Archive for the ‘Gene Therapy Research’ Category

June 30, 2013 What allows certain plants to survive freezing and thrive in the Canadian climate, while others are sensitive to the slightest drop in temperature? Those that flourish activate specific genes at just the right time -- but the way gene activation is controlled remains poorly understood.

A major step forward in understanding this process lies in a genomic map produced by an international consortium led by scientists from McGill University and the University of Toronto and published online today in the journal Nature Genetics.

The map, which is the first of its kind for plants, will help scientists to localize regulatory regions in the genomes of crop species such as canola, a major crop in Canada, according to researchers who worked on the project. The team has sequenced the genomes of several crucifers (a large plant family that includes a number of other food crops) and analyzed them along with previously published genomes to map more than 90,000 genomic regions that have been highly conserved but that do not appear to encode proteins.

"These regions are likely to play important roles in turning genes on or off, for example to regulate a plant's development or its response to environmental conditions," says McGill computer-science professor Mathieu Blanchette, one of the leaders of the study. Work is currently underway to identify which of those regions may be involved in controlling traits of particular importance to farmers.

The study also weighs in on a major debate among biologists, concerning how much of an organism's genome has important functions in a cell, and how much is "junk DNA," merely along for the ride. While stretches of the genome that code for proteins are relatively easy to identify, many other 'noncoding' regions may be important for regulating genes, activating them in the right tissue and under the right conditions.

While humans and plants have very similar numbers of protein-coding genes, the map published in Nature Genetics further suggests that the regulatory sequences controlling plant genes are far simpler, with a level of complexity between that of fungi and microscopic worms. "These findings suggest that the complexity of different organisms arises not so much from what genes they contain, but how they turn them on and off," says McGill biology professor Thomas Bureau, a co-author of the paper.

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Genomic atlas of gene switches in plants provides roadmap for crop research

27 June 2013 Last updated at 21:45 ET

Research into the genetic risks for asthma could lead to a test which predicts which children will never grow out of it, says a study in The Lancet.

Scientists found that those at higher genetic risk of asthma were 36% more likely to develop serious, life-long asthma than those with lower risk.

But they said it was too soon to be used as a reliable clinical test.

Asthma UK says the findings could help identify people whose asthma could become severe.

Earlier studies had linked several genes to small increases in asthma risk.

This study, led by researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, identified 15 separate locations in the human genome which are associated with asthma.

Using this knowledge combined with data from a major New Zealand health study of more than 1,000 people since birth, the researchers were able to calculate the genetic risk score for 880 individuals.

They then tracked the development and progression of their asthma from early childhood through to their late 30s.

Genetic risk prediction for asthma is still in its infancy.

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Asthma research in gene test hope

30 June 2013

Federated Farmers should back local farmers

Federated Farmers are backing the wrong side with their decision to support Environment Minister Amy Adams intention to block local councils from being able to regulate for genetic engineering in their local communities, the Green Party said today.

By supporting the Minister, Federated Farmers is misrepresenting rural New Zealand, many of its own members, and the majority of New Zealanders who do not want genetic engineering (GE) in their farming systems, environment or food supply, said Green Party GE spokesperson Steffan Browning.

Instead of protecting the best interests of local farming families, Federated Farmers is supporting a move that flies in the face of the international experience of GE, litigation, lower yields and unnecessary herbicide use.

Local councils need to represent their communities in the absence of government regulation. Its currently up to councils to ensure a genuinely precautionary approach to the risks of contamination, litigation, economic loss, and environmental damage from GE.

Government legislation, such as the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act and agencies such as the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment, consistently fail. GE proponents seem very happy to see inept legislation and compliance as a means towards the introduction of GE, regardless of the effects on New Zealand's clean green 100% Pure brand.

Federated Farmers has also discouraged suspension of the neonicitinoid poisons that threaten the important pollination activity of honey bees and other insects.

It is vital that spokespeople for primary production in New Zealand, like Federated Farmers, represent the best interests of family farmers and sustainable farming systems, not the corporate interests of the life sciences and agrichemical industry giants.

Federated Farmers grains council has previously been concerned at the risks of GE contamination in exports to Japan and elsewhere, and the honey industry knows that the EU and other markets don't want GE in a speck of their pollen or honey products.

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Federated Farmers should back local farmers

Federated Farmers are backing the wrong side with their decision to support Environment Minister Amy Adams intention to block local councils from being able to regulate for genetic engineering in their local communities, the Green Party said today.

