Synthetic Biology  

The tools and capabilities of synthetic biology are revolutionizing science and medicine by enabling the targeted design, engineering and construction of biological systems. Now researchers can even print genomic sequences and pathways that will help to address life’s most challenging questions. 

Emailing medicine and even organisms across the planet, and potentially across the solar system may be possible with a new device developed by Synthetic Genomics. The company founded by J. Craig Venter, the geneticist behind the first successful human genome sequencing and many other biotech breakthroughs.

The new tabletop device is called the Digital-to-Biological Converter, or DBC under the tradename BioXp. The machine accepts digital representations of DNA over the internet and reconstructs them on the spot using the chemical building blocks of life—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine.

It is the the world’s first DNA printer, a machine which will allow any biotechnology company or academic laboratory to create genes, genetic elements and molecular tools on their benchtop hands-free, starting with electronically transmitted sequence data. The device is set to dramatically improve the workflow for applications such as protein production, antibody library generation and cell engineering, says Synthetic Genomics.

The machine can print DNA, RNA, viruses, some kinds of vaccines, and bacteriophages to kill infections.

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Julie Robinson,  SGI-DNA, a Synthetic Genomics, Inc. (SGI) company, Senior Product Manager stated in a press release for the device that, "In just 9 months, since the BioXp™ System was first launched, SGI-DNA is delivering on its stated plan to expand instrument capabilities. Our more than 25 life science research laboratory customers throughout the United States can upgrade their systems seamlessly over the internet without any hardware changes.  This scalable design is at the heart for the BioXp™system.  By launching the cloning module SGI-DNA is moving from early access to full launch of the BioXp™ 3200 System."

The BioXp allows scientists to automate cloning 32 synthetic genes directly in a vector of up to 12 kb in a single hands-free overnight run. This capability allows much greater versatility for downstream applications. The BioXp System utilizes the Gibson Assembly method to provide seamless, high efficiency cloning.

The BioXp could allow what Venter has called biological teleportation where, "You will be able to download insulin from the internet" and new diseases will be sequenced and cured in hours with the treatments dispersed digitally."

SOURCE  Motherboard

By  33rd Square	Embed

 Life Extension  

Scientific advances are going to really accelerate according to Human Longevity founder Craig J. Venter and the company's CMO, Brad Perkins. They both promise to bring about a hundred years worth of progress in the next 10 years, and a revolution in medicine.

Using a "supercharged" approach to human genome research could see as many health breakthroughs made in the next decade as in the previous century, say key players in the medical start-up Human Longevity Inc.

“It’s going to be an exciting ride in the next 10 years,” Craig J. Venter, co-founder of Human Longevity Inc. said at the recent AHA Forum. Because technology has changed so dramatically since the genome was first mapped, he and other scientists now have previously unavailable machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computational tools to do the kind of experiments and analysis they first imagined all those years ago.

“I think there’s going to be more breakthroughs in the next decade than in the past 100 years,” he added.

Brad Perkins, chief medical offer at Human Longevity Inc, speaking at WIRED Health 2015 mirrored these statements.

Perkins says the opportunity for humanity—and Human Longevity—is the result of the convergence of four trends: the reduction in the cost of genome sequencing (from $100m per genome in 2000, to just over $1,000 in 2014), the vast improvement in computational power, the development of large-scale machine learning techniques and the wider movement of health care systems towards ‘value-based’ models. Together these trends are making it easier than ever to analyse human genomes at scale.

The company's CMO, Perkins heads up all clinical and therapeutic work at Human Longevity Inc. Previously he was an executive vice president at Vanguard Health Systems, and prior to that worked at the US Center for Disease Control, where he led the 2001 investigation into anthrax attacks. Now at Human Longevity, he believes the methods used to analyse diseases in the previous century can now be applied to the root causes of human aging.

Based in San Diego, Human Longevity is building up systems that use genome data and analytics to develop new ways to fight age-related diseases.

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The stealthy Human Longevity business plan is actually very simple, Perkins quipped: the company wants to take large amounts of genome data, subject it to machine learning and analytics, and "radically, disruptively" produce new models for medical care.

"Our focus is not being a fee for service sequencing operation," Perkins says. It is to "fully understand and fully interpret all the meaning in the human genome". To do that Human Longevity Inc is building machine learning systems which can act as a ‘Google Translate’ for genomics, taking in genetic code and spitting out insights.

Fittingly, they’ve hired as their chief data scientist Franz Och, who was formerly at Google working, among other things… on Google Translate. "To translate the language of biology in the form of sequence data into the language of health and disease, into the form of clinical phenotypes" is the aim, said Perkins.

"As genomics begins the process of revolutionizing human health and the practice of medicine, and opens the door to the next steps… of regenerative medicine."

The company will work to, "To define and continuously evolve what we consider to be a 21st digital description of the full human phenotype."

