Archive for May, 2014

Topics: editors picks, family, relationships, science, sex

INFERTILE men could in future be offered a new form of treatment based on converting their skin cells into the sperm-making tissue that is missing in their testicles, scientists have said.

A study has found that it is possible to convert skin cells into male "germ cells" which are responsible for sperm production, using an established technique for creating embryonic-like stem cells, in a form of genetic engineering.

The research, published in the journal Cell Reports, showed that stem cells derived from human skin become active germ cells when transplanted into the testes of mice - even when the man suffers from a genetic condition where he lacks functioning germ cells in his own testes.

Although the mice had functioning human male germ cells, they did not produce human sperm, said Renee Reijo Pera, of Montana State University, who led the study.

"There is an evolutionary block that means that when germ cells from one species are transferred to another, there is not full spermatogenesis unless the species are very closely related," she added.

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Skin cells provide new hope for infertile men

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

1-May-2014

Contact: Mary Beth O'Leary moleary@cell.com 617-397-2802 Cell Press

Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports on May 1st have successfully coaxed stem cells made from the skin cells of infertile men into producing sperm cell precursors. These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) produced sperm precursors following transplantation into the testes of mice.

The findings help to explain a genetic cause of male infertility and offer a window into basic sperm biology. The approach also holds considerable potential for clinical application, the researchers say.

"Our results are the first to offer an experimental model to study sperm development," said Renee Reijo Pera of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology & Regenerative Medicine and Montana State University. "Therefore, there is potential for applications to cell-based therapies in the clinic, for example, for the generation of higher quality and numbers of sperm in a dish.

"It might even be possible to transplant stem-cell-derived germ cells directly into the testes of men with problems producing sperm," she added. However, getting to that point will require considerable study to ensure the safety and practicality.

Infertility affects 10% to 15% of couples. Moreover, as the researchers note, genetic causes of infertility are surprisingly prevalent among men, most commonly due to the spontaneous loss of key genes on the Y sex chromosome. But the causes at the molecular level have not been well understood.

Reijo Pera said her primary motivation is to understand the fundamental decision early in development that enables the production of sperm cell precursors and ultimately sperm. One way to do that is to study cells lacking genes that are required for sperm production.

The researchers looked to infertile but otherwise normal men with deletions encompassing three Y chromosome azoospermia factor (AZF) regions, which are associated with the production of few or no sperm. They found that iPSCs derived from AZF-deleted cells were compromised in their ability to form sperm in a dish. But when those cells were transplanted into the seminiferous tubules of mice, they produced germ-cell-like cells (though significantly fewer than iPSCs derived from people without the AZF deletion do).

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Sperm precursors made from stem cells of infertile men

New York, NY (PRWEB) April 29, 2014

The Stem Cell Institute located in Panama City, Panama, welcomes special guest speaker Roberta F. Shapiro, DO, FAAPM&R to its public seminar on umbilical cord stem cell therapy on Saturday, May 17, 2014 in New York City at the New York Hilton Midtown from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

Dr. Shapiro will discuss A New York Doctors Path to Panama.

Dr. Shapiro operates a private practice for physical medicine and rehabilitation in New York City. Her primary professional activities include outpatient practice focused on comprehensive treatment of acute and chronic musculoskeletal and myofascial pain syndromes using manipulation techniques, trigger point injections, tendon injections, bursae injections, nerve and motor point blocks. Secondary work at her practice focuses on the management of pediatric onset disability.

She is the founder and president of the Dayniah Fund, a non-profit charitable foundation formed to support persons with progressive debilitating diseases who are faced with catastrophic events such as surgery or illness. The Dayniah Fund educates the public about the challenges of people with disabilities and supports research on reducing the pain and suffering caused by disabling diseases and conditions.

Dr. Shapiro serves as assistant clinical professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.

Stem Cell Institute Speakers include:

Neil Riordan PhD Clinical Trials: Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cell Therapy for Autism and Spinal Cord Injury

Dr. Riordan is the founder of the Stem Cell Institute and Medistem Panama Inc.

