An extinct mountain goat that was once common in the Pyrenees briefly became the first animal to be brought back from extinction, as researchers used frozen DNA to produce a clone. But the newborn kid died within minutes of birth due to breathing difficulties, signaling that the Jurassic Park dream of resurrecting extinct species is still some way off.
The Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo, is a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that is believed to have died out completely in 2000. Before the death of the last known individual (a 13-year-old female known as Celia), biologists captured her and took cells from her skin and ears, which were frozen in liquid nitrogen. An earlier cloning attempt using the skin cells failed during gestation. But the latest attempt involved the creation of 439 ibex-goat hybrid cloned embryos made by inserting the cell nuclei of the ibex’s skin cells into the egg cells of domestic goats which had their own cell nuclei removed. Of these cloned embryos, 57 were transferred into surrogate mothers and seven resulted in pregnancies, but only one goat gave birth and the newborn clone died after seven minutes as a result of lung deformities [The Independent].
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Fingerprints are for more than a good grip; they also allow fingers to feel fine textures, according to a new study. As fingers move across a surface, the intricate geography of the finger tips, known as epidermal ridges, help select and amplify just the right vibrations to convey information from the skin to the brain. Neuroscientist Ellen Lumkin compares the ridges on fingers to the cochlea in the ear. “Like the cochlea is a frequency analyzer for sounds, the fingertips are frequency analyzers for fingers,” says Lumpkin [Science News] Fingerprints help filter out the tactile equivalent of white noise.
When a finger sweeps over a finely textured surface, such as a cotton sleeve or a wooden coffee table, the interaction sends a large range of vibrations into the skin. Specialized sensors called Pacinian fibers, the tips of nerve fibers, detect only a select few of the vibrations — those right around 250 hertz — before sending the signal to the brain, where the touch sensation is processed [Science News]. But since Pacinian fibers are located relatively deep—about 2 millimeters—under the skin, researchers guessed that fingerprints help magnify the vibrations.
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A Florida couple has just received a genetic copy of their beloved and deceased golden Labrador Sir Lancelot, naming the three-month-old puppy Lancelot Encore. The couple paid $155,000 for one of the first commercially cloned dogs in the world, and say the money was well spent. “He was a wonderful dog,” said Nina Otto, 66. “Money wasn’t an object. We just wanted our wonderful, loving dog back” [ABC News]. The project was masterminded by the California biotech company BioArts.
Lancelot Encore joins a handful of other dogs cloned either commercially or as a proof of concept, and the latest success seems to indicate that researchers have thoroughly overcome the scientific barriers to cloning man’s best friend. Canines are considered one of the more difficult mammals to clone because of their reproductive cycle that includes difficult-to-predict ovulations [Reuters]. Now the fate of the fledging pet cloning industry is largely dependent on whether dog lovers think that clones are worth the high price tag. However, just yesterday another cloning company announced a new technique that could reduce the cost of dog cloning to about $50,000 within three years.
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The first clinical trial of a therapy based on human embryonic stem cells has received the green light from the FDA, marking a scientific and political milestone for embryonic stem (ES) cell research. The biotech company, Geron Corporation, received approval today for a study that would inject neural stem cells into patients suffering from spinal cord injuries. The study will be mainly a test for safety, but functional improvements, which have been observed in animals trials, may be possible. “For us, it marks the dawn of a new era in medical therapeutics. This approach is one that reaches beyond pills and scalpels to achieve a new level of healing,” Geron Chief Executive Dr. Thomas Okarma said [Reuters].
ES cells are taken from embryos a few days after fertilization and have the potential to differentiate into any type of cell in the body. The undifferentiated cells can’t be used directly, because they can form cancers called teratomas. But they can be used in the lab to generate potentially inexhaustible supplies of all other types of cell[s] that might be needed for repair. The type to be used in the trial are neural stem cells called oligodendrocyte progenitor cells. These support other neurons in the brain and nerves by supplying growth factors and by producing the myelin sheaths that protect neurons from damage [New Scientist]. The FDA will allow Geron to implant these neural stem cells directly into the spinal cords of eight to ten paraplegics. The trials are expected to begin this summer, and may be carried out in multiple medical centers. The patients have not yet been recruited because the injections must take place within two weeks of the spinal cord injury, before scar tissue forms.
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A certain herd of 200 goats on a Massachusetts farm may look bucolic and quaint, but they actually comprise a living, breathing pharmaceutical factory, or “pharm.” The goats have been genetically engineered t0 produce a blood-thinning drug in their milk, and a report from the FDA has just declared that the drug is effective and safe for human use. An FDA advisory panel will make a recommendation this Friday on whether to approve the drug for sales; if the drug is approved, it would be the first application under new FDA regulations that allow animals to be genetically altered to produce drugs, model human disease, produce industrial or consumer products or improve their use as food [USA Today].
