US scientists close to creating artificial life: study
Jan 24 02:44 PM US/Eastern
Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years
AP Top Science News At 3:06 p.m. EST
US scientists have taken a major step toward creating the first ever artificial life form by synthetically reproducing the DNA of a bacteria, according to a study published Thursday.
The move, which comes after five years of research, is seen as the penultimate stage in the endeavour to create an artificial life form based entirely on a man-made DNA genome -- something which has tantalised scientists and sci-fi writers for years.
"Through dedicated teamwork we have shown that building large genomes is now feasible and scalable so that important applications such as biofuels can be developed," said Hamilton Smith, from the J. Craig Venter Institute, in the study published in Science.
The research has been carried out at the laboratories of the controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter, who has hailed artificial life forms as a potential remedy to illness and global warming.
However, the prospect of engineering artificial life forms is highly controversial and is likely to arouse heated debate over the ethics and potential ramifications of such an advance.
It is one of the Holy Grails of science, but also one that stirs deep fears as forseen in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel "Brave New World" in which natural human reproduction is eschewed in favor of babies grown artificially in laboratories.
Venter said in a statement: "This extraordinary accomplishment is a technological marvel that was only made possible because of the unique and accomplished ... team."
His researchers had "dedicated the last several years to designing and perfecting new methods and techniques that we believe will become widely used to advance the field of synthetic genomics," he added.
Lead author Dan Gibson said the team had completed the second step in a three-step process to create a synthetic organism.
In the final stage of their research which they are already working on, the Maryland-based team will attempt to create a bacteria based purely on the synthetic genome sequence of the Mycoplasma genitalium bacteria.
The bacteria, which causes certain sexually transmitted diseases, has one of the least complex DNA structures of any life form, composed of just 580 genes.
In contrast, the human genome has some 30,000.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Scientist Makes Embryo Clones of Himself.
Ethical storm as scientist becomes first man to clone HIMSELF
By FIONA MACRAE - More by this author » Last updated at 17:46pm on 18th January 2008
Breakthrough: Dr Samuel Wood has successfully cloned himself
A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself.
In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg.
The embryos were the first to be made from cells taken from adult humans.
Although they survived for only five days and were smaller than a pinhead, they are seen as a milestone in the quest for treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
But critics fear the technology could be exploited by mavericks to clone babies and accused the scientists of reducing the miracle of human life to a factory of spare parts.
Researchers from the Californian stem cell research company Stemagen employed the same technique used to make Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, to create the embryos.
They took eggs donated by young women having IVF and replaced genetic material with DNA from the skin cells of two men.
The eggs were then zapped with an electric current to induce fertilisation and the creation of embryos.
Some of the skin cells came from Dr Wood, Stemagen's chief executive officer and a leading fertility specialist, while the others came from another member of staff.
The result was a handful of embryos, at least three of them clones of Dr Wood and the other man.
Although all were destroyed in the process, the technique is seen as a vital step in the creation of cloned embryos rich in stem cells, which are "master cells" capable of becoming any type of body tissue.
By FIONA MACRAE - More by this author » Last updated at 17:46pm on 18th January 2008
Breakthrough: Dr Samuel Wood has successfully cloned himself
A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself.
In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg.
The embryos were the first to be made from cells taken from adult humans.
Although they survived for only five days and were smaller than a pinhead, they are seen as a milestone in the quest for treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
But critics fear the technology could be exploited by mavericks to clone babies and accused the scientists of reducing the miracle of human life to a factory of spare parts.
Researchers from the Californian stem cell research company Stemagen employed the same technique used to make Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal, to create the embryos.
They took eggs donated by young women having IVF and replaced genetic material with DNA from the skin cells of two men.
The eggs were then zapped with an electric current to induce fertilisation and the creation of embryos.
Some of the skin cells came from Dr Wood, Stemagen's chief executive officer and a leading fertility specialist, while the others came from another member of staff.