Jorge Paz-Rodriguez MD Stem Cell Therapy for Autoimmune Disease: MS, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus

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The long-term consumption of too much high-energy and high-fat food leads to overweight. Behind this trivial statement lies the extremely complex regulation of lipid metabolism. Together with colleagues from Japan, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim have now discovered that the Sirt7 gene plays a central role in energy metabolism. Despite consuming high-fat food, genetically modified mice that lack the gene maintain their normal weight.

Food was not always available to such excess as it is in western societies today. On the contrary, our metabolism was tailored to the optimum exploitation of energy, as humans, for millennia, had to budget their calories carefully. Thus, the formation and depletion of fat depots as energy stores is subject to complex regulation. A series of regulators is involved in lipid metabolism in the liver for the purpose of storing excess energy and making it available again when required.

Working in cooperation with colleagues from the Sendai and Kumamoto Universities in Japan, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research in Bad Nauheim have now identified a protein from the sirtuin group that plays a major role in the utilization of energy in the context of a high-fat diet and is responsible for the formation of fat depots. Sirtuins are known as a group of proteins with wide-ranging biological functions.

The researchers carried out their tests on mice which lack a sirtuin known as SIRT7. These Sirt7-knockout mice and non-genetically-modified animals were fed particularly high-fat pellets for months. "We established that Sirt7-knockout mice put on significantly less weight than the control group. On the contrary, they maintained their normal weight," says Eva Bober, a scientist at the MPI. Moreover, compared with the non-genetically-modified mice, these animals tended to have lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels in their livers and normal insulin levels. "Everything pointed to the fact that the animals which lacked SIRT7 were able to process the excess energy in the food better and did not build up any pathological fat depots," says Bober.

To investigate the molecular processes behind this observation, the scientists studied the gene activities of the liver cells. In the process, it emerged that SIRT7 activates the expression of a large number of genes for lipid metabolism. In the liver cells from mice without SIRT7, this gene remains largely unactivated and fewer fat depots are formed as a result.

"We discovered a second mechanism as well," says Bober. "SIRT7 also inhibits the degradation of certain proteins. Because they are then active for longer, these proteins also make a greater contribution to energy storage than is actually intended." Conversely, if SIRT7 is missing, these proteins are degraded and fewer fat depots are formed.

The researchers hope that their study will provide the basis for new therapeutic approaches. "We would now like to examine substances with which the function of SIRT7 can be deliberately inhibited. We want to examine whether the same effects arise as observed in the mice that lack the Sirt7 gene," explains Bober. The long-term objective is the development of a drug that would reduce the efficiency of lipid metabolism. This would enable the avoidance of overweight.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Fattening gene discovered by researchers

Human Genetic Engineering Final Project

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Human Genetic Engineering Final Project - Video

TTA14-OGM-Genetic Engineering
TTA14-OGM-Genetic Engineering.

By: Sallie Hill Outten

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TTA14-OGM-Genetic Engineering - Video

John Sterling | 05/01/2014

The following article, reproduced in full below, was originally published at Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.

Its been a hot year for biotech! As G. Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Co., noted in a recent report, life science firms raised $2.9 billion in new equity capital globally from public investors in February. This included $1.1 billion raised by 18 companies that completed initial public offerings and $1.8 billion raised by 23 companies that completed follow-on offerings during the month.

In the U.S., 16 life sciences companies raised $959 million through IPOs and 22 companies raised $1.75 billion through follow-on offerings on U.S. exchanges during February, making the month the biggest for IPOs in terms of the number of completed deals since February 2000!

Why the excitement? Promising new biotherapeutics are emerging from the drug pipeline. Advances in stem cell research and regenerative medicine are occurring at a rapid pace. And OMICS technologies (e.g., genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, glycomics, and lipomics), originally developed and used in the lab, are now making their way into clinical medicine, truly ready to usher in an era of personalized medicine.