"By supporting the Minister, Federated Farmers is misrepresenting rural New Zealand, many of its own members, and the majority of New Zealanders who do not want genetic engineering (GE) in their farming systems, environment or food supply," said Green Party GE spokesperson Steffan Browning.

"Instead of protecting the best interests of local farming families, Federated Farmers is supporting a move that flies in the face of the international experience of GE, litigation, lower yields and unnecessary herbicide use.

"Local councils need to represent their communities in the absence of government regulation. Its currently up to councils to ensure a genuinely precautionary approach to the risks of contamination, litigation, economic loss, and environmental damage from GE.

"Government legislation, such as the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act and agencies such as the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment, consistently fail.

"GE proponents seem very happy to see inept legislation and compliance as a means towards the introduction of GE, regardless of the effects on New Zealand's clean green 100% Pure brand.

"Federated Farmers has also discouraged suspension of the neonicitinoid poisons that threaten the important pollination activity of honey bees and other insects.

"It is vital that spokespeople for primary production in New Zealand, like Federated Farmers, represent the best interests of family farmers and sustainable farming systems, not the corporate interests of the life sciences and agrichemical industry giants.

"Federated Farmers grains council has previously been concerned at the risks of GE contamination in exports to Japan and elsewhere, and the honey industry knows that the EU and other markets don't want GE in a speck of their pollen or honey products.

"GE contamination has had a significant cost on rural communities world wide. The Environment Minister and Federated Farmers should stop pretending that New Zealand legislation can prevent the same here.

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Federated Farmers should back local farmers - Green Party

Asthma Health Home>>Asthma>>Health news Written by: QMI Agency Jun. 29, 2013 A child uses an inhaler. Image from Fotolia

A genetic test might be able to predict whether children with asthma are likely to grow out of it by the time they become adults, new research says.

The study, led by researchers from Duke University in North Carolina, was published Friday in the online issue of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

The researchers say they looked at the results of a huge genetic study of asthma, drafted a profile of asthma risk genes and tested it against a leading asthma research database of individuals that have been followed from birth to their 30's.

The team says individuals who had the highest genetic risk scores were the ones most likely to develop asthma, developed it earlier, and tended to have more severe asthma.

Another important result from the study was that "the genetic risk profile was able to give more information about asthma risk than you could get from looking at family history of the disease," the researchers said.

They emphasized that although the study shows it is possible to use a genetic risk profile to predict which children with asthma will grow out of it and which will have the persistent form of the disease, "more work needs to be done before it can be used with patients."

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Genetic test may predict who'll outgrow asthma

Jennifer Estep has never been diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer. Yet, the 37-year-old mother of two has had her breasts and ovaries surgically removed.

Estep, of Cooper City, is one of many women who have had preventive, or prophylactic, surgery after a test showed they carried a genetic mutation that significantly increased their risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.

Indeed, a study of 2,677 women in nine countries who tested positive for BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene mutations that significantly increase a womans risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer showed that many American women chose to have their breasts or ovaries removed once they learned they carried the genes.

Genetic testing and the BRCA gene mutations were thrust into the spotlight after actress Angelina Jolie revealed in a May 14th op-ed column in The New York Times that she had a preventive double mastectomy because she carried the BRCA 1 mutation. Jolie, 38, like many other BRCA-positive women, has a family history of breast and ovarian cancer. Her mother died in 2007 of ovarian cancer and her aunt recently passed away from breast cancer.

That genetic test made all the difference in the world for me, Estep said. Without it, I would be sitting and waiting to get breast cancer.

Maxine Chang-Chin, a cancer risk assessment counselor at Memorial Healthcare System in Broward, said Jolies choice has increased awareness about genetic testing.

It opens up that conversation. Some patients heard about it and now called and said they want to have genetic testing done, said Chang-Chin, who said at least five patients called recently to talk about genetic testing. They are also saying, You know what, I am more comfortable removing my breasts than I was before. Its making them feel more comfortable because Angelina Jolie is young as well.

Dr. Olaf Bodamer, medical director at the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Department of Human Genetics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said his laboratory has been getting a number of calls by women seeking genetic testing.

I think there was an immediate spike following the story in The New York Times, Bodamer said.

But, Chang-Chin and Bodamer noted, genetic testing is not for everyone.