The result was a handful of embryos, at least three of them clones of Dr Wood and the other man.
Although all were destroyed in the process, the technique is seen as a vital step in the creation of cloned embryos rich in stem cells, which are "master cells" capable of becoming any type of body tissue.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Technological Evolution Vs. Biological Evolution
This is just a quick example of how technologically things are getting smarter and smarter as they get smaller and smaller, the opposite of our biological evolution from which all of our technological evolution has evolved.
Jobs Reveals Tiny New Laptop
Jan 15 02:29 PM US/Eastern
By MAY WONG and JORDAN ROBERTSON
AP Technology Writers
Ultra-Lightweight, .76 Inch-Thick Apple Notebook ‘MacBook Air’ Unveiled
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at Macworld Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it's opened.
Jobs also confirmed the tech giant's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections 30 days after they're released on DVD.
Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.
At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it's .16 inches, he said. It comes standard with an 80- gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.
Jobs Reveals Tiny New Laptop
Jan 15 02:29 PM US/Eastern
By MAY WONG and JORDAN ROBERTSON
AP Technology Writers
Ultra-Lightweight, .76 Inch-Thick Apple Notebook ‘MacBook Air’ Unveiled
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs took the wraps off a super-slim new laptop at Macworld Tuesday, unveiling a personal computer less than an inch thick that turns on the moment it's opened.
Jobs also confirmed the tech giant's foray into online movie rentals, revealing an alliance with all six major movie studios to offer films over high-speed Internet connections 30 days after they're released on DVD.
Always a showman, Jobs unwound the string on a standard-sized manila office envelope and slid out the ultra-thin MacBook Air notebook computer to coos and peals of laughter from fans at the conference.
At its beefiest, the new computer is .76 inches thick; at its thinnest, it's .16 inches, he said. It comes standard with an 80- gigabyte hard drive, with the option of a 64GB flash-based solid state drive as an upgrade.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Texas UFO
Dozens in Texas town report seeing UFO
By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 58 minutes ago
STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.
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Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."
While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.
Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."
Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.
Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.
"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."
Officials at the region's two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.
One man has offered a reward for a photograph or videotape of the mysterious object.
About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.
Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.
Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said that he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving fast, but that even with binoculars could not see the object to which the lights were attached.
"I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it," Gaitan said. "I think it must be some kind of military craft — at least I hope it was."
By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 58 minutes ago
STEPHENVILLE, Texas - In this farming community where nightfall usually brings clear, starry skies, residents are abuzz over reported sightings of what many believe is a UFO.
ADVERTISEMENT
Several dozen people — including a pilot, county constable and business owners — insist they have seen a large silent object with bright lights flying low and fast. Some reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.
"People wonder what in the world it is because this is the Bible Belt, and everyone is afraid it's the end of times," said Steve Allen, a freight company owner and pilot who said the object he saw last week was a mile long and half a mile wide. "It was positively, absolutely nothing from these parts."
While federal officials insist there's a logical explanation, locals swear that it was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. People in several towns who reported seeing it over several weeks have offered similar descriptions of the object.
Machinist Ricky Sorrells said friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But he decided to come forward after reading similar accounts in the Stephenville Empire-Tribune.
"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," Sorrells said. "It feels good to hear that other people saw something, because that means I'm not crazy."
Sorrells said he has seen the object several times. He said he watched it through his rifle's telescopic lens and described it as very large and without seams, nuts or bolts.
Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station in Fort Worth, said no F-16s or other aircraft from his base were in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported the sighting.
Lewis said the object may have been an illusion caused by two commercial airplanes. Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun.
"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," Lewis said. "With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you."
Officials at the region's two Air Force bases — Dyess in Abilene and Sheppard in Wichita Falls — also said none of their aircraft were in the area last week. The Air Force no longer investigates UFOs.
One man has offered a reward for a photograph or videotape of the mysterious object.
