...dCas9-fusion proteins has dramatically increased the potential applications of CRISPR/Cas9 in genome-engineering... tools for all-optical electrophysiology A major challenge in the field of all-optical electrophysiology... the perfect voltage indicator and optogenetic actuator pair. Ideally, indicators should possess fast ...sensitivity. This hierarchical screen led to the generation of two enhanced voltage indicators: QuasAr1 and...temporal control over CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome modification and gene expression. The plasmids associated... system widely accessible for many potential applications. Polstein LR & Gersbach CA, Nat Chem Biol ...expression Brilliant technologies adopt basic biological concepts and employ them in creative and innovative...

... editing in Escherichia coli. Acta Biochimica et Biophysica Sinica. https://doi.org/10.1093/abbs/gmab036...far, we’ve used the MUCICAT system in two ways: In our initial paper, we used MUCICAT to optimize the gene...industrial strain. Not only is MUCICAT better, it is faster. Using MUCICAT only needs 2 newly constructed...engineered cells for green chemistry and biomedical applications.   Yiwen Zhang entered the Sheng Yang Lab...integration using CRISPR-associated transposases” or MUCICAT. Here, we’ll describe each of these CRISPR systems...providing users with a complete editing process. The MUCICAT system While the above systems are great for experiments...chromosomal integration (ex: genome editing), our MUCICAT system which is based on the CRISPR-associated ...

...SR, Bird A (2017) Radically truncated MeCP2 rescues Rett syndrome-like neurological defects. Nature 550...awareness and published his observations in a German medical journal. Decades later and after years of painstaking...silenced by a Lox-Stop cassette, resulting in the neurological deficits observed in Rett Syndrome. Restoring... tamoxifen-inducible Cre not only halted the neurological damage but completely reversed it, regardless...this interaction to varying degrees determine the clinical severity of different MECP2 mutations. More recently...the MECP2 protein is necessary to rescue the neurological defects of Rett syndrome (Tillotson et al., ...detrimental as too little, resulting in MECP2 duplication syndrome or Rett Syndrome, respectively. One ...

...regulator. Other methods for physical shearing exist as well, such as sonication and needle shearing. Essentially... whole genome amplification (by a mechanism known as multiple displacement amplification) even in the ...proteins! Many thanks to our guest blogger Jessica Sacher! Jessica Sacher is a microbiology PhD student at...Their Viruses." Chemical Reviews (2016). PubMed PMID: 27319741. 3. Simpson, David J., Jessica C. Sacher, and...This post was contributed by guest blogger, Jessica Sacher, a microbiology PhD student at the University...bacteria) may be the most numerous and most diverse biological entities on our planet, but we still know collectively...adding methyl groups, glycosyl groups, and other modifications to their bases in order to protect their DNA...

...them. An easy way to do this is gel purification. In gel purification, you use a voltage difference across...backbone. Sample results indicative of successful and unsuccessful ligations are indicated below. A successful...grow overnight cultures for DNA purification. The simplest purification you can do is a miniprep, but if... maxiprep. In these purifications, you generally lyse the bacteria; add chemicals to precipitate out the...that can be easily maintained in a variety of biological systems. Read on for an in-depth breakdown of...digests. Of course there’s much more detail and verification required for the process to work well, so let...backbone. Because you lose some DNA during the gel purification step, it is important to digest plenty of starting...

... microscopy technique to incorporate optical sectioning. Optical sectioning refers to the ability to extract...Super-resolution microscopy uses a number of optical and chemical ‘tricks’ to turn subsets of fluorescent ...Richardson, Director of the Harvard Center for Biological Imaging and a Lecturer on Molecular and Cellular...are a sports photographer at the Super Bowl, a medical technologist taking an x-ray, or a biologist imaging...excitation volumes to enhance spatial contrast (i.e. optical sectioning (2) or super-resolution (3). Fluorescence...before reaching the detector. The pinhole is specifically placed to only allow light from the focal plane...of a sample. Therefore, when a large number of optical slices are acquired all fluorophores throughout...

