New Scientist reports:

Red blood cells travel through the bloodstream delivering vital oxygen to body tissues and taking away unwanted carbon dioxide – and they have to squeeze through blood vessels as thin as 3 micrometres across to do it. But in some diseases, such as malaria and sickle cell disease, red blood cells lose this ability to deform.

Because of the small size of red blood cells and the demanding work they do, nobody has succeeded in making artificial versions to help people with such conditions.

Now though Joseph DeSimone, a chemical engineer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US, thinks he knows how.

He has created tiny sacks of the polymer polyethylene glycol just 8 micrometres across – in the range of human red blood cells – that are capable of deforming in a way that allows them to pass through the tiniest capillaries.

Polyethylene glycol is biologically benign, but binds easily with other substances, which makes it ideal for carrying cargo through the blood, says DeSimone.

Artificial blood replacement is likely to be a key biomedical enhancement technology in the near future. Ray Kurzweil frequently talks about the "respirocytes" which will act as supplemental mechanical red blood cells, 1000 times more efficient than their biological counterparts. Those who choose to replace even a small portion of their red blood cells with respiorocytes will be capable of what today could only be viewed as superhuman feats: running at sprinting speed for a quarter of an hour or more without breathing; sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool for hours at a time.

Of course, most of us don't want or need to be able to do such outrageous things. Respirocytes will initially be implemented to address many of the same kinds of conditions that DeSimone's polymer blood-cell substitutes are proposed for.They will also probably be used to give a much-needed boost to those recovering from serious illnesses or who have suffered some kind of major trauma. And speaking of illnesses and trauma, I can imagine respirocytes also serving as a delivery mechanism -- one of many that nanotechnology will provide -- for much more effective, and much less traumatic treatments for diseases such as cancer than anything currently available.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We talked a little about the risks associated with genetic modification of crops on the most recent FastForward Radio. Where the danger exists, it is not so much a matter of crops being deliberately modified to do some kind of harm -- Stephen pointed out that there are probably easier, more direct, and harder to detect ways of causing destruction than modifying crops -- but rather due to unintended consequences of modifications that are aimed at achieving some good outcome.

Here's an interesting case in point:

First documented case of pest resistance to biotech cotton

A pest insect known as bollworm is the first to evolve resistance in the field to plants modified to produce an insecticide called Bt, according to a new research report.

Bt-resistant populations of bollworm, Helicoverpa zea, were found in more than a dozen crop fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006.

"What we're seeing is evolution in action," said lead researcher Bruce Tabashnik. "This is the first documented case of field-evolved resistance to a Bt crop.

"Resistance is a decrease in pest susceptibility that can be measured over human experience," said Tabashnik, professor and head of UA's entomology department and an expert in insect resistance to insecticides. "When you use an insecticide to control a pest, some populations eventually evolves resistance."

So the bollworms are now immune to the insecticide the cotton produces, meaning either that

1.The entire exercise was pointless?

or

2. We need to move on to the next round of genetic modification to find a way to wipe out these super-bugs?

Well, not so fast:

Even so, the researchers found that most caterpillar pests of cotton and corn remained susceptible to Bt crops.

"The resistance occurred in one particular pest in one part of the U.S.," Tabashnik said. "The other major pests attacking Bt crops have not evolved resistance. And even most bollworm populations have not evolved resistance."
Bollworm, Helicoverpa zea, moths have a wingspan of 1. 5 to 2 inches. Their caterpillars, known as bollworms, are serious pests of cotton in the southeastern US and Texas....
Click here for more information.

The field outcomes refute some experts' worst-case scenarios that predicted pests would become resistant to Bt crops in as few as three years, he said.

So let's wait and see what other species do before we modify cotton any further. Meanwhile -- if the Bt-resistant strain spreads beyond the small area they currently occupy -- what about genetically modifying the bollworms? Right now it is probably well beyond our capacity to introduce a strain of bollworm into the wild that has some distinct reproductive advantage over the standard bollworms, but if we could do that, and if the modified bollworms were wired to re-develop the susceptibility to Bt, we might bring the situation into stasis.

Every few generations, the bollworms would evolve resistance to Bt, and every few generations, the susceptibility to it would be forcefully reintroduced. Rather than upping the amount of change to the cotton, just change the bollworms enough to keep them at bay.

One way to control unintended consequences is to control the number of variables in play. So we have a plant producing a natural insecticide and a pest developing a resistance to that insecticide. Rather than introducing new variables, the smart approach would be to find a way to work just with those

While not "natural" in the strictest sense, this approach would follow a more natural model of equilibrium than, say, allowing a strain of super-bugs to evolve through injecting multiple kinds of insecticide into the plant's genetic makeup or through doing something really wonky like modifying bollworms such that they want to feed on other bollworms.