Human Longevity Inc will be analyzing the whole genome sequence—all 3.2 billon base pairs, compared to much lower numbers analysed by existing, mainstream DNA research companies such as 23andMe.

Collecting and analyzing all that data will require the world’s largest sequencing facility, which Human Longevity Inc operates, and Perkins estimates is currently able to sequence 35,000 human genomes per year.

That amount will almost triple to around 100,000 genomes per year by the end of 2015 and target is one million genomes per year by 2020. "I’d like to see that number higher," Perkins says.

The result of this work will be revolutionary according to Venter and Perkins. "I’m encouraged that we’re on the verge of having lots more grandfathers and grandmothers at the special events of all of our lives," Perkins says. "As genomics begins the process of revolutionizing human health and the practice of medicine, and opens the door to the next steps… of regenerative medicine. It’s going to be an extraordinarily exciting ride."

SOURCES  Medical Daily and WIRED

By 33rd Square

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 Aging  

Craig Venter, Peter Diamandis and Robert Hariri have teamed up to form a new company to fight aging. Human Longevity Inc. announced plans to sequence 40,000 human genomes in year to better understand age-related diseases like cancer and dementia.

Craig Venter, is now on a quest to conquor age-related disease.  The well-known scientist behind the successful completion of the Human Genome Project and the team leader of a project to create a custom-made lifeform has started a new venture, Human Longevity Inc.

Venter has teamed up with stem cell pioneer Dr. Robert Hariri and X Prize Foundation founder Dr. Peter Diamandis to form the company. Human Longevity Inc will use both genomics and stem cell therapies to find treatments that allow aging adults to stay healthy and functional for as long as possible.

"I haven't been a skeptic, but I have been one of the people complaining that too little has happened after the human genome was sequenced," Venter told National Geographic.

"We're hoping to make numerous new discoveries in preventive medicine. We think this will have a huge impact on changing the cost of medicine," Venter said on a conference call announcing his latest venture.

Fighting aging is increasingly becoming a scientific and business rallying point; Venter's transition into longevity follows the formation in September of Google-backed biotechnology company Calico.

Robert Hariri, J. Craig Venter, and Peter Diamandis (right to left)
Image Source -Brett Shipe/Science

The company, which will be based in San Diego-based already has $70 million in private backing and has already purchased two ultrafast HiSeq X Ten gene sequencing systems from Illumina Inc, a leading manufacturer of DNA sequencing machines, with the option to buy three more.

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The company plans to use that technology to map 40,000 human genomes in a push to build the world's largest database of human genetic variation. The database will include sequences from the very young through the very old, both diseased and healthy. 40,000 is the calculated number the two gene sequencing machines can complete in a year.

"This will be one of the largest data studies in the history of science and medicine," Venter told the conference call.

Along with gathering whole genome data, the company will collect genetic data on the trillions of microbes - including bacteria, viruses and fungi - living in and on humans.

By better understanding the microbiomes in the gut, in the mouth, on the skin and other sites on the body, the company said it hopes to develop better probiotics as well as better diagnostics and drugs to improve health and wellness.

The company's initial treatment targets will be some of the toughest age-related diseases: cancer, diabetes and obesity, heart and liver diseases, and dementia.

Venter said the company will start first with cancer. It has teamed up with the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego, with the goal of sequencing the genomes of everyone who comes there for treatment, as well as doing a full genome sequence on their tumors.

"Cancer is one of the most actionable areas right now with genomic-based therapies," Venter said, adding that cancer is "just the first of a multitude of diseases we will be sequencing this year."

"Undoubtedly, important biologic discoveries will be made along the way, but it remains unclear whether such efforts like Human Longevity Inc and Calico can influence longevity," Dr. Eric Topol, Scripps Health chief academic officer and director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute said.

In addition to UCSD, the company has established strategic collaborations with privately held Metabolon Inc of North Carolina, a company that focuses on biochemical profiling, as well as his own J. Craig Venter Institute, a nonprofit genomics research institute.



SOURCE  Reuters

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Join critically-acclaimed author and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and world-renowned theoretical physicist and author Lawrence Krauss as they discuss biology, cosmology, religion, and a host of other topics.

The authors will also discuss their new books. Dawkins recently published The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True, an exploration of the magic of discovery embodied in the practice of science. Written for all age groups, the book moves forward from historical examples of supernatural explanations of natural phenomena to focus on the actual science behind how the world works.

Krauss's latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, explains the scientific advances that provide insight into how the universe formed. Krauss tackles the age-old assumption that something cannot arise from nothing by arguing that not only can something arise from nothing, but something will always arise from nothing.

Also, in case you missed it, here is Richard Dawkins uncut interview and laboratory tour with Craig J. Venter for "The Genius of Charles Darwin", the Channel 4 UK TV program which won British Broadcasting Awards' "Best Documentary Series" of 2008. Craig Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research and has been credited with being instrumental in mapping the human genome. His team published the first complete genome of an individual human - Venter's own DNA sequence.