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Opening up the conversation about BRCA genetic testing

FRIDAY, June 28 (HealthDay News) -- People with more genetic risks for asthma are not only more likely to develop the disease in childhood, but also more likely to continue to have asthma into adulthood, according to a new study.

Previous studies have linked several genes to increased asthma risk, so the researchers wanted to investigate the cumulative effect of those genes.

For the study, they analyzed data from 880 people in New Zealand who have been followed since they were born in 1972 or 1973. Those with more genetic risks for asthma developed asthma earlier in life than those with fewer genetic risks. Among study participants who developed asthma in childhood, asthma that persisted into adulthood was more likely in those with more genetic risks.

These patients also had more allergic reactions associated with severe and persistent asthma and developed lung function problems. Their quality of life also suffered because they missed work and school more often and were admitted to hospital more often due to asthma.

The study appears June 28 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.

"We've been able to look at how newly discovered genetic risks relate to the life course of asthma at an unprecedented level of resolution," Daniel Belsky, a postdoctoral fellow at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy and the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development, said in a university news release.

However, much more research is needed before it may be possible to use genetic risk scores for asthma in patients, he noted.

"It will be important to explore how these genetic risks play out in environments that differ in terms of air pollution or other important, modifiable factors," Belsky said.

He added that the study could lead to a better understanding of the biology of asthma and help efforts to develop new ways to prevent and treat asthma, which affects 26 million people in the United States.

-- Robert Preidt

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Genetic Risks for Asthma May Persist Into Adulthood

Health segment 5: Possible results from your genetic screen from Paw Print Genetics
Kobe #39;s results are revealed! Watch this final health segment on the Working Man #39;s Retriever to see Kobe results and understand what you will receive after te...

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Health segment 5: Possible results from your genetic screen from Paw Print Genetics - Video

Bloat Genetics (6/29/13)
Megan Rolf tells us how cattle genetics may impact bloat.

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Bloat Genetics (6/29/13) - Video

Genetics in Cancer Prevention: Cancer Registries Clinical Trials
University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus Cancer Genetics Course A 5-day intensive course in the genetics of cancer for upper level undergraduates, ...

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Genetics in Cancer Prevention: Cancer Registries

Genetic Therapies for Genetic Diseases: Results and Lessons from Recent Successes
Genetic Therapies for Genetic Diseases: Results and Lessons from Recent Successes Air date: Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 3:00:00 PM Description: Wednesday Aftern...

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New Guiding Principles in Cancer Gene Research -- Brad Cairns, PhD
The discovery, by Bradley R. Cairns, PhD, Senior Director of Basic Science at Huntsman Cancer Institute and a professor in the Department of Oncological Scie...

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New Guiding Principles in Cancer Gene Research -- Brad Cairns, PhD - Video

A gene scorecard may one day help predict which youngsters are likely to grow out of childhood asthma and which will have the disease in adulthood, a study said on Thursday.

Asthma is one of the commonest disorders among children in developed countries and is spreading fast in emerging economies.

Roughly half of children with asthma will emerge from it by the time they become young adults -- but until now, no-one knows how to determine who will be the lucky ones.

The new research, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine Journal, marks a first step towards a predictive test.

Researchers in the United States put together a risk score derived from 15 genetic variants that are closely associated with asthma.

They tested this model on data from a highly-regarded, long-running study in New Zealand, in which 880 people have been tracked for health since their birth 40 years ago.

Those whose DNA carried most risk variants were more than a third likelier to develop asthma earlier in life and to have asthma that persisted into adulthood than those at low genetic risk.

A higher score also meant they were likelier to be prone to asthma-related allergic reactions and impaired lung function. They were also likelier to miss school or work than counterparts with a lower genetic risk.

The test is an initial foray into a complex disease believed to have environmental and genetic factors, and for which more risk variants are likely to emerge.

It could unlock better understanding of the biology of asthma, notably how pollution and genes interact.

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Gene clues show which children will grow out of asthma

TUESDAY, June 25 (HealthDay News) -- Five newly identified genetic regions linked to the onset of migraine could boost scientists' understanding of what drives the painful headaches, researchers say.

"This study has greatly advanced our biological insight about the cause of migraine," Dr. Aarno Palotie, from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom, said in an institute news release. Migraine is difficult to study, he added, because "between episodes the patient is basically healthy, so it's extremely difficult to uncover biochemical clues."