This won't eliminate all risks, of course, but this kind of approach (if it ever becomes feasible) would help to keep the risks manageable.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One of the wonderful oddities of the Epic of Gilgamesh is that our Mesopotamian hero is described as being two-thirds divine and one-third human. That's a breakdown you don't see every day. Hercules and other Greek demigods were generally described as having a mathematically comprehensible 50-50 split between human and divine parents. One possible explanation for the 2/3-1/3 reckoning is that the ancient author was counting divine parentage as twice as important as human, so a being who had one human and one divine parent would be counted as only one third human. This is never stated explicitly, however, leaving Gilgamesh fans across the centuries to speculate as to exactly how he came by a parentage divisible by three.

I don't think anything like this was involved, however:

British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases.

Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.

"We are not trying to alter genes, we're just trying to swap a small proportion of the bad ones for some good ones," said Patrick Chinnery, a professor of neurogenetics at Newcastle University involved in the research.

These researchers are being careful to produce an embryo that is essentially the offspring of just two parents -- with genetic material from the third "parent" being brought in just to address a specific problem. But the implications are unavoidable -- a human embryo could be produced with three or five or nine or 100 parents. I'm not sure what all the arguments against such a procedure would be, but one that comes to mind is that life is complicated enough without being brought in the world and being told that you are the child of some large number of people. And what would the legal obligations of the various parents be? Would they be divided up depending on the amount of genetic material contributed?

On the other hand -- critical and possibly unanswerable social issues aside -- wouldn't such children stand to be particularly robust? One of the advantages of sexual reproduction is that greater variety leads to greater viability. Multiple parents could give offspring genetic variety on steroids. Still, I think their must be some risks associated with mixing it up genetically, and those would be magnified, too.

Via GeekPress.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 08:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Scientists have been excited about the possibilities of embryonic stem cells at least since they were isolated in 1998. These cells are the root of the tree. We start as a handful of these cells and grow into a full individual. These cells can - and do - differentiate to become all parts of the body. If we could harness this capability, theoretically we could grow entire replacement organs. Or we could treat diseases like diabetes and heart disease noninvasively.

That's been the hope. But in order for embryonic stem cells to help a particular patient, they need to be a match for that patient. Up until now, the only way to get a perfectly matching stem cell line was by cloning. First, a human egg was harvested painfully from a woman. Then the egg donor's genetic material would be removed and the patient's genetic material would be added. After the resulting embryo had divided a few times, stem cells could be harvested - killing the embryo.

If that sounds labor intensive, it is. If it sounds expensive, it is. If it sounds ethically questionable - well, you're not alone in thinking that. Some question the destruction of the embryo; others see the potential of exploiting women for their eggs. For embryonic stem cells to move beyond the lab to produce therapies for patients, we needed a better way to produce embryonic stem cells. It looks like we got it:

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It's a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

...

"People didn't know it would be this easy," Thomson said. "Thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow."

And we need thousands of labs. We need the stem cell lines for research, and we also need for this method to be perfected. At present the method disrupts the skin-cell DNA too much to be safe. It is thought that as this procedure is refined, the risk of creating cancer instead of stem cells will be reduced.

Glenn Reynolds remarked that if this pans out, it will be the biggest story of the year. I think it will pan out. There's essentially no chance that this could be hoax - as with Dr. Hwang back in 2005. This research was accomplished independently by teams on two continents. And since it can be easily reproduced, this is likely to become accepted science very soon.

But this probably won't be the biggest story of this year. This is the sort of story that only excites those who understand the implication. It's likely to be a bigger story in a few years when medical breakthroughs start disrupting medicine-as-usual. When that happens researchers can point back to this moment as the watershed - the point at which it all began.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

South Korean researchers at Chonnam National University have created a tiny robot that is capable of traveling through the bloodstream to clear arteries.

This is not a nanobot. It operates at a much larger scale - it is slightly less than a millimeter in size.

Perhaps it should be called a micro-cyborg. The bot's locomotion is powered by heart tissue cultivated from the patient. This means that there is no need for a cumbersome battery pack. It runs on the same ATP -> ADP chemical reaction that the rest of the body relies on.

Phil and I discussed how practical it would be to power in-body bots this way in our last FastForward Radio show.

This bot can move 55 yards a week and dispense artery clearing meds where they are most needed.

Faster, please.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

"Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare.

I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years."

- Freeman Dyson

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This is just fantastic news:

Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again.

In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.

The results show that insulin-dependent diabetics can be freed from reliance on needles by an injection of their own stem cells. The therapy could signal a revolution in the treatment of the condition...

The researches stop short of calling this a cure. Perhaps oral medication will still be required. But what an improvement this will be.

But then, the article gets weirdly political:

The findings were released to reporters yesterday as the future of US stem-cell research was being debated in Washington.

Stem cells are immature, unprogrammed cells that have the ability to grow into different kinds of tissue and can be sourced from people of all ages.

Previous studies have suggested that stem-cell therapies offer huge potential to treat a variety of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease. A study by British scientists in November also reported that stem-cell injections could repair organ damage in heart attack victims.

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

I fail to see the logic in using a breakthrough in adult stem cell research to bash Bush's position on embryonic stem cell research.

Bush supports the type of research that led to this breakthrough. I'm sure he'll celebrate this victory. He'll probably use this occasion to make the point (wrongly in my opinion) that only adult stem cells hold promise.

