What’s the News: Test-tube evolution just went viral: a new study shows how to use viruses’ knack for natural selection to create tailored proteins. Researchers at Harvard say their new technique is a hundred times faster than the usual methods, churning through 200 generations of proteins in 8 days, and, crucially, requires no attention from researchers after it’s set up: a crock pot for evolution. Though a godsend primarily for researchers, in the future it could accelerate the growth of customized proteins for new drugs.

Scientists have harnessed the power of viruses in a method for evolving customized proteins.

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If you send stem cells just the right signals, they’ll develop into any one of a wide range of tissues, from retina to spinal cord to heart muscle. But which signals to send? A team at John Hopkins has painstakingly gone over more than 30 techniques for getting cells to differentiate and consolidated them into a simple procedure that has successfully been used to turn at least 11 lines of stem cells into healthy, beating heart cells—all without introducing the cancer-causing mutations that can plague this kind of work.

“We took the recipe for this process from a complex minestrone to a simple miso soup,” says study leader Elias Zambidis.

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What’s the News: Neuroscientists have found a preliminary answer to a question that has puzzled philosophers for centuries: If someone who has always been blind is one day able to see, can they recognize by sight objects they already know by touch? In a new study published online by Nature Neuroscience, patients who had been blind since birth underwent sight-restoring surgeries as children or adolescent. In the day or two following surgery, patients seemed unable to match what they felt with their hands with what they saw, the researchers found, but a week later, they could.

This results suggests that the brain doesn’t have the innate ability (or maybe has limited innate ability) to tie input from different senses to the same concept—but that it can learn, and pretty fast. Just how fast, the researchers wrote, suggests that the neuronal machinery needed to bring together visual and tactile information may already be there; it just has to be started up.

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What’s the News: Scientists have for the first time directly linked freeway vehicle emissions with brain damage. Scientists used a new technique that involved trapping airborne toxins along Los Angeles’ 110 Freeway, freezing them in water, and exposing lab mice to the toxins. “As a society, we need to figure out ways to minimize the level of the very, very nasty particulates we are dumping into the air we breathe,” University of Southern California gerontology researcher Todd Morgan told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s having terrible consequences.” (more…)

What’s the News: With Congress yet to pass a budget, the country is facing a government shutdown unless lawmakers reach an agreement by midnight tonight. In addition to shuttering many government offices, the shutdown would likely cause present serious difficulties for federal government-funded research.

Difficulties Such As…

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The stem cells formed a sac that then folded in half
a couple days later (see image above, courtesy of Nature),
forming the optic cup.

What’s the News: Give a blob of cells the right environment—lots of nutrients, special chemical signals, and a comfy gel cushion—and they just might grow you a body part. In a feat of bioengineering, scientists at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan have grown a retina from mouse embryonic stem cells. Remarkably, much of the development happened spontaneously, indicating that even undifferentiated cells have a blueprint in mind. Researchers hope the work will someday yield transplantable retinas for people with diseases like retinitis pigmentosa.

“When I received the manuscript, I was stunned, I really was,” commented human molecular geneticist Robin Ali (via Nature News). “I never though I’d see the day where you have recapitulation of development in a dish.”

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What’s the News: Scientists found that periodic fasting may decrease the risk of coronary artery disease and diabetes, and also causes significant changes in heart-disease risk factors like cholesterol, blood-sugar, and triglyceride levels, which hadn’t been linked to fasting before. “We’ve shown it is not a chance finding. Fasting is not just an indicator for other healthy lifestyles,” says lead researcher Benjamin Horne of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute. “It is actually the fasting that is working to reduce the risk of disease.”

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What’s the News: A gene that makes bacteria resistant to up to 14 antibiotics has been discovered in bacteria in drinking water and street puddles in the Indian capital of New Delhi by a research team from the University of Cardiff in Wales. Scientists were already aware that microbes bearing this gene, which produces an enzyme called NDM-1, were infecting people in India, but it had been thought that such bacteria were mainly picked up in hospitals. This study shows that the gene, which is capable of jumping from species to species, is loose in the environment.

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What’s the News: Scientists are using nanoparticles to develop ways to fight bacteria that are resistant to conventional antibiotics. These tiny drugs physically punch holes through bacteria instead of killing them chemically, which means that they could be especially effective on antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains like the dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). “The applications are going to be very diverse, whether we’re talking about wound healing or dressing, skin infection, and quite possibly injections into the bloodstream,” James Hedrick, master inventor at IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, told Popular Science.

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What’s the News: Scientists have developed a new carbon nanotube device (pictured above) that’s capable of detecting single cancer cells. Once implemented in hospitals, this microfluidic device could let doctors more efficiently detect the spread of cancer, especially in developing countries that don’t have the money for more sophisticated diagnostic equipment. Any improvement in detecting cancer’s spread is important, says MIT associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics Brian Wardle, because “of all deaths from cancer, 90 percent are … from tumors that spread from the original site.”

