Glowing plants and DIY bio succeed on Kickstarter In the last week, over 3,000 people on Kickstarter ignored the fact it's next to impossible to keep a houseplant alive and backed the now fully-funded "Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity" campaign. The funds will be used to build upon existing technology and create a transgenic plant that has a soft blue-green glow to act as an electricity-free nightlight. Backer rewards, each glowing, include an arabidopsis plant, a rose plant, and arabidopsis seeds. We check in as the Glowing Plants team heads towards their first stretch goal and look at how this project is part of a bigger trend in DIY biology. But be warned: this is not your grandma's seed catalog. View all Arabidopsis thaliana is a small unassuming plant, but is as famous in science circles as any plant has a hope of achieving. The process is like building a custom hot rod. Some of the backer rewards also encourage this DIY biology ethic. Source: Glowing Plant, Kickstarter
Can Glowing Trees One Day Replace Electric Streetlights? “We don’t live in nature any more – we put boxes around it. But now we can actually engineer nature to sustain our needs. All we have to do is design the code and it will self-create. Our visions today – if we can encapsulate them in a seed – [will] grow to actually fulfill that vision.” - Andrew Hessel in a recent ArchDaily interview “Engineering nature to sustain our needs” is exactly what the Glowing Plant Project aims to do. How is this possible? Bioluminescence – the production and emission of light by a living organism – is the overarching concept of the Glowing Plant Project, whose team members are essentially injecting flowering plants with genes for bioluminescence. “The Glowing Plant is a symbol of the future, a symbol of sustainability and a symbol to inspire others to create new, living things,” says project leader Antony Evans. To read more about the Glowing Plant project and to donate to the cause, click here. References: Kickstarter, PRWeb, TIME
ReStore cette semaine: Organs on Demand RENAL RECONSTRUCTION: Wake Forest postdoctoral fellow Hyun-Wook Kang operates a 3-D printer that is making a kidney prototype with cells and biomaterials.IMAGE COURTESY OF WAKE FOREST INSTITUTE FOR REGENERATIVE MEDICINE On a stage in front of an audience of thousands, a futuristic-looking machine squirted gel from a nozzle. Layer by layer, it built up the material, shaping it into a curved, pink, kidney-shape structure based on a medical CT scan of a real organ. It was 2011, and Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, was demonstrating his progress in using three-dimensional (3-D) printing to make a kidney during his TED Talk. But Atala had not made a functional human kidney, as he at times seemed to imply and as the Agence France-Presse reported in a widely disseminated article. Atala’s kidney prototype represents both the promise of 3-D printing in a medical context and the hurdles that tissue engineers have yet to clear. Blood trouble References
iGem Synthetic Biology based on standard parts iGEM 2016 Registration for iGEM 2016 is now open! Visit 2016.igem.org for more information. The International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to education and competition, the advancement of synthetic biology, and the development of an open community and collaboration. iGEM runs three main programs: the iGEM Competition - an international competition for students interested in the field of synthetic biology; the Labs Program - a program for academic labs to use the same resources as the competition teams; and the Registry of Standard Biological Parts - a growing collection of genetic parts use for building biological devices and systems. Programs Click bellow to find more information about each program. Competition iGEM runs the premiere student competition in synthetic biology. Labs Program Academic labs can also be part of the iGEM community. Registry Values Facets Previous Years Note
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Converting fat cells from liposection to liver cells in nine days — a regenerative medicine breakthrough A new method of creating liver cells does not form tumors in immunocompromised mice. Three weeks after induced pluripotent stem cells (left, magnification below) were implanted in test tissue, palpable tumors were formed in the area of implantation. In contrast, no tumors were detected 2 months after the same number of the new spherical liver-like cells were implanted (right, magnification below). (Credit: Dan Xu et al./Cell Transplantation) A fast, efficient way to turn cells extracted from routine liposuction into liver cells — a feat with huge potential for regenerative medicine — has been developed by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists The scientists performed their experiments in mice, but the adipose (fat) stem cells they used came from human liposuction and actually became human, liver-like cells that flourished inside the mice’s bodies. This method is distinct from those producing liver cells from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS).
La tête d’un ver décapité repousse… avec sa mémoire Visant à fabriquer de nouveaux organes pour remplacer ceux qui se révèlent défectueux, la médecine régénératrice est un domaine en pleine expansion. Un domaine qui pose aussi des questions inattendues lorsqu’il touche au cerveau : pour les personnes souffrant d’une maladie neurodégénérative comme la maladie d’Alzheimer, qu’arrivera-t-il aux souvenirs stockés depuis l’enfance lorsqu’on repeuplera le cerveau avec des neurones tout neufs issus de cellules souches ? Les informations seront-elles perdues comme des archives brûlées ou bien parviendront-elles à être conservées grâce à une sorte de mémoire dynamique en constant remodelage ? La réponse à ces questions fascinantes pourrait bien venir de… vers. Plus précisément des planaires, des vers plats d’eau douce qu’affectionnent les biologistes pour plusieurs raisons. On commence à voir où les chercheurs veulent en venir car qui dit tête, dit cerveau et mémoire. C’est ce tour de force qui est décrit dans l’article du JEB.
Endeavor - Spiber Inc. The practical application of protein materials has been widely considered to be an unattainable goal. The technological and financial barriers involved are significant. However, we believe that this giant leap is necessary to push humanity forward into a more sustainable future. The moon is the most remote and extreme environment upon which mankind has ever set foot. Many said this "moonshot" was an impossible goal, but the brave, passionate men and women of the Apollo program changed the meaning of this word forever. The practical application of protein materials is our moonshot. Watch Video