09 Apr

Posted at 17:20h in Scoop.it

Researchers are developing a probiotic to make disease-causing bacteria self-destruct.

 

As resistance to antibiotics grows in the U.S., researchers are looking for new ways to fight germs like Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that can cause fatal infections in hospitals and nursing homes.

One way to do that: a “CRISPR pill” that instructs harmful bacteria to self-destruct.

CRISPR is the powerful gene-editing technology already being explored as a way to precisely edit human genes to cure diseases (see "Can CRISPR Save Ben Dupree?"). But the technology’s versatility is such that it’s being studied for a huge range of other uses. Just last week scientists in Boston showed they could craft CRISPR into cheap, simple diagnostic tests.

Now scientists want to turn it into ultra-precise antimicrobial treatments to “specifically kill your bacteria of choice,” says food scientist Jan-Peter Van Pijkeren of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.technologyreview.com

09 Apr

Posted at 17:17h in Scoop.it

The device could be used to rapidly diagnose genetic diseases or to evaluate the accuracy of gene-editing techniques

 

Most methods for the detection of nucleic acids require many reagents and expensive and bulky instrumentation. Here, scientists now report the development and testing of a graphene-based field-effect transistor that uses clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technology to enable the digital detection of a target sequence within intact genomic material. Termed CRISPR–Chip, the biosensor uses the gene-targeting capacity of catalytically deactivated CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) complexed with a specific single-guide RNA and immobilized on the transistor to yield a label-free nucleic-acid-testing device whose output signal can be measured with a simple handheld reader.

 

The team used the CRISPR–Chip to analyze DNA samples collected from HEK293T cell lines expressing blue fluorescent protein, and clinical samples of DNA with two distinct mutations at exons commonly deleted in individuals with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In the presence of genomic DNA containing the target gene, CRISPR–Chip generates, within 15 min, with a sensitivity of 1.7 fM and without the need for amplification, a significant enhancement in output signal relative to samples lacking the target sequence. The CRISPR–Chip expands the applications of CRISPR–Cas9 technology to the on-chip electrical detection of nucleic acids.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: news.berkeley.edu

09 Apr

Posted at 17:14h in Scoop.it

A virus that inserts itself into the genome of a type of banana plagues plantations in Africa, but CRISPR gene editing can be used to eliminate the viral DNA. Genome editing has been used to destroy a virus that lurks inside many of the bananas grown in Africa. Other teams are trying to use it to make the Cavendish bananas sold in supermarkets worldwide resistant to a disease that threatens to make it impossible to grow this variety commercially in future.

 

An Australian team has already genetically engineered the Cavendish to make it resistant by adding a gene from a wild banana. But because of the opposition to GM food worldwide, this variety may never be grown commercially. Using CRISPR is seen as preferable because some countries including the US do not regard genome edited plants as transgenic, depending on what has been done. Because the Cavendish is a sterile mutant that can only be propagated by cloning, there is no way to breed resistant varieties. Instead, several teams worldwide are trying to use CRISPR to make it resistant to Tropical Race 4.

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.newscientist.com

01 Apr

Posted at 23:23h in Scoop.it

SailDrone makes wind powered + solar powered ocean drones to understand planetary systems affecting humanity. The company designs, manufactures, and operates their global fleet sail-drones — monitoring the state of the planet in real time. Their data sets can be used by commercial enterprise, research institutions, or private groups on specific missions.

 

SailDrone is making world history by offering high resolution, ocean data collection at-scale. Their sail-drone is 20 feet long, 18 feet high above the water, weighs 600 pounds. It can operate indefinitely: the wind is propulsion that pushes it along, a solar power panel charges the batteries that run the on-board computers + communications equipment.

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.kurzweilai.net

01 Apr

Posted at 23:21h in Scoop.it

Aiming a laser beam at an aircraft isn’t a harmless prank: The sudden flash of bright light can incapacitate the pilot, risking the lives of passengers and crew. But because attacks can happen with different colored lasers, such as red, green or even blue, scientists have had a difficult time developing a single method to impede all wavelengths of laser light. Today, researchers report liquid crystals that could someday be incorporated into aircraft windshields to block any color of bright, focused light.

 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: phys.org

01 Apr

Posted at 23:19h in Scoop.it

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio observatories spanning the globe, has set its sights on a pair of behemoths: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center, and an even more massive black hole 53.5 million light-years away in galaxy M87. In April 2017, the observatories teamed up to observe the black holes’ event horizons, the boundary beyond which gravity is so extreme that even light can’t escape. After almost two years of rendering the data, scientists are gearing up to release the first images in April, 2019. 

 

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.sciencenews.org

24 Mar

Posted at 16:11h in Scoop.it

Nearly one in two children with cancer are never diagnosed and may die untreated, according to a new model proposed in a study published in The Lancet Oncology by Zachary Ward and colleagues from Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

In fact, the model estimates that there were 397.000 childhood cancer cases globally in 2015, while only 224,000 had been previously recorded as diagnosed that year, leading ultimately the researchers to say that over 43% of childhood cancer cases were undiagnosed. But there was substantial regional variation: it ranges from 3% in both Western Europe (120 undiagnosed cases out of 4,300 total new cases) and North America (300 of 10,900 cases), to 57% (43,000 of 76,000 new cases) in Western Africa. With such path, at current levels of health system performances, If no improvements are made, the study authors estimated that nearly three million out of 6.7 million total cases will be missed between 2015 and 2030.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: cancerworld.net

24 Mar

Posted at 16:09h in Scoop.it

Projection mapping is one of the most recent visual technologies that so far has been out of reach for consumers. The company Lightform is hoping to change that with its projector-mounted scanner and software. We get our hands on the Lightform device to see how it maps objects and environments in front of it–like a replica movie prop–and go through the software to learn how to create striking augmented visuals on top of the real world.

 

How it works

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.youtube.com