The 2014 BIO International Convention will be held in San Diego this June. As usual, the BIO conference committee did a superb job in putting together a first-class program that covers a wide range of topics with something to offer everyone involved in biotech R&D or commercialization. Its been a tough call this year but here are my picks for the top 10 cant miss sessions at the conference.

To learn more about the program and available registration packages for Convention, please visithere

John Sterling is editor-in-chief of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN).

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GENs Top 10 Session Picks for the 2014 BIO International Convention

Today virtually everything we eat is produced from seeds that have been genetically altered in some way. New methods of plant tinkering have emerged over the generations and so, too, have the fears

Today virtually everything we eat is produced from seeds that have been genetically altered in one way or another. Credit: Thinkstock

Editor's note: The following is the introduction to the May 2014 issue of Scientific American Classics: The Birth of the Great GMO Debate.

The idea of intentionally infecting a plant with a bacterium might seem strange. Just three decades ago, however, researchers discovered that they could use this infection to deliver new and potentially useful genes into crops.

What has long appeared to be simply the agent of a bothersome plant disease is likely to become a major tool for the genetic manipulation of plants: for putting new genes into plants and thereby giving rise to new varieties with desired traits, announced acclaimed scientist Mary-Dell Chilton in 1983 in a pioneering article, one of many in this collection from the archives of Scientific American. Today genes introduced this way are yielding some of the most exciting new approaches to food securityas well as a hearty amount of debate.

Despite the excitement about the potential benefits of genetic engineering 30 years ago, the broader historical perspective highlighted in this collection reveals that this is just one of many thrilling and surprising advances in the long history of plant genetic alteration, which began well before this retrospective issue could document. (Scientific American extends back only to 1845.) Consider the assessment of the new technology of cross-pollination described in 1717 by botanist Richard Bradley: A curious person may by this knowledge produce such rare kinds of plants as have not yet been heard of.

For 10,000 years, in fact, we have altered the genetic makeup of our crops. For example, the ancient ancestor of modern corn was created some 6,000 years ago by Native Americans who domesticated a wild plant called teosinte, which looks nothing like a modern corn plant. If humans still depended on this wild relative, we would need hundreds, if not thousands, of times more plantsand acresto replace corn.

Today virtually everything we eat is produced from seeds that have been genetically altered in one way or another. The old approaches were crude and have been refined over the centuries. Modern methods include grafting and forced pollination (mixing genes of distantly related species) and radiation treatments to create random mutations in seeds. The newest method is genetic engineeringa technology developed after scientists observed that the bothersome plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens habitually introduced its own genes into plants. With a little laboratory work, the bacterium can instead implant desirable genes, such as those that increase nutrients or help the plant resist pests or drought.

The planting of genetically engineered crops during the past 20 years has drastically reduced the amount of synthetic insecticides sprayed worldwide, shifted the use of herbicides to those that are less toxic, rescued the U.S. papaya industry from disease, and benefited the health and well-being of farmers and their families and consumers. Every scientific review of the crops on the market so far has concluded that the plants are safe to eat.

Just as the excitement surrounding the benefits of genetic engineering paralleled those of our predecessors, so, too, has the fear of plant tinkering technologies persisted over time. Consider the comments of Maxwell T. Masters, president of the International Conference of Hybridization, in his 1899 Scientific American article: Many worthy people objected to the production of hybrids on the ground that it was an impious interference with the laws of Nature. Today we are all too familiar with similar arguments about the application of genetic engineering in agriculture.

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Plant Engineers Sow Debate

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Apr-2014

Contact: Gail Wilson gail.wilson@imperial.ac.uk 44-020-759-46702 Imperial College London

A distinctive genetic 'signature' found in the blood of children with tuberculosis (TB) offers new hope for improved diagnosis of the disease.

TB is very difficult to diagnose in children and is often recognised late when the child is already critically ill and the disease has spread from the lungs to the brain or other organs. Now an international team of researchers has shown that the disease can be identified in over 80 percent of cases by looking at 51 specific genes in the blood of affected children.

