototype of Golden Rice was developed, the prestigious science journal Nature refused to publish the study documenting the successful experiment. Why do you think Nature reacted that way, and what does it tell us about the cultural climate during the period when Golden Rice was first developed?

Well, I cant speak for the Nature editors, so in this case youre asking the wrong person. In my book, I quote what Ingo Potrykus had to say about the matter, which was:

The Nature editor did not even consider it worth showing the manuscript to a referee, and sent it back immediately. Even supportive letters from famous European scientists did not help. From other publications in Nature at that time we got the impression that Nature was more interested in cases which would rather question instead of support the value of genetic engineering technology.

And I will leave it at that.

CE: The classic objection to GMOs, including Golden Rice, is that theyre unnatural. Would you summarize your response to that claim in the book?

In the book I show that in fact most of the foods that we eat are unnatural in the sense that they are products of years of artificial selection, often using techniques other than conventional crossbreeding.

In particular I cite the example of Rio Red grapefruit, which is sold all over America and is not considered a GMO, despite the fact that its genes have been scrambled over the years by artificial means including radiation mutation breeding, in the form of thermal neutron (thN) bombardment, which was done at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. This highly mutant and genetically modified grapefruit variety is on file at the Joint FAO/IAEA Mutant Variety Database, at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in Vienna, Austria. You can hardly get more unnatural than Rio Red grapefruit.

By contrast, there is a plant whose roots in the ground are potatoes, but whose above ground fruit are tomatoes. This is the so-called TomTato, and was created by exclusively conventional means, i.e., grafting, which goes back thousands of years. But which of the two is more unnaturalthe Rio Red grapefruit or the freakish TomTato? And why does it matter?

CE: There are a lot of transgenic crops being developed, so why did Golden Rice become such a lightening rod for controversy in the GMO debate?

Because if it gets approved, works, and ends up saving lives and sight, it will lead to greater acceptance of GMO foods in general, which is the very last thing that GMO opponents want. That cannot be said of any other GMO.

CE: Bangladesh appears poised to release Golden Rice before the end of 2019. Are you hopeful that farmers will soon have access to it, or do you foresee more political and regulatory obstacles getting in the way?

In the words of Jack Reacher (the hero of Lee Childs crime novels), Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Seeing what has happened to Golden Rice over the course of 20 years, nothing would surprise me going forward. I would sort of be more surprised if Bangladesh approved it and it was grown and people ate it than if it were banned outright in the countries where its needed most. That is the most infuriating part of the whole story.

Ed Regisis a science writer whose work has appeared inScientific American,Harpers,Wired,Nature,Discover, and theNew York Times,among other publications. He is the author of ten books, includingWhat Is Life? Investigating the Nature of Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology.

Cameron J. English is the GLPs senior agricultural genetics and special projects editor. He co-hosts the Biotech Facts and Fallacies podcast. Follow him on Twitter @camjenglish

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How misguided regulation has kept a GMO 'superfood' off the market: Q&A with Golden Rice author Ed Regis - Genetic Literacy Project

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

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

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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.

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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