About 200 UFO sightings are reported each month, mostly in California, Colorado and Texas, according to the Mutual UFO Network, which plans to go to the 17,000-resident town of Stephenville to investigate.
Fourteen percent of Americans polled last year by The Associated Press and Ipsos say they have seen a UFO.
Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said that he first saw red glowing lights and then white flashing lights moving fast, but that even with binoculars could not see the object to which the lights were attached.
"I didn't see a flying saucer and I don't know what it was, but it wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it," Gaitan said. "I think it must be some kind of military craft — at least I hope it was."
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Bioartificial Heart Signals Potential For More Organs
First bioartificial heart may signal end of organ shortage
Last Updated: 11:01am GMT 13/01/2008
Breakthrough which marks the creation of the first living artificial heart could signal the beginning of the end of organ shortages, reports Roger Highfield
Doctors have stripped down and refurbished a dead heart so that it can beat again, an unprecedented feat that could signal the beginning of the end of organ shortages..
Scientists in Minnesota grow a heart
Watch: Scientists in Minnesota grow a heart
The revolutionary research could overcome the shortage of replacement hearts and other organs, and do away with the need for antirejection drugs, according to an American team.
The world's first beating, retooled "bioartificial heart" is described today in the journal Nature Medicine by University of Minnesota researchers in research that could pave the way to a new treatment for the 22 million people worldwide who live with heart failure.
The team took a whole heart and removed cells from it. Then, with the resulting architecture, chambers, valves and the blood vessel structure intact, repopulated the structure with new cells.
"We just took nature's own building blocks to build a new organ," says Dr Harald Ott, a co-investigator who now works at Massachusetts General Hospital. "When we saw the first contractions we were speechless."
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Click to learn more...
The work has huge implications: "The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said Prof Doris Taylor, director of the Centre for Cardiovascular Repair, Minnesota, principal investigator.
The method could be used to grow liver, kidney, lung and pancreas, indeed virtually any organ with a blood supply.
She tells The Daily Telegraph that although "years away" from using the method in hospitals, she is ready to grow a human heart, though costs make it prohibitive at present.
"We could begin with human cells and pig or human scaffold now but creating the larger bioreactors (the vessels in which the organs are grown) and generating the reagents and growing enough cells would cost tens of thousands of dollars for each heart at this point.
"That is just too expensive to answer basic questions. We of course want to move in that direction, but funding is limited. As we can we will go forward - perhaps one heart at a time. "
In general, the supply of donor organs is limited and once a heart is transplanted, individuals face life-long immunosuppression, where drugs are used to prevent rejection, often trading heart failure for high blood pressure, diabetes, and kidney failure over the long term..
Because a new heart created by decellularization could be filled with the recipient's own stem cells the researchers believe it's much less likely to be rejected by the body.
And once placed in the recipient, in theory the heart would be nourished, regulated, and regenerated similar to the heart that it replaced.
"We used immature heart cells in this version, as a proof of concept. We pretty much figured heart cells in a heart matrix had to work," Prof Taylor says. "Going forward, our goal is to use a patient's stem cells to build a new heart."
As for the source of the cells from a heart patient, she says: "From muscle, bone marrow, or heart; depending on where the science leads us."
Although heart repair was the initial goal, decellularization shows potential to change how scientists think about engineering any organ, she says. "It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas - you name it and we hope we can make it."
UK Transplant comments that 155 people had their lives saved or transformed by a heart transplant last year, though 28 died while on the waiting list. Currently, 81 people are waiting for heart transplant.
Nationally, more than 9,000 people need a transplant, yet typically only around 3,000 are performed every year. Last year 1,000 people died needing a transplant. A UK Transplant spokesman says: "These developments offer long term hope and long may they continue but the real problem now is a desperate shortage of donated hearts."
Dr Tim Chico, Consultant Cardiologist, University of Sheffield, says: "This is an ingenious step towards solving a massive problem. Heart failure (an inability of the heart to pump sufficient blood, usually after a heart attack) is increasing in the UK.
