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Technology News

Biotech for all – taking science back to it’s roots?

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This morning I came across a very interesting TED talk by Ellen Jorgensen entitled “Biohacking — you can do it, too” (http://on.ted.com/gaqM). The basic premise is to make biotech accessible to all, by setting up community labs, where anyone can learn to genetically engineer an organism, or sequence a genome. This might seem like a very risky venture from an ethical point of view, but actually she makes a good argument for the project being at least as ethically sound than your average lab. With the worldwide community of ‘biohackers’ having agreed not only to abide by all local laws and regulations, but drawing up its own code of ethics.

So what potential does this movement have as a whole? One thing it’s unlikely to lead to is bioterrorism, an idea that the media like to infer when they report on the project. The biohacker labs don’t have access to pathogens, and it’s very difficult to make a harmless microbe into a malicious one without access to at least the protein coding DNA of a pathogen. Unfortunately, the example she gives of what biohacking *has* done is rather frivolous, with a story of how a German man identified the dog that had been fouling in his street by DNA testing. However, she does give other examples of how the labs could be used, from discovering your ancestry to creating a yeast biosensor. This rings of another biotech project called iGem (igem.org), where teams of undergraduate students work over the summer to create some sort of functional biotech (sensors are a popular option) from a list of ‘biological parts’.

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The Cambridge 2010 iGem team made a range of colours of bioluminescent (glowing!) E.coli as part of their project.

My view is that Jorgensen’s biohacker project might actually have some potential to do great things. Professional scientists in the present day do important work, but are often limited by bureaucracy and funding issues – making it very difficult to do science for the sake of science. Every grant proposal has to have a clear benefit for humanity, or in the private sector for the company’s wallet, which isn’t really how science works. The scientists of times gone by were often rich and curious people, who made discoveries by tinkering and questioning the world around them, and even if they did have a particular aim in mind they weren’t constricted to that by the agendas of companies and funding bodies. Biohacking seems to bring the best of both worlds, a space with safety regulations and a moral code that allows anyone to do science for whatever off-the-wall or seemingly inconsequential project that takes their fancy – taking science back to the age of freedom and curiosity.

Scientists Implant Biofuel Cell in Living Snail

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By Maria Panagiotidi

Researchers led by Evgeny Katz, the Milton Kerker Chaired Professor of Colloid Science at Clarkson University, have implanted a biofuel cell in a living snail. Their findings were published in the Journal of The American Chemical Society.

Researchers led by Evgeny Katz, the Milton Kerker Chaired Professor of Colloid Science at Clarkson University, have implanted a biofuel cell in a living snail. This is the first incidence of an implanted biofuel cell continuously operating in a snail and producing electrical power over a long period of time using the snail’s physiologically produced glucose as a fuel. (Credit: Image courtesy of Clarkson University)

The “implanted battery” can generate electrical power for several months driven by glucose, which is produced by the snail.

This is the first reported incident of an implanted biofuel cell operating in a snail and producing electrical power over a long period of time using as fuel the glucose that is physiologically generated by its host.

Implantable biofuel cells have been suggested as sustainable micropower sources operating in living organisms, but such systems are still very challenging to design. In the future, implanted fuel cells that are driven by glucose generated by their host could power medical devices in humans or environmental sensors in animals.

Evgeny Katz and his colleagues made the electrodes of their fuel cell out of densely packed carbon nanotubes, and attached glucose-oxidizing and oxygen-reducing enzymes to them. The authors then implanted the electrodes into a snail (Neohelix albolabris). After decreasing the rate of current extraction to match the snail’s slow glucose transport and metabolism, they got continuous electrical output for an hour. The amount of electricity produced was far below that of just one AAA battery, but the group of scientists aim to increase it in future experiments. The fuel cell remained functional in the snail for several months during which the animal was allowed to roam freely and live an almost normal life.

The aim of this research is creating insect cyborgs, an idea that has been funded by the U.S. Department of Defense.

 

Reference

Lenka Halámková, Jan Halámek, Vera Bocharova, Alon Szczupak, Lital Alfonta, Evgeny Katz. Implanted Biofuel Cell Operating in a Living Snail. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2012; : 120308155036002 DOI:10.1021/ja211714w

You can find the article here:  http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja211714w 

 

 

Hydrogen-powered Robojelly preparing for maiden voyage

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By Holly Rogers

A robotic jellyfish made of smart materials could be used in search and rescue operations, say researchers from Virginia Tech.