The researchers hope the findings published on 30 April in the New England Journal of Medicine could be used to develop a cheap, quick and effective diagnostic test.

Lead researcher, Professor Michael Levin, Director of the Wellcome Centre for Clinical Tropical Medicine at Imperial College London, explained: "We urgently need better methods to diagnose TB in children, so treatment can be started earlier and to avoid unnecessary treatment of children who are wrongly diagnosed. The symptoms of TB in children are common to many other childhood diseases, and the standard tests used on adults are not effective in children. Although the disease is treatable, thousands of children still die each year due to late diagnosis and many more are left with damage to their brain, bones and lungs."

The study funded through the EU and carried out at Wellcome Trust-supported units in Africa looked at over 2,800 children admitted to hospitals in South Africa, Malawi and Kenya with symptoms of TB. The researchers identified those who had proven TB and those in whom TB was excluded as the cause of the child's illness.

Blood samples from the South African and Malawian children were examined to see which genes were activated or suppressed in those with the disease. The researchers found that TB could be distinguished from other diseases by looking at just 51 genes from over 30,000 in the human genome and seeing whether they were activated or suppressed. This information was used to give a single TB risk score for each child which, when tested in the Kenyan patients, accurately diagnosed over 80 percent of the children with TB.

Professor Levin said: "It has taken seven years and the combined efforts of clinicians and scientists in the UK, Africa and Singapore to identify this gene signature of childhood TB. What we now need is collaboration from biotechnology and industrial partners to turn these findings into a simple, rapid and affordable test for TB that can be used in hospitals worldwide."

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Diagnosis of childhood TB could be improved by genetic discovery

Let #39;s Play: The Sims 3 Pets - (Part 34) - Equestrian Genetics
HIGHLIGHTS: -Julie #39;s midlife crisis ends! (thank god.. -We get lifetime happiness rewards! -Queen gets to level 9 in racing! -Granny learns the handiness ski...

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Let's Play: The Sims 3 Pets - (Part 34) - Equestrian Genetics - Video

Cannabis Genetics History EXODUS CHEESE grown by Lady Sativa Genetics Amsterdam Weed Review
visit http://andrew.pyrah.net for more - COMMENT and LIKE if you enjoyed the video and SUBSCRIBE to see my new videos as they are released - it all helps my ...

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Cannabis Genetics & History EXODUS CHEESE grown by Lady Sativa Genetics Amsterdam Weed Review - Video

The Sims 3 Perfect Genetics Challenge (Part 1) Welcome!
OPEN FOR IMPORTANT LINKS AND INFO Like/Follow me on: ONLINE STORE: http://jessamica92.spreadshirt.com/ SECOND CHANNEL: http://www.youtube.com/user/JessaGames WEBSITE: http://www.jessamica...

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The Sims 3 Perfect Genetics Challenge (Part 1) Welcome! - Video

Biotechnology - GMO #39;s Gene Therapy
Video notes on genetically modified organisms gene therapy.

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Biotechnology - GMO's & Gene Therapy - Video

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

1-May-2014

Contact: Leslie Orr Leslie_Orr@urmc.rochester.edu University of Rochester Medical Center

University of Rochester scientists have discovered a gene with a critical link to pancreatic cancer, and further investigation in mice shows that by blocking the gene's most important function, researchers can slow the disease and extend survival.

Published online by Cell Reports, the finding offers a potential new route to intrude on a cancer that usually strikes quickly, has been stubbornly resistant to targeted therapies, and has a low survival rate. Most recent improvements in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, in fact, are the result of using different combinations of older chemotherapy drugs. The research led by Hartmut "Hucky" Land, Ph.D., and Aram F. Hezel, M.D., of UR Medicine's James P. Wilmot Cancer Center, identifies a new target in the process of garbage recycling that occurs within the cancer cell called autophagy, which is critical to pancreatic cancer progression and growth.