In their research, Palotie's team pinpointed five genetic regions tied to migraine. They did so after analyzing the results of 29 different genetic studies involving more than 100,000 samples from people with and without migraines.

Some of the five regions are close to a network of genes that are sensitive to oxidative stress, a biochemical process that leads to improper functioning of cells. The researchers believe that many of the genes in regions associated with migraine are interconnected and may be disrupting the internal regulation of tissue and cells in the brain, resulting in some of the symptoms of migraine.

The researchers also identified another 134 genetic regions that are possibly associated with migraine susceptibility.

Migraine affects about 14 percent of adults, and according to the researchers this was the largest study of migraine genetics to date.

"We would not have made discoveries by studying smaller groups of individuals," study co-author Dr. Gisela Terwindt, of Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, said in the news release. Having such a large study population "means we can tease out the genes that are important suspects and follow them up in the lab."

-- Robert Preidt

Copyright 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

SOURCE: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, news release, June 23, 2013

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Gene Discoveries Could Give Insight Into Migraines

Public release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Eduard Akhunov eakhunov@k-state.edu 785-532-1342 Kansas State University

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- The world's food supply got a little more plentiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough.

Eduard Akhunov, associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University, and his colleague, Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California-Davis, led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat stem rust pathogen -- called Ug99 -- that was first discovered in Uganda in 1999. The discovery may help scientists develop new wheat varieties and strategies that protect the world's food crops against the wheat stem rust pathogen that is spreading from Africa to the breadbaskets of Asia and can cause significant crop losses.

Other Kansas State University researchers include Harold Trick, professor of plant pathology; Andres Salcedo, doctoral candidate in genetics; and Cyrille Saintenac, a postdoctoral research associate currently working at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in France. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Borlaug Global Rust Initiative.

The team's study, "Identification of Wheat Gene Sr35 that Confers Resistance to Ug99 Stem Rust Race Group," appears in the journal Science.

It identifies the stem rust resistance gene named Sr35, and appears alongside a study from an Australian group that identifies another effective resistance gene called Sr33.

"This gene, Sr35, functions as a key component of plants' immune system," Akhunov said. "It recognizes the invading pathogen and triggers a response in the plant to fight the disease."

Wheat stem rust is caused by a fungal pathogen. According to Akhunov, since the 1950s wheat breeders have been able to develop wheat varieties that are largely resistant to this pathogen. However, the emergence of strain Ug99 in Uganda in 1999 devastated crops and has spread to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, though has yet to reach the U.S.

"Until that point, wheat breeders had two or three genes that were so efficient against stem rust for decades that this disease wasn't the biggest concern," Akhunov said. "However, the discovery of the Ug99 race of pathogen showed that changes in the virulence of existing pathogen races can become a huge problem."

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Resistance gene found against Ug99 wheat stem rust pathogen

Two genes that are resistant to fungal wheat disease may help ward off a growing epidemic of stem rust that threatens crops in Africa, the Middle East and beyond, researchers said Friday.

International scientists have spent years trying to pin down the sections of the wheat genome that are resistant to Ug99, a pathogen that was first found to be killing wheat crops in Uganda in the late 1990s and has since appeared in Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran.

The last major outbreak of wheat stem rust in the 1950s was quelled two decades later with the introduction of a resistant strain of plants, a pioneering project by Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution.

Concerns resurfaced when the Ug99 pathogen appeared, packing the potential to infect 90 percent of the crop globally and risking unrest linked to shortages and high prices since wheat provides about 20 percent of the world's food.

Two genes -- Sr35 and Sr33 -- appear to confer resistance by acting as part of the plant's immune system and fighting off the deadly fungal disease.

"This is a very significant development," said Ronnie Coffman, international professor of plant breeding at Cornell University who was not involved in the two companion studies published in the US journal Science.

"It puts us in a position eventually to stack multiple genes, tightly linked, that will provide durable resistance against the pathogen," he told AFP.

The hunt for resistant genes has taken many years and was made harder by the complexity of the wheat genome, which has almost twice as much genetic information as the human genome, researchers said.

One of the resistant genes, Sr35, was identified in an ancient and rarely planted form of wheat known as einkorn, found in Turkey.

"Until now, however, we did not know what kind of gene confers resistance to Ug99 in this wheat accession," said researcher Eduard Akhunov, associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University.