The tentacled creation, known as Robojelly, is made from a collection of materials that change shape or size to match their environment, held in place with carbon nanotubes. As well as its intelligent build, it could theoretically run forever – the clever cnidaria is powered entirely by hydrogen.

“To our knowledge, this is the first successful powering of an underwater robot using external hydrogen as a fuel source”, said Yonas Tadesse, the lead author of the study.

Robojelly is made from “shape memory alloys”, which are smart materials that remember their original shape. These materials are wrapped in carbon nanotubes and coated in platinum powder, which is the key to the fuel source. The platinum powder reacts with oxygen and hydrogen from the surround water and produces heat, which powers the robot’s movements.

Its swimming technique mimics that of a jellyfish – the “bell” chamber  fills with water, which then collapses, forcing the water out and driving the body forwards. In jellyfish, this is done with muscle contractions, but Robojelly makes use of heat produced by the fuel cell to transform its smart material body. However, although Robojelly has been successfully tested in a water tank, it’s not quite ready for service yet. Developers need to add individual controls to each segment of the robot, which will allow it to be steered in different directions. Until then, it can be seen in testing phase below:

 

 

Y. Tadesse, A. Villanueva, C. Haines, D. Novitski, R. Baughman and S. Priya, Hydrogen-fuel-powered bell segments of biomimetic jellyfish, Smart Materials and Structures, 21, 2012.

The paper can be found at: http://iopscience.iop.org/0964-1726/21/4/045013

Sheffield University opens new solar energy research center

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Ben Robinson

 

A new solar technology research ‘farm’ at the University of Sheffield saw it’s official opening last week by the deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. The ‘Solar Farm’ as it is coined makes up one part of a larger initiative within the University called ‘Project Sunshine’, which through inter-disciplinary research aims to tackle the future energy and food needs of the world. Sheffield Solar farm looks at different solar panel technologies that are available and in development at the present moment. Another area of Project Sunshine research is into food production and methods for increasing crop yields by looking at new cropping methods that use sunlight water and fertiliser more efficiently than at present. Project sunshine also looks into the area of environmental change through satellite observation and what implications this has on a global scale to energy and food needs. This area of research also tackles social issues and the outcomes of changed views on energy use.

 

The solar farm consists of a 70^2 m array of silicon photovoltaic panels and includes a test bed for future technologies relating to photovoltaic panels. The primary silicon photovoltaic array is designed to feed back electricity into the University’s electrical system, providing around 1% of the annual power consumption of the Hicks Building (8000 kW hr per annum). On top of providing power to the University the silicon array will be a useful research tool for researchers, policy makers and the public allowing real time data to be acquired in an operational environment. Power generation data that will be obtained from the array will also be compared to the sun’s irradiance and how diffuse the light is. This data can be used to see what affect cloud cover and other weather conditions have on solar panel output, combating one of the major questions raised when solar power is discussed as a new generation of energy production. The data can be viewed through the Solar Farm’s own website providing daily irradiance and photovoltaic data output, as well as up to the minute solar and electrical power readings.

 

On top of the large silicon array other technologies are to be tested at the solar farm to promote transfer of knowledge and new links between industry and academia. This will be achieved through the secondary test bed that has been installed. Different silicon panels from different manufacturers will be tested here. The operational data achieved from the latest products will allow for these technologies to be adapted to cope with the variations in light levels due to atmospherical effects. The test bed can also house new flexible thin film photovoltaic cells with the intention of their future integration into buildings which would result in a substantial increase in the total area of photovoltaic cells in operation in the UK. Another technology for the test bed is that of polymer photovoltaics, an area closely tied in with research being conducted within the university. This will allow photovoltaics that have been created by groups in the university to get data on how they perform in an operational environment, for the first time.   

 

It will be interesting to see how the research develops at the solar farm and how this will aid development of future solar technologies with higher efficiencies and better implementation into the real world. The UK has a sufficient area for solar panels that would provide a significant proportion of the energy needed, on the roofs of most buildings or in gardens. If these new technologies can be developed and integrated into these areas then aims to cut carbon emissions can be achieved and the way we produced energy revolutionised.

 

Links to the Initiatives websites:

Project sunshine : http://shine.sheffield.ac.uk/

Solar Farm (where real time data can be viewed) : http://www.sheffieldsolarfarm.group.shef.ac.uk/

Balls to the World Cup!