The goats, which are being bred by the biotech company GTC Biotherapeutics, produce a protein called antithrombin that prevents blood clotting. About 1 in 5,000 people don’t produce enough of the protein, putting them at risk of developing blood clots in their veins. Such clots can be extremely painful. If they break loose and travel through the bloodstream to the lungs or the brain, the consequences can be catastrophic. Pregnant women with the disorder are at high risk of miscarriage or stillbirth, because of blood clots in the placenta [AP]. While people with the deficiency typically manage their condition with conventional blood thinning drugs, such drugs aren’t suitable for surgeries and childbirth, when the risks of blood clots are particularly high–that’s where the new drug would come in. GTC is also developing further studies to test the drug in patients at risk for clots in non-hereditary conditions such as coronary bypass surgery [Reuters].
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A new device smaller and cheaper than a postage stamp could be used to diagnose diseases in developing countries, Harvard researchers report. The sophisticated microfluidic diagnostic devices, called microPADS, are made out of little more than paper and sticky tape and cost about three cents each. “The starting point with us was asking, ‘What’s the simplest, cheapest [material] we could think of?’ … And that was paper,” [The Scientist] said co-author George Whitesides.
The microPADs, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [subscription required], are made with layers of paper and water-proof tape. Tiny holes and channels etched into the paper lead from a small number of single wells on top and branch out through the stack to an array of microwells on the bottom [IEEE Spectrum]. When liquids such as urine or blood is placed in the upper wells, they are absorbed through the channels into the microwells, which contain proteins, antibodies, or other chemicals. A color-change reaction indicates the absence or presence of a disease. Because the device splits one sample into dozens of separate microwells, several tests can be performed simultaneously. The prototype microPADs transported four separate liquid samples to 64 designated reservoirs within 5 minutes. In 27 out of 30 tries, the devices moved the liquids without mixing them [ScienceNOW Daily News].
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In a pioneering new treatment, doctors created a tailor-made new windpipe for a woman out of donor tissue and the woman’s own stem cells, and say the new, transplanted trachea has been accepted by the woman’s immune system as a natural part of her body without the use of powerful immune-suppressing drugs. Martin Birchall, one of the surgeons, said the transplant showed “the very real potential for adult stem cells and tissue engineering to radically improve their ability to treat patients with serious diseases. We believe this success has proved that we are on the verge of a new age in surgical care” [The New York Times]. Similar treatments could soon be tried on transplants of other hollow organs, like the bowel, bladder, and reproductive tract, he said.
The 30-year-old patient, Claudia Castillo, had failing airways and severe shortness of breath due to a bout with tuberculosis. By March of this year, Castillo’s condition had deteriorated to the point where she was unable to care for her children. Removing a lung was one treatment option, which would have allowed her to live, but seriously impaired her quality of life [Forbes.com]. She opted instead for this experimental treatment, in which doctors took a piece of trachea from an organ donor and transformed it into a structure that now appears native to her body.
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A new intelligent pill designed by Philips, the Dutch electronics company, promises to deliver medicine in the right place, at the right time, inside your body. The company, best known for consumer products like webcams and wireless headphones, is packing some of the same technology into the new pill, known as the iPill. Containing a microprocessor, battery, wireless radio, pump and a reservoir for medication, the inch-long capsule is designed to treat digestive tract disorders such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis [Times Online].
Once swallowed, the iPill allows researchers to keep track of its precise location through a wireless transmitter. It sends dispatches about the temperature and acidity of its surroundings to an outside receiver as it travels through the GI tract over the course of a day or two. The acidity, measured by pH, of the gut decreases as the pill gets further from the stomach, and that allows researchers to pinpoint the place where the drug is needed [San Francisco Chronicle]. Researchers can pre-program drug release when certain conditions are met or cue the drug release using a remote controller.
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A drug that mimics the effects of a compound found in red wine has been shown to prevent obesity and diabetes in mice that were fed a high-calorie diet and prevented from exercising, taking another step towards the target of a anti-obesity pill. The natural compound found in grapes and red wine, called resveratrol, is believed to have numerous health benefits related to longevity, heart health, and metabolism. But tests in mice suggested gallons of wine would be necessary for humans to stand a chance of getting the same benefits. The scientists turned their attention to creating a more potent drug [BBC News].
The new experimental drug, called SRT1720, was developed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Researchers explain that mice fed a high-fat diet were tricked into switching their metabolisms to a fat-burning mode that normally takes over when energy levels are low…. “We are activating the same enzymes that are activated when people go to the gym,” said Peter Elliott, a vice president at Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, the Glaxo unit that developed the drug. “That is why we believe the profile for this drug is very safe” [Reuters].