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Gene discoveries may aid fight against wheat disease

Kim Knerl Speaks On Better Food Better Ways Of Living
Kim starts speaking at 02:46 What did the more than 2 million people from 52 countries and 436 cities do on their March Against Monsanto, 25 May 2013? This, ...

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Kim Knerl Speaks On Better Food

Matthew Liao - Engineer Humans to Stop Climate Change (Ideas at the House)
The latest science suggests that it is too late to prevent human-induced climate change. Technological optimists are now turning their minds to mitigation th...

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Matthew Liao - Engineer Humans to Stop Climate Change (Ideas at the House) - Video

Walter Kloefkorn Speaks On Beyond Corporate Globalization
Water starts speaking at 02:46 What did the more than 2 million people from 52 countries and 436 cities do on their March Against Monsanto, 25 May 2013? This...

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Walter Kloefkorn Speaks On Beyond Corporate Globalization - Video

Her techniques aren't super-sophisticated. She's not a leader in the field. She's more or less an amateur. This is what you can do with ordinary genetic engineering tools right now. Artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg can find a cigarette lying on the sidewalk on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, and working from traces of saliva, by pulling DNA out of those saliva cells and using a bunch of simple algorithms available online, she can make some very educated guesses about what the smoker might look like.

She thinks she's got a probable lead on not only gender, but on more subtle things: eye color, hair color, facial structure, skin tone. The bit of green chewing gum she found next to a bodega on Wilson Avenue ...

... "probably" (while the probabilities may vary with characteristics) belonged to a Latino man who looks like this ...

And, although this isn't fair because she already knows what she looks like, when she tried retro-engineering herself from her own DNA, this is what she got ...

How she does this, you will see here, in this short (well, it's longer than I usually post, clocking in at more than 11 minutes) documentary shot by Kari Mulholland. The video takes us from Heather sitting in her doctor's waiting room pondering a little hair stuck under glass in a picture frame, and then we move on, to her decision to collect loose hairs left on subway seats, tabletops, to the business of breaking DNA out of ordinary saliva or hair, to her finding the genetic bits that code for eye color, hair color and facial features online, to her ultimate works: 3-D sculptures that are now shown in art galleries all over the world.

As commentator Ellen Jorgensen says, Heather's project is "a very accessible way for the public to engage with this new technology. It really brings it to light how powerful it is, the idea that a hair from your head can fall on your street and a perfect stranger can pick it up and know something about it, and with DNA sequencing becoming faster and cheaper, this is the world we're all going to be living in."

I guess so. What I don't know is, How close is she getting, really? What I do know, is that while getting her Ph.D. and doing her art, she has managed to learn whatever it is you need to know to do this, and it didn't seem to take her that long.

I'm thinking, this is a game a lot of people can, and one day will, play. I hope they're nice people.

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Artist Plays Detective: Can I Reconstruct A Face From A Piece Of Hair?

28 Jun 2013 00:00

It is controversial due to fears over genetic engineering, but supporters claim only a tiny bit of DNA is changed

Getty

Britain could become the first nation to allow babies to be born with three genetic parents, officials will announce today.

A landmark decision by the Department of Health opens the door to treatments for diseases that make use of donated DNA from a second donor mum.

New regulations to fertility law allowing the procedures will be issued for public consultation later this year and then debated in Parliament.

If MPs find them ethically acceptable the first patients could be treated within months.

Around 10 three parent babies could be born every year.

Allowing the currently illegal techniques would mark a turning point because it means altering the germ line made up of inherited DNA.

Experts say only the tiny amount of DNA in a cells battery packs - the mitochondria - would be changed.

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Britain set to allow babies to be born with THREE genetic parents in world first

Public release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Sophie Mohin smohin@liebertpub.com 914-740-2100 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc./Genetic Engineering News

New Rochelle, NY, June 28, 2013Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers announces the launch of 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing, a highly innovative, peer-reviewed journal on this rapidly growing disruptive technology. The preview issue will publish in the fall of 2013, and quarterly thereafter in 2014. Editor-in-Chief Hod Lipson, PhD, is the Director of Cornell University's Creative Machines Lab at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

The Journal will include original articles, exclusive interviews with top professionals and innovators in the field, commentaries, opinion pieces, industry reports, a debate section, webinars, videos, and podcasts. 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing will publish comprehensive and timely authoritative world-class material and will enable readers to become global participants in a unique multimedia platform.