What’s the Context:

• The researchers’ original microfluidic device from four years ago featured tens of thousands of microscopic silicon posts coated with tumor-sticking antibodies: when cancer cells bumped into the posts, they’d stick. But if cancer cells didn’t bump into a silicon post, they’d go undetected. The group says their new version is eight times better.
• When cancer cells migrate, there are “usually only several [cancer] cells per 1-milliliter sample of blood” containing billions of other cells, making cancer exceedingly difficult to detect.
• This new dime-sized microfluidic machine works in the same way, but the solid silicon tubes were switched out for highly porous carbon nanotubes. This allows the blood to actually flow through the tubes instead of just around them, increasing the likelihood of catching a cancer cell.
• In other cancer detection news, some are using dogs to sniff out cancer and others use genetic tests to figure out cancer risks.
• Combating cancer ranges from new cancer-fighting drugs to just ignoring cancer (sometimes).

Not So Fast: The process of commercializing a technology like this takes quite a while; the previous version from four years ago is being tested in hospitals now and is may be commercially available “within the next few years.”

Next Up: The scientists are currently tweaking the device to try to catch HIV.

Reference: Grace D. Chen et al. “Nanoporous Elements in Microfluidics for Multiscale Manipulation of Bioparticles.” Small. DOI: 10.1002/smll.201002076

Image: Brian Wardle/MIT

What’s the News: DARPA wants to fund research into technologies that could be built into the genome of microorganisms and keep track of any changes made to the organism’s genes, according a call for proposals the agency made earlier this month. In other words, DARPA wants to “turn on Track Changes” in certain viruses and bacteria.

What’s the Context:

• This genetic surveillance technology would help safeguard intellectual property, DARPA says. (See this PDF for the full description of the request.) Patenting genes has proven controversial enough on its own, so high-tech policing of these patents is unlikely to go down easy.
• Second, this technology could be used for “providing secure access” to dangerous pathogens or “proprietary microorganisms.” In other words, they want it to password-protect bugs, for reasons of health and/or commerce.
• DARPA isn’t shy about asking for proposals that are more than a bit off the wall: how to make a cannon that can fire people onto a tall roof, for instance, or a Jestons-esque flying car.

How the Heck: No idea. And, judging by its description, DARPA isn’t too sure either. The agency is asking for “multidisciplinary research proposals” and gives a nod to “possibly utilizing a cryptographical or complex mathematical approach.”

Image: Wellcome Images / Peter Artymiuk

What’s the News: Scientists have identified three gene mutations that lead to acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that afflicts white blood cells, which may lead to better cancer drugs in the future. As Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute hematologist George Vassiliou told the BBC, his team’s study “found critical steps that take place when the cancer develops. Identifying the biological steps … means we can look for new drugs to reverse the process.”

How the Heck:

• The researchers discovered the major mutation by switching on the Npm1 gene in mice: They observed that about one third of the mice went on to develop leukemia.
• They knew some other genes were involved because not all the mice contracted cancer. So next, they randomly mutated mouse genes, and then analyzed the mutations in the ones that developed cancer, identifying two other mutations in the process. The second mutation affected cell growth and division and the third affected the cell’s environment.

What’s the Context:

• Acute myeloid leukemia occurs when the body develops an abnormal amount of undeveloped white blood cells. It’s the most common type of acute leukemia, accounting for more than 6,000 deaths in the U.S. each year.
• The scientists chose to work on this kind of leukemia because “there had been little progress in developing new drugs.”
• 80beats has covered acute myeloid leukemia in the past, including its link to a possible HIV cure, and more on leukemia in general, from whether the cancer can be passed on from mother to child to decoding a cancer patient’s genome.
• In 2005 Discover covered the news of a possible vaccine for leukemia.

Not So Fast: Researchers caution that it could take decades before new cancer-fighting drugs based on this study come on the market. This present study only used mice as subjects.

Reference: George S Vassiliou et al. “Mutant nucleophosmin and cooperating pathways drive leukemia initiation and progression in mice.” Nature Genetics. doi:10.1038/ng.796

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Bruce Wetzel

What’s the News: For the first time in medical history, scientists have successfully grown mouse sperm in a laboratory. As Northwestern University cell biologist Erwin Goldberg told New Scientist, “People have been trying to do this for years.” It’s hoped that being able to grow sperm outside the testes will lead to improved fertility treatments for men.

How the Heck:

• The concept is simple: Combine the right dosage of chemicals that will provide nourishment to testes in a petri dish. Actually finding the magic amount is a tedious process of trial and error.
• First, the team genetically engineered mice “so that a protein only present in fully grown sperm would fluoresce green.”
• Next, the scientists extracted germ cells (which produce sperm) from the newborn mice testes, and put them in a bath of agarose gel, fetal bovine serum, testosterone, and other chemicals.
• After about a month, they discovered that virtually half of the lab-grown sperm were glowing, indicating that they were fully grown.
• They then used in vitro fertilization to impregnate female mice, who eventually gave birth to fertile mice themselves.