... sport athletes, as well as the ethical and health policy implications arising from sport-related concussion... years of exclusively writing lab reports and empirical essays had also stirred some of my more creative...begun my journey towards a career in science communication, an established field of inquiry with which ...University of Otago’s Department of Science Communication the following year and, having thoroughly enjoyed...straight on to a master's degree in science communication. The first year of the course involved a whirlwind...world of industry. Along this road, science communication graduates are often well-equipped. Many institutions...truly benefit others. Herein, a good science communicator—with an understanding of how to appeal to a ...

...transmitted transsynaptically). This is because the recombinant forms of these viruses typically used in ...able to replicate, and for a virus to cross a synapse from one cell to another, it must replicate. Modified...tracing, it has two practical limitations. First, these high levels of viral replication are toxic. Second... well as to only spread monosynaptically from these cells. These modifications take advantage of the fact... became foundational later on when we studied biological processes, like how our stem cells are housed... thus, are a major part of the answer to many biological questions about the brain. To address this, molecular...enter cells and deliver a variety of cargoes, genetically engineered neurotropic viruses emerged as powerful...

...desired modification. Finally, the positive clones are sequenced to confirm the desired modification and ...polymerase activity (for amplification), 3’->5’ exonuclease activity (increases amplification fidelity), and no... genome modifications. Occasionally, multimerization of the PCR primers can cause duplication of the primer...the desired modification have been identified (and confirmed to be free of primer duplications), final validation...used to mutate the PAM sequence (an NGG sequence critical for Cas9 cleavage), thereby rendering the resulting...and the absense of additional modifications.   Site-directed mutagenesis of Plasmids. A) Generation..., which flank the targeted region. Upon PCR amplification, the template is removed by DpnI restriction...

...recombination. Yeast Replicating plasmids (YRp):  These vectors contain an Autonomously Replicating Sequence (ARS...These vectors replicate as though they are small independent chromosomes and are thus typically found as a...not necessarily promote replication.  Selection markers for yeast Historically, scientists have utilized...mammalian vectors, will catch you up on the core replication and resistance features of yeast vectors and ...proteins yet they still share many of the same technical advantages that come with working with prokaryotes...includes but is not limited to: rapid growth, ease of replica plating and mutant isolation, a well-defined genetic...mutation. Yeast expression plasmids used in the lab typically contain all the necessary components to allow ...

...a tail, and when gap junction-mediated electrical communication is briefly inhibited in the entire worm...fluorescent reporting and genetically encoded fluorescent voltage indicators (GEVI) are ideal tools to...thing that comes to mind. However, ion-based communication is not just for neurons. Non-neuronal cells ...It's just that for non-neural cells, ion-based communication happens at a slightly slower scale.  All living...living cells with a membrane possess an electrical state. This state, known as the resting potential (... (Vmem), can be measured as the imbalance of electrical charge between the inside and the outside of the...bioelectricity is revealing the important role of bioelectrical signaling mediated by ion-channels and pumps...

...systems have been used as biological tools for a wide range of applications in molecular biology or in...activity of CcdB. Applications of ccdB in plasmid cloning Perhaps the most widely used application of CcdB is...selection markers. Restriction modification systems Because restriction modification systems consist of two enzymes...types of plasmid addiction systems and their applications. The discovery of toxin-antitoxin systems Toxin-antitoxin...CcdA (antitoxin) where CcdB inferes with DNA replication by binding the GyrA subunit of DNA gyrase and...construct. Other toxin-antitoxin systems and their applications MazE/MazF Aside from CcdB/CcdA, there are many...counterselectable marker to create unmarked genetic modifications in the yeast Pichia pastoris. By combining both...

...Each round of amplification should result in a 10-100-fold increase in virus. Purification (2 days) - Purification... Purification is required if rAdV is to be used in vivo. The standard method for purification of rAdV ...or 10 days) Physical titer (particle count, rAdV genomes/mL) can be measured by: Optical density: particle...vectors (AdV) are attractive vectors for research applications and gene therapy: they can be produced at high...AdVs is what makes them ideal candidates for applications in oncolysis and vaccination!) In the 65 years...years since its discovery, researchers have done significant work to improve the Adv genome’s utility in research...Adenovirus-mediated gene delivery: Potential applications for gene and cell-based therapies in the new...