"A chronic shortage of donors for heart transplantation makes stem cell therapy appealing. The study is very preliminary, but it does show that stem cells can regrow in the 'skeleton' of a donor heart. However, it will take a lot of further work to assess whether this will ever be a viable option for patients."
"This very exciting study," comments Dr Jon Frampton, University of Birmingham. "Although this is only a first step requiring considerable follow-up development, the study nevertheless represents an exciting breakthrough that will eventually make the prospect of repairing damaged hearts a reality and will also be an approach that can be extended to other organs."
Prof Wayne Morrison, Director of the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery, Melbourne, comments: "This is the first time a whole organ has been tissue engineered outside the body.
"They have demonstrated that they can create a heart that looks like a heart and is shaped like a heart and, most excitingly, that they can re-establish the blood vessels that were originally there. It is this 'regrowth' of the blood vessel cells that gives the potential in the future to connect this structure to a blood vessel in the body and then get circulation to go through it.
Dr Anita Thomas at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, adds: "There is one more major step to achieve before we can proceed any further: we need to see what happens when these artificial hearts are placed in a recipient animal for any length of time. The authors of the article have the necessary skills and yet have not reported their results. We wait with anticipation for their next publication."
How to grow a heart
While there have been advances in growing heart tissue in the lab, the problem has been how to create a 3D scaffold that mimics the complex architecture and intricacies of the body's primary pump.
That is why Prof Doris Taylor and her colleagues resorted to "decellularization" - removing all of the cells from an organ with detergent - in this case an animal cadaver heart - leaving only the extracellular matrix, the framework between the cells, intact, along with the plumbing and heart valves.
After successfully removing all of the cells from both rat and pig hearts, the researchers injected rat hearts with a mixture of immature cells that came from newborn rat hearts and placed the structure in a sterile chamber in the lab to grow.
The results were very promising, Prof Taylor said. Four days after seeding the decellularized heart scaffolds with cells, contractions were observed. Eight days later, the hearts were pumping, albeit at only two per cent of the efficiency of an adult heart.
A study at of the hearts at the cellular level revealed that the "cells have many of the markers we associate with the heart and seem to know how to behave like heart tissue."
Last Updated: 11:01am GMT 13/01/2008
Breakthrough which marks the creation of the first living artificial heart could signal the beginning of the end of organ shortages, reports Roger Highfield
Doctors have stripped down and refurbished a dead heart so that it can beat again, an unprecedented feat that could signal the beginning of the end of organ shortages..
Scientists in Minnesota grow a heart
Watch: Scientists in Minnesota grow a heart
The revolutionary research could overcome the shortage of replacement hearts and other organs, and do away with the need for antirejection drugs, according to an American team.
The world's first beating, retooled "bioartificial heart" is described today in the journal Nature Medicine by University of Minnesota researchers in research that could pave the way to a new treatment for the 22 million people worldwide who live with heart failure.
The team took a whole heart and removed cells from it. Then, with the resulting architecture, chambers, valves and the blood vessel structure intact, repopulated the structure with new cells.
"We just took nature's own building blocks to build a new organ," says Dr Harald Ott, a co-investigator who now works at Massachusetts General Hospital. "When we saw the first contractions we were speechless."
advertisement
Click to learn more...
The work has huge implications: "The idea would be to develop transplantable blood vessels or whole organs that are made from your own cells," said Prof Doris Taylor, director of the Centre for Cardiovascular Repair, Minnesota, principal investigator.
The method could be used to grow liver, kidney, lung and pancreas, indeed virtually any organ with a blood supply.
She tells The Daily Telegraph that although "years away" from using the method in hospitals, she is ready to grow a human heart, though costs make it prohibitive at present.
"We could begin with human cells and pig or human scaffold now but creating the larger bioreactors (the vessels in which the organs are grown) and generating the reagents and growing enough cells would cost tens of thousands of dollars for each heart at this point.