Autophagy is derived from the Greek roots "auto" (self) and "phagein" (to eat), and is an intracellular digestive process that allows cells to survive under stress. During a cell's transformation from normal to malignant, autophagy speeds up to keep pace with rapid cellular changes and a tumor's quest to grow. The newly discovered PLAC-8 gene sustains the highly active recycling process, as it removes faulty proteins and organelles and degrades them into reusable building blocks during cancer progression.

"What makes this an exciting opportunity is that the gene we're studying is critical to the cancer cell's machinery but it is not essential to the function of normal cells," said Land, chair of Biomedical Genetics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and director of research at Wilmot. "By targeting these types of non-mutated genes that are highly specific to cancer, we are looking for more effective ways to intervene."

The Cell Reports study underlines Wilmot's overall unique approach to cancer research. Rather than investigate single faulty genes linked to single subtypes of cancer, Rochester scientists have identified a larger network of approximately 100 non-mutated genes that cooperate and control the shared activities of many cancers. While investigating this larger gene network, Land and Hezel focused on PLAC-8.

Moreover, the team found that by inactivating PLAC-8 in mice and shutting down autophagy, they could significantly slow cancer's progression. The relevance of PLAC-8 may also extend to other tumors lung, colon, and liver, for example -- that share key genetic changes such as KRAS and p53 mutations that are present in the majority of pancreatic cancers. The breadth of these findings is an area of ongoing study in the Land and Hezel labs.

"PLAC-8 and its job within the cancer cell of accelerating recycling suggests new points of attack and what we all hope will be opportunities to identify and develop new treatments," said Hezel, vice chief of Wilmot's Division of Hematology and Oncology and a UR associate professor. "Our data showing PLAC 8's role in autophagy has great potential because while there are other drugs being evaluated to inhibit autophagy, not all of them target proteins specifically important to this process in tumors."

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Gene discovery links cancer cell 'recycling' system to potential new therapy

NSC 342 Spinal Cord Injury Group Project
Daemen College, NSC 342 Spring 2014 Group Project Bailey Crook Katie Bull Nicole Kelley Sarah Munella.

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NSC 342 Spinal Cord Injury Group Project - Video

Heart cells created from human embryonic stem cells successfully restored damaged heart muscles in monkeys.

The results of the experiment appear in the April 30 advanced online edition of the journal Nature in a paper titled, "Human embryonic-stem cell derived cardiomyocytes regenerate non-human primate hearts."

The findings suggest that the approach should be feasible in humans, the researchers said.

"Before this study, it was not known if it is possible to produce sufficient numbers of these cells and successfully use them to remuscularize damaged hearts in a large animal whose heart size and physiology is similar to that of the human heart," said Dr. Charles Murry, UW professor of pathology and bioengineering, who led the research team that conducted the experiment.

A physician/scientist, Murry directs the UW Center for Cardiovascular Biology and is a UW Medicine pathologist.

Murry said he expected the approach could be ready for clinical trials in humans within four years.

In the study, Murry, along with Dr. Michael Laflamme and other colleagues at the UW Institute for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine, experimentally induced controlled myocardial infarctions, a form of heart attack, in anesthetized pigtail macaques.

The infarcts were created by blocking the coronary artery of macaque for 90 minutes, an established model for the study of myocardial infarction in primates.

In humans, myocardial infarctions are typically caused by coronary artery disease. The resulting lack of adequate blood flow can damage heart muscle and other tissues by depriving them of oxygen. Because the infarcted heart muscle does not grow back, myocardial infarction leaves the heart less able to pump blood and often leads to heart failure, a leading cause of cardiovascular death.

The goal of stem cell therapy is to replace the damaged tissue with new heart cells and restore the failing heart to normal function.

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Stem cell therapy regenerates heart muscle damaged from heart attacks in primates

Spinal Cord Injury Standing
April 27 2014 Me Practacing standing. A bit scary but I think it will get better. Doing it is key.

By: Ian Sands

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Trigger Point Injections to manage pain of Arachnoiditis (spinal cord injury)
Arachnoiditis Survivor needs your help to raise awareness include other Survivors in an empowering art project. This update posted for the Arachnoiditis Su...

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