Gene editing gone rogue to making something cool with spiders. We are also cooling down with some cryopreservation to get ready to go up to space to look for new microbes and space crystals (still not that kind!)
A match made in gene-editing heaven, Cathy Tie, the bio-tech prodigy-turned-entrepreneur, tied the knot with another prodigy, Jiankui He, the most controversial CRISPR baby maniac. He still claims "Ethics is holding back scientific innovation and progress", even after serving prison time for conducting clinical studies involving germline editing of human embryos, resulting in several pregnancies and two alleged live births, among several other blatant breaches of research and humane ethics.
Cathy seemed to be a better half, branded as a Wunderkid on CNN and even appeared on Forbes' “30 Under 30” list in 2018. But this year, she announced the Los Angeles Project, which will try to modify animal embryos to make fluorescent glow-in-the-dark rabbits as pets. Yep, the Forbes 30u30 list seems to also highlight the honorees imprisoned for massive fraud.
We are not sure if this power couple is out to end bioethics as we know it today, but they have inspired heavy-handed stands on human genetic engineering ethics and rogue science.
If you haven't checked, He is known for some quite out there tweets that make us think if this account is run by his edited CRISPR clone. But hey, I wouldn't mind sending this to my boss!
Topics and companies around the topic of longevity seem to be picking up speed as we come across something new every week. The main idea of longevity companies is often to increase human lifespan while keeping people healthy. However, as the technologies are still developing, some people think they might not be able to catch the “long life bus”. To this end, companies like Tomorrow.Bio, is tackling this by directing their attention to preservation until the technology catches up. But how? Well, with placing either your whole body or brain in biostasis via cryopreservation. Think of it like an ultra-stable, ultra-low temperature freezer for your body… or brain!
Tomorrow.Bio, founded in 2020, was recently able to raise a €5M seed round to expand to the US and further advance its research. Their current facilities are in Berlin and Zurich. How about the price of this service? Well, it’s not cheap. You could pay a monthly membership of approximately 88USD and get 30,000 off from your preservation, but this would still run you 200,000USD for your body. The brain is, of course, a little cheaper. However, we should note that we were not able to find research supporting their efforts.
Read more HERE
Silk spider has been a long-time fascination of many researchers and material nerds. It's super strong, elastic, biodegradable, and even tougher than materials like Kevlar. So no wonder! But gathering and modifying spider silk production for use has proven difficult over the years. Now, researchers have been able to modify a spider using genetic engineering techniques to produce red fluorescent silk. The research was published in the Journal of the German Chemical Society.
This is interesting, as this type of modification of spider silk has not been explored so far. The silk itself, as stated before, has significant properties, so exploring modifications is of great interest for a variety of applications. Read more HERE.
Space is a vastly uncharted frontier. But sometimes we find new things in already charted places. Like from the Chinese space station, where researchers were able to newer before seen strain of bacteria, likely from Earth but now adapted to space life. This was reported in a recent article. It is important to understand these kinds of microbes to generate appropriate strategies for space-bound missions to keep the crews healthy and operational.
The new strain, named Niallia tiangongensis, was named after the space station where it was found, and it is a close relative to some known bacteria that can cause sepsis in patients who are immunocompromised. This is, of course, not the first time ‘space bacteria’ has been a thing. Recently, there was some coverage of a relatively similar case on the ISS. You can also read more from HERE
Is this science fiction? Or maybe superstition? Not really what we are talking about here. When we say space crystals, we quite literally mean crystals grown in space. This might not sound significant at first glance, but hear us out. One of the findings that the researchers on ISS have been able to prove is that these kinds of crystals grown in the microgravity of space have much better stability than those grown on the surface of our planet. Now, this combined with research into monoclonal antibodies that could be key in cancer treatments, points to this stability being key to developing efficient administration methods.
Now, why hasn’t this been done before? Well, these crystals are extremely fragile. Re-entry to the atmosphere? Not the most subtle process. But as other space technologies move forward from SpaceX, reducing payload cost to Sierra Space debuting its space shuttle to make re-entry softer, we are seeing these types of opportunities become more viable. Currently, on the upcoming mission of one of these space shuttles, Merck, a pharma giant, is sending a unit to study just this crystal formation to see how useful the method could be. Read more HERE
We always find it interesting to see how different fields move forward and intermingle together. This week coming across how crystals could be produced in space to make better cancer medication? WILD! Or just something more personable and curious about some real rogue-sounding gene editors. We have also tried a slightly different format with the titling for the second time here. How are you finding it? Better or worse compared to what we had before. This is meant for you, so we appreciate all the feedback, so we can bring you an even better format and content next week.
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