https://player.fm/series/best-damn-podcast/interview-w-ira-p…generation
Category: bioengineering – Page 183
If any organization embodies our idea of the classic mad inventors, just running amock with crazy ideas, it’s DARPA jumping dog robot? Sure. Self-guiding bullets? What can go wrong? Vertical take-off plane? Well, why not? Bioengineered spy plants? Wait, what?
Yes, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – DARPA – the part of the US Department of Defense responsible for developing technologies to be used by the military, is planning to bioengineer plants for intelligence gathering.
DARPA says its new program “envisions plants as discreet, self-sustaining sensors capable of reporting via remotely monitored, programmed responses to environmental stimuli.” Because that doesn’t sound terrifying at all. Somewhere between 1984’s foliage microphones and the classic “bug” in a pot plant.
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Looking back at best of 2017)
Summary: Nanotechnology meets gene editing. MIT researchers use nanoparticles instead of viruses to deliver the CRISPR gene editing system. This article first appeared on LongevityFacts. Author: Brady Hartman]
In a new study, MIT scientists have developed nanoparticles that deliver the CRISPR gene editing system, eliminating the need to use viruses for delivery.
Using the new delivery technique, the gene editors were able to cut out genes in about 80 percent of liver cells, the best success rate ever achieved with CRISPR in adult animals. Speaking about the success of the project, Daniel Anderson, senior author of the study and an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, said.
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