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To sign up for email alerts for 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing contact journalmarketing2@liebertpub.com.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals, including Big Data, New Space, Soft Robotics, Tissue Engineering, Rejuvenation Research, and Environmental Engineering Science. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's more than 70 journals, newsmagazines, and books is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 140 Huguenot Street, New Rochelle, NY 10801-5215 http://www.liebertpub.com Phone (914) 740-2100 (800) M-LIEBERT Fax (914) 740-2101

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3-D Printing and Additive Manufacturing preview issue publishing Fall 2013

Wheat stem rust goes after its favorite meal.

Evans Lagudah and Zakkie Pretorius

Currently, roughly 20 percent of humanity's caloric intake comes from wheat. Agricultural strains, specialized for bread or pasta production, have been bred for high productivity and resistance to many agricultural pests. But over the past few years, one of those pests, a fungus called wheat stem rust, has evolved the ability to overcome wheat's defenses. Dangerous strains of wheat stem rust were first spotted in Uganda, but are now present elsewhere in Africa, in Yemen, and in some areas of Iran. That's set off an international scramble to find ways of generating a resistant wheat before the rust spreads any further.

By working with uncultivated relatives of agricultural wheat, two teams of scientists have identified a pair of genes, each of which provides partial resistance to the new strain of stem rust. Although each gene can be bred back into commercial wheat strains, the combination of the two is likely to be even more potent, so the researchers are considering putting them on a single DNA construct and then engineering that into various agricultural strains.

Wheat stem rust infections severely limit the plant's productivity and can kill it in severe infections. In the early 1900s, outbreaks in the US would routinely destroy a double-digit percentage of the nation's harvest. The breeding of resistant strains of wheat was thereforea major accomplishment. In 1999, however, researchers in Uganda discovered a new strain of stem rust (Ug99) that could infect resistant crops. Since then, the fungus has spread to other parts of Africa, and resistant strains have been spotted in the Middle East. Tests indicate that roughly 90 percent of the currently cultivated wheat strains are vulnerable to it. In 2005, a group was formed to coordinate international efforts to breed a resistant crop.

Fortunately, a significant number of wild relatives of wheat, along with strains that are no longer cultivated, have been maintained. Current agricultural strains are hexaploid, meaning they have six sets of chromosomes instead of the usual two (the extra chromosomes affect wheat's growth and seed production), with two sets each coming from three different wheat strains. One of those three strains turned out to be partially resistant to the Ug99 strain; in another case, a wild relative of another strain that contributed chromosomes to commercial wheat turned out to be resistant. The genes involved are Sr33 and Sr35, respectively.

Since those discoveries, scientists have been doing the painstaking task of breeding the individual genes back into non-resistant strains of wheat and generating a genetic map to identify where it resides in the genome. Once they had narrowed it down to a handful of genes, they took a resistant strain and exposed it to mutagens. Some of the wheat offspring became susceptible to Ug99 again, and DNA sequencing revealed the specific gene that was mutated, allowing researchers to identify the source of resistance.

Both Sr33 and Sr35 turned out to be related to a large family of pathogen resistance genes in plants, all of which share the ability to bind nucleotides like ATP and have a long stretch that allows two of them to wrap around each other in what's called a coiled-coil. In each case, the genes were part of a cluster of related resistance genes; recombination among them appears to help create a diverse set of resistance proteins.

The previous breeding work shows that these genes work when bred into other strains of wheat, but one of the studies went well beyond that, cloning Sr35 and inserting it into a gene transfer vector. When the DNA for the vector was inserted into a new strain of wheat, some of the offspring were resistant to Ug99.

The authors of both papers suggest that having both Sr33 and Sr35 present is more likely to provide full resistance to Ug99, and limit the stem rust fungus from evolving tolerance a second time. But it would take years to breed just one of the genes into a commercial wheat strain, and then breed back the strain's useful agricultural properties. So, the papers advocate putting both Sr33 and Sr35 into a gene transfer vector, and doing some genetic modification of existing wheat strains. That process would greatly accelerate the full availability of resistant strains.

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Old wheat, new genetic engineering may protect crop from deadly pest

Oops. The World Food Prize committees got a bit of egg on its facegenetically engineered egg. They justawardedthe World Food Prize to three scientists, including one from Syngenta and one from Monsanto, who invented genetic engineering because,they say, the technology increases crop yields and decreases pesticide use. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Monsanto and Syngenta are majorsponsorsof the World Food Prize, along with a third biotech giant, Dupont Pioneer.)