Context:

• Past attempts at lab-grown sperm weren’t very successful. Many of the sperm cells from a  2006 study, for example, died before developing fully.
• Ed Yong has written about sperm, including the barbed sperm of the flatworm and the sperm wars between ants and bees.
• 80beats has covered how plastics decrease sperm counts, the secret of the sperm’s wild dash, and the shared 600-million-year-old sperm gene between humans, fish, and flies.

Not So Fast:

• The researchers developed offspring using only 100 sperm cells; doctors would like to see “millions if possible” to make successful fertility treatments in humans.
• Scientists may have observed “healthy and reproductively competent offspring,” but they don’t delve into the possible long-term side effects of creating people from sperm developed off the traditional route. In vitro sperm creation could be compared to IVF, a technique that leads to greater risk of diabetes and some other conditions. Researchers still aren’t sure why this is, though they have made some headway, discovering that the DNA of IVF-babies actually differs from other children.

Next Up: This technique still needs to be proved in humans, and if it is, it could have wide-ranging effects. For example, in the future, doctors might be able to extract testicular tissue from young boys—who haven’t yet developed mature sperm—and then grow sperm in the lab. Or for infertile men, doctors could extract germ cells, produce sperm, and then find out what’s wrong with them.

Reference: “In vitro production of functional sperm in cultured neonatal mouse testes” Takuya Sato et al. doi:10.1038/nature09850

Image: Wikimedia Commons / Bobjgalindo

Back in the 1980s, gene therapy was one of science’s greatest hopes and hypes, and researchers predicted the technique would be used to cure a huge range of illnesses. During the 90s, many early gene therapy trials were effective or downright dangerous, some causing cancer or even death. But more recently, scientists who stuck with gene therapy have started to see positive results, with promising treatments for malformed hemoglobin, color blindness, and depression. (See the DISCOVER magazine feature “The Second Coming of Gene Therapy” for more.) Now, researchers have announced that they’ve successfully treated the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in a small group of people—a far cry from a cure, but still a step in the right direction.

I Once Was Blind but Now I See

The theory behind gene therapy is simple: A healthy gene hitches a ride into the patient’s genome on a virus, replacing the genes responsible for some genetic disease or disorder. Actually doing this is more difficult, because humans have a little thing called an immune system that’s remarkably efficient at finding and destroying foreign bodies. After the first U.S. death from gene therapy in 1999, and leukemia cases in France the same year, many started to think that gene therapy was more of a problem than an answer.

The early and awful failures forced all of the researchers in the field to retreat and reconsider the staggering complexity that challenged them. They could not just replace a bad gene with a good gene, as some early pundits had hoped—they also had to orchestrate the nuanced and elaborate dance between the gene products (proteins) and the patient’s immune system, which could recognize a foreign body and viciously attack it. After that was settled, gene therapists still had to find a suitable virus, or vector, to carry replacement genes into human cells without inciting a damaging or deadly immune response…. It was this new perspective more than anything else that turned gene therapy from a simple but failed and frustrated hope into, once again, medicine’s next big thing—a stunning spectacle of hubris, ignominy, and redemption on the scientific stage. [DISCOVER]

New: Gene Therapy and Parkinson’s Disease

While there’s no cure for Parkinson’s as of yet, doctors have an arsenal of methods, ranging from drugs, brain stimulation, and (now) gene therapy that help reduce the disease’s symptoms. Hopes for using gene therapy to alleviate Parkinson’s effects aren’t new. What is new is that scientists have successfully completed the first randomized, controlled, double-blind trial of treating Parkison’s patients with gene therapy—and they found that it significantly improved debilitating symptoms such as tremors, motor skill problems, and rigidity. (more…)

In a society where pill-popping is the answer to many a medical malady, severely dysfunctional or damaged organs are especially frustrating—they’re usually beyond the reach of any known drugs. Cell-based therapy, though, is no drug: Using patients’ own cells, medical experts have successfully grafted the first engineered-from-scratch urethras.

The story starts with five Mexican boys, aged 10 to 14, whose urethras were damaged beyond repair because of accidents.

“When they first came in, they had a leg bag that drains urine, and they have to carry this bag everywhere they go,” says Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University in North Carolina. “It’s uncomfortable and painful. So these children were mostly sitting or bed-bound.” [NPR]

Currently the usual treatment calls for an artificial graft, which has a failure chance as high as 50% (and failure here means a lifetime of infections and incontinence). “When an organ or tissue is irreparably damaged or traumatically destroyed, no amount of drugs or mechanical devices will restore the patient back to normal,” regenerative medicine expert Chris Mason, from University College London, told the BBC. (more…)