"That is just too expensive to answer basic questions. We of course want to move in that direction, but funding is limited. As we can we will go forward - perhaps one heart at a time. "
In general, the supply of donor organs is limited and once a heart is transplanted, individuals face life-long immunosuppression, where drugs are used to prevent rejection, often trading heart failure for high blood pressure, diabetes, and kidney failure over the long term..
Because a new heart created by decellularization could be filled with the recipient's own stem cells the researchers believe it's much less likely to be rejected by the body.
And once placed in the recipient, in theory the heart would be nourished, regulated, and regenerated similar to the heart that it replaced.
"We used immature heart cells in this version, as a proof of concept. We pretty much figured heart cells in a heart matrix had to work," Prof Taylor says. "Going forward, our goal is to use a patient's stem cells to build a new heart."
As for the source of the cells from a heart patient, she says: "From muscle, bone marrow, or heart; depending on where the science leads us."
Although heart repair was the initial goal, decellularization shows potential to change how scientists think about engineering any organ, she says. "It opens a door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas - you name it and we hope we can make it."
UK Transplant comments that 155 people had their lives saved or transformed by a heart transplant last year, though 28 died while on the waiting list. Currently, 81 people are waiting for heart transplant.
Nationally, more than 9,000 people need a transplant, yet typically only around 3,000 are performed every year. Last year 1,000 people died needing a transplant. A UK Transplant spokesman says: "These developments offer long term hope and long may they continue but the real problem now is a desperate shortage of donated hearts."
Dr Tim Chico, Consultant Cardiologist, University of Sheffield, says: "This is an ingenious step towards solving a massive problem. Heart failure (an inability of the heart to pump sufficient blood, usually after a heart attack) is increasing in the UK.
"A chronic shortage of donors for heart transplantation makes stem cell therapy appealing. The study is very preliminary, but it does show that stem cells can regrow in the 'skeleton' of a donor heart. However, it will take a lot of further work to assess whether this will ever be a viable option for patients."
"This very exciting study," comments Dr Jon Frampton, University of Birmingham. "Although this is only a first step requiring considerable follow-up development, the study nevertheless represents an exciting breakthrough that will eventually make the prospect of repairing damaged hearts a reality and will also be an approach that can be extended to other organs."
Prof Wayne Morrison, Director of the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery, Melbourne, comments: "This is the first time a whole organ has been tissue engineered outside the body.
"They have demonstrated that they can create a heart that looks like a heart and is shaped like a heart and, most excitingly, that they can re-establish the blood vessels that were originally there. It is this 'regrowth' of the blood vessel cells that gives the potential in the future to connect this structure to a blood vessel in the body and then get circulation to go through it.
Dr Anita Thomas at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland, adds: "There is one more major step to achieve before we can proceed any further: we need to see what happens when these artificial hearts are placed in a recipient animal for any length of time. The authors of the article have the necessary skills and yet have not reported their results. We wait with anticipation for their next publication."
How to grow a heart
While there have been advances in growing heart tissue in the lab, the problem has been how to create a 3D scaffold that mimics the complex architecture and intricacies of the body's primary pump.
That is why Prof Doris Taylor and her colleagues resorted to "decellularization" - removing all of the cells from an organ with detergent - in this case an animal cadaver heart - leaving only the extracellular matrix, the framework between the cells, intact, along with the plumbing and heart valves.
After successfully removing all of the cells from both rat and pig hearts, the researchers injected rat hearts with a mixture of immature cells that came from newborn rat hearts and placed the structure in a sterile chamber in the lab to grow.
The results were very promising, Prof Taylor said. Four days after seeding the decellularized heart scaffolds with cells, contractions were observed. Eight days later, the hearts were pumping, albeit at only two per cent of the efficiency of an adult heart.
A study at of the hearts at the cellular level revealed that the "cells have many of the markers we associate with the heart and seem to know how to behave like heart tissue."
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