...are currently approved or have made significant progress in clinical trials.     Figure 1: Types...editor-based clinical trial for SCD in 2022 and Editas Medicine starting a Cas12-based clinical trial for...choice. In sum, CRISPR therapies have made significant clinical strides since we first wrote this blog post... no longer an accurate descriptor; progress in clinical therapy is more fitting, so it is time to update...some solid tumors are currently in early-phase clinical trials and have shown promising preliminary results...introduction of the cancer-fighting component, CAR. Clinical trials are underway to explore CRISPR’s capacity...for these diseases was sponsored by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. Data shared from these...

...Nature chemical biology. 2021 May;17(5):509-18. Inoue M. Genetically encoded calcium indicators to probe...Iino M. Genetically encoded fluorescent indicators for organellar calcium imaging. Biophysical journal...sensors. Selecting a calcium sensor Genetically encoded calcium indicators (GECIs) are fluorescent proteins...transients in living cells and organisms. Unlike chemical indicators, these DNA constructs can be delivered to... Imaging neuronal activity with genetically encoded calcium indicators. Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. ...Measuring calcium signaling using genetically targetable fluorescent indicators. Nature protocols. 2006 Aug;...studies, you can start by asking ‘What is the biological phenomena I want to observe?’ This information...

... capabilities. Specifically this includes primer directed isothermal RNA amplification, new toehold switch...portable quantification of diagnostic results.  Our approach now detects samples at clinically relevant...global strains of the Zika virus (Asian-, African- and American-lineages). Strain discrimination is especially...current outbreak because of the neurological symptoms associated with the American-lineage of the virus. For...populated regions of South, Central, and North America. Diagnostics will play an important role in helping...outbreak was reported, and we felt that, given the critical need for low-cost, field-based diagnostics, our... journal Cell just six weeks later. The Zika publication timeline I think we can speak for all the authors...

...methods of replication. In fact, an entire classification scheme, known as the Baltimore replication classes...that in a bit! Viral genomes and replication When it comes to replication, viruses tend to march to the ...developed around how they replicate (Figure 2). Figure 2: Baltimore replication classes. Image credit: ...an intermediary DNA replication step between DNA and mRNA. DNA genome replication can involve an RNA or...that have been genetically modified to either limit or completely eliminate their replicative ability. The...Viral Vectors 101: Viral Applications Viral Vectors 101: Viruses as Biological Tools Viral Vectors 101:...cell. The cell then uses its own machinery to replicate the viral genome and proteins. This is, for the...

...understanding of complex biological processes. Many tools exist to perturb biological function in a direct...use in dsRNA applications. Figure 1: Schematic of an RNAi-inducing transgene. Typically, the desired...individually engineered and empirically evaluated for their gene silencing efficacy, thereby requiring a substantial...limitations of any technique in the context of the biological question. For example, while gene knockouts have...makes traditional knockouts unattractive from a practical perspective. Therefore, techniques that function...degradation, blocking translation, or chromatin modifications of complementary gene sequences (Figure 1). ...silencing can be easily induced by exogenous application of long or short dsRNA. However, it is important...

.... The overlap here is that it is unethical to use scientifically unproven technologies to edit a human...human clinical trials. This model also demonstrates that when we are at the point of scientifically rigorous...throughout the history of medical research, there have always been people who unethically experiment on humans...Cas9 genome editing is not far enough along, scientifically, to be doing in humans; We have not had a broad... recently published a report on the social and ethical issues of genome editing and human reproduction...with healthy mitochondria, with the intent to eradicate mitochondrial diseases. The key success of the...investigate the scientific possibility, safety, and efficacy of the mtDNA transfer options being investigated...

...cell lines (European, East Asian, Indigenous American, Africa, or South Asian) used in the screens based...Sean and Aaron knew that their study had significant statistical limitations, and expected to find only ...kind of biological framework, suggested to them that their findings may be the result of a technical artifact...Biomedical research has a long and well-documented history of racial bias, which still impacts and influences...Dependency Map cancer cell lines (left). Heatmap indicating the breakdown of ancestry associated dependencies...Seeking an explanation  First, they looked for a biological explanation, a relationship between the genetic...machinery where to cut.      Fig. 2: Heatmap indicating loci where SNPs reside on sgRNA target sequences...