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In a big step forward for cloning research, scientists have produced healthy clones of mice that were dead and frozen for 16 years. Researchers say the new technique could allow conservationists to freeze tissue from endangered species, which could then be used to produce clones if those species become extinct. The finding also raises hopes of one day being able to resurrect extinct animals frozen in permafrost, such as the woolly mammoth, says [lead researcher] Teruhiko Wakayama…. “It would be very difficult, but our work suggests that it is no longer science fiction,” he says [New Scientist].
Researchers have previously produced clones from frozen animal tissue, but only from specimens that were preserved with special chemicals to protect cells from damage during the deep freeze. In this study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [subscription required], no such special precautions were taken when the mice were stowed in a freezer 16 years ago. Many zoos are not in a position to collect cells and freeze them in such a way as to preserve their viability, says [cloning expert] Robert Lanza … but they can put a dead animal “in a plastic bag and throw it in the freezer”, he adds. “With a kitchen freezer you could store the genetic diversity of every panda in existence” [New Scientist].
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Researchers have built a honeycomb-like scaffold that resembles natural heart tissue, and found that when they seeded the artificial structure with heart cells from young rats the cells grew and joined together in an approximation of normal heart muscle. The cells had also formed electrical connections with one another, allowing them to contract in coordination – and when an electric field was applied along the long axis of the honeycomb, the cells indeed contracted. “You could see the cells ‘beating’ on the scaffold,” says [study coauthor] George Engelmayr [New Scientist].
Other researchers have constructed biodegradable scaffolding on which to grow different types of tissue, but heart tissue poses particular technical challenges. Heart tissue must be flexible enough to change shape as the heart contracts, but also strong enough to withstand the intense forces generated by these contractions. So, the researchers used a polymer…. “It’s elastic like a rubber band,” Engelmayr says, so it can withstand repeated stretching while only gradually losing strength as it degrades [Technology Review].
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Using a gene from a snapdragon flower, researchers have created a purple tomato rich in antioxidants, and a new study has shown that cancer-prone mice that were fed the altered tomatoes had significantly longer lifespans than those that dined on regular tomatoes. The tomatoes’ purple hue was a side effect of the type of antioxidants produced, called anthocyanins.
The tomatoes produce levels of anthocyanins about on par with blackberries, blueberries and currants, which recent research has touted as miracle fruits. But because of the high cost and infrequent availability of such berries, tomatoes might be a better source, says [lead researcher Cathie] Martin [USA Today].
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Researchers have created a “biocomputer” out of strands of RNA inside a living yeast cell, and demonstrated that it can be programmed to respond to conditions within the cell by taking specific actions. Like the most basic computers, the RNA device operates on a simple system of Boolean logic—it can be programmed to respond to the commands AND, OR, NAND and NOR.
The invention could have a wide range of applications, researchers say. Bio-computers might eventually serve as brains for producing biofuels from cells, for example, or to control “smart drugs” that medicate only under certain conditions. For example, a smart drug could sample a cellular environment and trigger a self-destruct sequence if disease is detected, [study coauthor Christina] Smolke said [National Geographic News].
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Researchers have invented a new tool in the fight against antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that are becoming a growing health threat worldwide: a nanoscale device that shows instantly whether new drugs can kill the bacteria. The device uses tiny springboards coated in bacteria proteins, which are then exposed to an antibiotic; if the drug effectively binds to the proteins, the springboard bends.
[D]rug resistant superbugs are becoming more common and increasingly causing problems outside of hospitals. So [lead researcher Rachel] McKendry and colleagues want to find speedier ways to screen new potential antibiotics. They say their new nanoscale device can help, revealing in minutes whether an antibiotic is potent enough to kill bacteria [New Scientist]. Typically, researchers test new antibiotics by growing a bacterial culture and then applying the antibiotics, but it can take days for the cultures to grow.
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A biotechnology company has announced a new price for sequencing an individual’s entire genome: $5,000. The announcement from the California start-up Complete Genomics signifies a drastic price drop–the going rate for a complete genome is currently about $100,000–and could allow researchers to routinely collect vast amounts of genetic information. Researchers say that a $5,000 genome would enable new studies to identify rare genetic variants linked to common diseases, and it could open up the sequencing market to diagnostic and pharmaceutical companies, making genome sequencing a routine part of clinical drug testing [ABC News].
Complete Genomics won’t offer its services directly to people who are curious about their genetic makeup, setting it apart from consumer-oriented companies like 23andMe and deCODE Genetics. Complete Genomics expects most of its customers to be pharmaceutical companies or research laboratories that are doing studies aimed at finding genes linked to diseases. Such studies might look at the DNA of 1,000 people with a disease and 1,000 people without the disease. Right now, such studies look at only particular locations in the DNA because it is too expensive to determine the entire DNA sequence. But presumably, an entire sequence would provide more complete information [The New York Times].
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