DARPA Launches Program to Industrialize Genetic Engineering

DARPA has launched a program called called “Living Foundries,”designed to apply the conventions of manufacturing to living cells, Wired Danger Room reports.

DARPA has awarded seven research grants worth $15.5 million to six different companies and institutions, including the University of Texas at Austin, Cal Tech, and the J. Craig Venter Institute. “Living Foundries” aspires to streamline genetic engineering for “on-demand production” of whatever bio-product suits the military’s immediate needs, starting with a library of “modular genetic parts.”

The agency wants researchers to come up with a set of “parts, regulators, devices and circuits” that can reliably yield various genetic systems. After that, they’ll also need “test platforms” to quickly evaluate new bio-materials to “compress the biological design-build-test cycle by at least 10X in both time and cost,” while also “increasing the complexity of systems that can be designed and executed.”

What could possibly go wrong?

(via DARPA, Venter launch assembly line for genetic engineering | KurzweilAI)

via joshbyard:

Miniature USB device can sequence DNA

via springwise:

Your genome in minutes: New technology could slash sequencing time | KurzweilAI

Scientists from Imperial College London are developing technology that could ultimately sequence a person’s genome in mere minutes, at a fraction of the cost of current commercial techniques. The researchers have patented an early prototype technology that they believe could lead to an ultrafast commercial DNA sequencing tool within ten years. Their work is described in a study published this month in the journal Nano Letters and it is supported by the Wellcome Trust Translational Award and the Corrigan Foundation. The research suggests that scientists could eventually sequence an entire genome in a single lab procedure, whereas at present it can only be sequenced after being broken into pieces in a highly complex and time-consuming process. Fast and inexpensive genome sequencing could allow ordinary people to unlock the secrets of their own DNA, revealing their personal susceptibility to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer. Medical professionals are already using genome sequencing to understand population-wide health issues and research ways to tailor individualised treatments or preventions. 

phdr:

DNA Passing Through Graphene Nanopore As sad as it sounds, I’m a big fan of graphene. This 1nm thick single layer of carbon atoms takes on interesting properties that graphite (which is made up of lots of layers of graphene) doesn’t have. Every week there seems to be advances in different applications: ultrafast transistors, chemical sensors or touch screen technologies.

Over the past few months several papers have been detailing ways in which graphene can be used to translocate DNA, or to put it simply, pull it through a hole (as shown in the above picture). The latest work, published in Nature, started by using a layer of graphene as a membrane to separate two liquid reservoirs, demonstrating that the graphene can stop the flow of ions across it when a voltage is applied. When a nanoscale hole is present ions can pass through the membrane, with flow increasing as the size of the hole increases, meaning an increase in electric current that can measured. (Imagine a bucket divided in two by a plastic sheet: if the top half of the bucket is filled with water, it cannot flow to the bottom half because of the sheet, but if the sheet has a puncture the water can flow to the bottom half and a bigger hole results in a bigger flow of water).

It’s this property that may allow cheap DNA sequencing, an area that is always looking for ways to bring the cost of the process down. DNA is negatively charged so would be dragged through the hole, the same as other charged molecules. As it does the bases on the DNA partially blocks the hole meaning the rate of the smaller ions flowing through the hole changes. These changes in current might be used to identify the bases passing through the hole: each base on a strand of DNA (A, C, G or T) blocks the hole to a different extent, therefore changing the current.

At the moment each base takes about 10 nanoseconds to pass through the hole, that is too quick to measure a change in current, so one of the next tasks is to slow DNA translocation down. Another task is to be able to measure the minute changes in current over background noise. If these can be solved, then it might be possible to achieve relatively cheap genome sequencing.

Read more at ScienceDaily or PhysicsWorld

‘Graphene as a subnanometre trans-electrode membrane’ S. Garaj et al. Nature 467, 190-193 (2010)

Find the paper here (subscription required)

Sergey Brin’s Search for a Parkinson’s Cure | Wired Magazine

High-Speed Science Can a model fueled by data sets and computational power compete with the gold standard of research? Maybe: Here are two timelines—one from an esteemed traditional research project run by the NIH, the other from the 23andMe Parkinson’s Genetics Initiative. They reached almost the same conclusion about a possible association between Gaucher’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, but the 23andMe project took a fraction of the time.—Rachel Swaby

emergentfutures:

Life from a Test Tube? The Real Promise of Synthetic Biology

Scientists are closing in on the ability to make life from scratch, with potential consequences both good and bad.

Scientific American

Technology Review: The Human Genome in 3-D

New technology that makes it possible to assess the three-dimensional interactions among different parts of the genome has revealed how these molecules are packed into such a tiny space. The findings could also yield new clues to genome regulation—how specific genes are turned on and off.

)