Monsanto makes the same case on itswebsite, saying, Since the advent of biotechnology, there have been a number of claims from anti-biotechnology activists that genetically modified (GM) crops dont increase yields. Some have claimed that GM crops actually havelower yields than non-GM crops GM crops generally have higher yields due to both breeding and biotechnology.

But thats not actually the case. A new peer-reviewed study published in theInternational Journal of Agricultural Sustainabilityexamined those claims and found that conventional plant breeding, not genetic engineering, is responsible for yield increases in major U.S. crops. Additionally, GM crops, also known as genetically engineered (GE) crops, cant even take credit for reductions in pesticide use. The studys lead author, Jack Heinemann, is not an anti-biotechnology activist, as Monsanto might want you to believe. Im a genetic engineer. But there is a different between being a genetic engineer and selling a product that is genetically engineered, he states.

The study compared major crop yields and pesticide use in North America, which relies heavily on GE crops, and Western Europe, which grows conventionally bred non-GE crops. The studys findings are important for the future of the U.S. food supply, and therefore for the world food supply since the U.S. is a major exporter of many staple crops.

Heinemann, a professor of molecular biology at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and director of the Center for Integrated Research in Biosafety, says he first began looking into the matter after he heard a remark made by Paul Collier in 2010. Both Heinemann andCollier, an Oxford economics professor and author of the bestselling bookThe Bottom Billion, were speaking at a conference in Zurich.

Collier made the offhand remark during his talk that because Europe has shunned GMOs [genetically modified organisms], its lost productivity compared to the US, Heinemann recalls. That seemed odd to me. So while he was talking, I went to the FAO [UN Food and Agriculture Organization] database and I had a look at yields for corn. And over the short term, from 1995 to 2010, the US and Western Europe were neck and neck, there was no difference at all. So his assertion that lack of GMOs was causing Europe to fall behind didnt seem true.

Heinemann attempted to ask Collier for the source of his facts through the conferences Internet-mediated audience Q&A system, but he never got an answer. He continued poking around for data and stumbled upon what he calls the textbook example of the problems that come from a low genetic diversity in agriculture the 1970 Southern corn leaf blight epidemic.

Really what happened by 1970 was that upwards of 85 percent of the corn grown in the US was almost genetically identical, explains Heinemann. The US is the worlds biggest producer of corn and both geographically and in quantity, so when you cover that much land with a crop of such a low genetic diversity, youre simply asking for it to fail In 1970 a previously unknown pathogen hit the US corn crop and the US almost lost the entire crop. It was a major crisis of the day. The only thing that saved the corn crop was that the weather changed in 1971 and that weather change wasnt as favorable to the pathogen, so it gave farmers and breeders and extra year to swap over the corn germplasm to a variety that wasnt as vulnerable.

All told, the epidemic cost an estimated five trillion kilocalories in lost food energy, making it many times larger than the Irish potato famine, said Heinemann.

Now that was in a day where biofuels were not being made from corn. So there was no competition for those food calories Fast-forward to the drought of 2012. How many food calories were lost because of it? In kilocalories, its 89 trillion just from the drought. Thats just from an annual variation due to weather The U.S. is the biggest producer and exporter of corn.

See more here:
Study: Monsanto GMO food claims probably false

Study identified genetic changes which increase chance of childhood asthma turning into life-long condition Genetic tests could be used to predict children likely to grow out of asthma About half of asthmatic children will stop suffering symptoms by adolescence

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 18:04 EST, 27 June 2013 | UPDATED: 18:04 EST, 27 June 2013

Genetic testing can indicate whether or not a child is likely to grow out of asthma, research has shown.

Results from a 40-year-long study have identified genetic changes which increase the chances of childhood asthma turning into a life-long condition by 36 per cent.

The findings suggest that genetic tests might prove a useful way to predict long-term asthma risk in the future.

Research showed genetic testing can indicate whether a child will grow out of asthma (file picture)

But experts stress they are not yet advanced enough to be used in clinical practice.

Around half of all children with asthma will stop suffering symptoms by the time they reach adolescence or adulthood.

Originally posted here:
Genetic tests can show if children are likely to grow out of asthma according to study lasting 40 YEARS