I've witnessed similar confusion from the other side of the political spectrum. It was a pastor preaching the evils of "stem cell research" without bothering to mention that "hey, I've got no problem with adult stem cell research."

When partisans confuse adult stem cell research with embryonic stem cell research, I'm tempted to question either their intellect or their intellectual honesty.

Of course if scientist want to confuse the two by getting adult stem cells to become embryonic stem cells, then more power to 'em.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 06:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Check out this interesting article (via GeekPress) about the search for DNA strands that never were, and that probably ought not to be, because they wouldn't be compatible with life. This quote caught my attention:

Further down the line there is the possibility of constructing a "suicide gene" to code for deadly amino acid primes. It could be attached to genetically modified organisms and activated to destroy them at a later date if they turned out to be dangerous, Hampikian suggests.

Speaking as an organism, I'd have to say that I'm pretty glad that no such switch has been built into me, giving someone the authority to decide that I'm dangerous and I have to go. Wow, talk about your dystopia. How about a future in which everyone has one of these built in, and the government has the switch?

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, sort of. Idealogues can always find something to argue about, but for most of us the moral dilemma is over. Even the Bush administration called this a "step in the right direction.

Advanced Cell Technology researchers have announced that they can remove a single cell from an 8 cell embryo to create a new embryonic stem cell line. The remaining 7 cells can go on to form a perfectly healthy baby.

I understand that this research is an outgrowth of genetic testing. Fertility clinics have been taking a cell for genetic testing purposes for some time. If the tests showed that the embryo is healthy, it was implanted and grew into a healthy baby.

Now they can take that single cell, let it divide once, and use one cell for testing and the other to grow into a embryonic stem cell line that did not destroy an embryo.

It has been argued that since this does not benefit the baby, such procedures should not be allowed. Well, this is wrong. One might argue that genetic testing does not benefit the embryo. That's part of the whole "wrongful life" can of worms. But nobody can seriously argue that it would not be a benefit to be born with a perfectly genetically matching embryonic stem cell line thriving at the doctor's office.

And it's not a small benefit to be born into a world that has an unlimited supply of embryonic lines for research.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 06:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the extra testosterone found in Floyd Landis's blood was not from a natural source. I don't see him fighting back from that. It seems certain that he'll have his Tour de France title stripped from him. This and the allegations against Lance Armstrong have delivered a one-two punch to U.S. cycling.

UPDATE: Per Phil (and CBS News) Lance Armstrong has been cleared of the doping allegation.

The sports commentary I've heard all seems to contain the hope that cycling will be able to get it's act cleaned up. I'm not sure that's possible.

The ultimate problem is that doping works. And it's not just the guys in the back of the pack that are being helped to finish in the middle. Modern performance enhancement boosts the performance of leaders like Floyd Landis too. And doping will improve as the technology improves.

A world-wide event like the Tour de France attracts the best athletes in the world. All competitors - even the ones doping - have trained their bodies to peak condition. They've put everything into their sport. If they think their chance of winning would be increased by performance enhancing drugs, then the temptation will be huge for someone who competes at that level.

This problem is not going away. Tests will get more sophisticated, but doping will too. It's an arms race that will predictably produce scandals and crackdowns.

Some of these athletes may even think that winning requires doping. Whether or not that's true now, the situation will become absurd when performance enhancement becomes common. How fun will it be to watch sports when 13-year-olds are outperforming highly trained "clean" athletes?

Performance enhancement has already begun entering society as a medical treatment for some muscular and neurological conditions. But more and more these drugs will be seen as life-style choice. Most people would like to increase their strength and endurance IF they could do so safely. The market is there.

In 100 years humanity will have very different physical limits from today. Obviously athletes at that time will reflect that reality. Between then and now we may be in for a bumpy ride.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Until very recently studying cells required a scientist to peer into a microscope in real time. This tended to give scientists a static view of cells. But understanding life as a process requires observation over time.

A computer system that automatically tracks the movements of proteins within a living cell has been developed by a team of biologists and computer vision experts. It could save researchers the hours often spent analysing microscope images by hand, to determine the way a cell works.

The system, called CellTracker, automatically analyses a series of still digital images captured through a microscope...

The system uses image recognition algorithms to identify the membrane marking the edge of a cell as well as the one enclosing the nucleus, which contains the cell's DNA. It can track the movements of these features in multiple cells simultaneously.

Developments like this on the cellular level and like Prof. Kim Tae-kook's MAGIC system on the molecular level will allow a whole new level of biological understanding. The Dark Ages are just about over.

Posted by Stephen Gordon at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After spending way more of the weekend than I had planned tinkering with both my lawnmower and edger (none too successfully in the case of the latter device), I have only three words -- sign me up:

For anyone tethered to a lawnmower, the Holy Grail of horticultural accomplishment would be grass that never grows but is always green.

Now, that vision of suburban bliss—and more—seems plausible as scientists have mapped a critical hormone signaling pathway that regulates the stature of plants. In addition to lawns that rarely require mowing, the finding could also enable the development of sturdier, more fruitful crop plants such as rice, wheat, soybeans, and corn.

Faster, please.

Via FuturePundit

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)