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Kathryn Swindells


Taking place in South Africa, the football world cup is the big sporting event of 2010, so not just any football will suffice. This year’s tournament will be played with the ‘Jabulani’, a football that was developed by researchers at the University of Loughborough along with the sports company Adidas. Their aim was to create a ball which was perfectly round, accurate in flight and easy to handle in all conditions. 

Instead of hand-stitching pieces of leather together, the new ball is made out of eight thermally bonded 3-D panels. This removes any imperfections caused by the stitching and means that the ‘Jabulani’ is perfectly round and more accurate in flight. 

Dr. Andy Harland, of the Sports Science Institute at Loughborough, “said “When compared to a 32 panelled stitched ball for example, you don’t get the differences in stiffness and differences in response that are a function of the material and the stitching arrangement around the ball.””

The ball is also not completely smooth. It has a so-called Grip’’n’’Groove profile which circles the ball to optimise the aerodynamics. “

Dr. Martin Passmore of Loughborough University said “This is to make sure that the ball is much more symmetrical in flight and so it flies in a much more controlled way”.” 

The handling has also been improved by the introduction of “goose bumps” onto the surface which should enable it to be playable in all weather conditions. 

To test the properties of the ball, researchers at Loughborough utilised a robot which enabled them to mimic a human foot kicking the ball. This is capable of reproducing the same shots over and over again, allowing the scientists to study the flight of the ball using advanced motion capture cameras. The system is even capable of a variety of kicks and, in effect, is able to ‘‘bend it like Beckham’’ over and over again.

However, the big test will come in the next few weeks as teams’ battle it out to become world champions. There has been some controversy with a number of players saying the ball is difficult to control but the manufacturers insist that this is to do with the altitude rather than the design. 

It would seem that as is the case with many new things, the ‘Jabulani’ will take some getting used to; maybe the team that is quickest to master it will end up victorious. 

More information can be found at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/service/publicity/news-releases/2009/169_adidas-jabulani.html. 

 

Plastic Fantastic – plastic antibodies protect against bee venom in mice

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By Joey Shepherd

In the first study of its kind to show results in living animals, a group headed by Kenneth Shea of Stanford University have developed plastic antibodies that can capture and clear a bee venom peptide, melittin, from the bloodstream of living mice.

The team created the melittin antibodies using a process known as ‘molecular imprinting’ – essentially creating moulds made of non-toxic synthetic organic nanoparticles (NPs) by making the NPs form around molecules of melittin. The melittin was then dissolved away, leaving protein-sized polymer nanoparticles with an imprint of the venom peptide. The NPs were then able to capture the melittin peptides since they were an exact fit, much as naturally occurring antibodies capture their targets.

When the researchers injected the miniscule plastic antibodies into the mice 20 seconds after injecting the bee venom, it resulted in the survival of 60% of the treated mice. In comparison, none of the untreated mice survived injection of the toxin. The group used fluorescence imaging of the live mice to track fluorescently-labelled NPs and found that they accumulated in the liver for disposal after capturing the poisonous peptide from the bloodstream.

Although the plastic antibodies won’t be able to function exactly like naturally occurring antibodies, as they have no means of communicating with other cells of the immune system, they could provide new anti-toxin therapies.

Original paper: Hoshino et al., J.Am.Chem.Soc 132::6644 (2010).

How to build a ‘Black hole’

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Ben Robinson


Scientists from the Southeast University in Nanjing, China have produced a device that is capable of acting as an “Electromagnetic Black Hole”.

The device reported this month in the New journal of Physics, is capable of achieving a 99 per cent absorption rate for microwaves. This work has applications for the study of Black holes in the lab, harvesting Electromagnetic waves (light, microwaves, X-rays etc) or acting as a thermal heating source due to processes in it’s core.

Theoretical work by Prof. Evgenii Narimanov and Dr. Alexander Vildishev proposed that it would be possible to create an “Omnidirectional light Absorber”. Scientists, led by Dr. Qiang Cheng, have created such a device using metamaterials, artificially created structured materials that have an effect and can manipulate electromagnetic waves.

The device is comprised of two key regions, an outer shell that causes microwaves to spiral in to the second region, an absorptive core. Using the principle of refraction (changing the direction of light) the scientists could build an outer shell that directs incident microwaves into the core. This was achieved through an architecture of 60 concentric rings of metamaterials that had a varying degree of refraction, formed by variations in the size of the metamaterials’ structured patterns. This created a gradient where the angle that microwaves were guided to the core increased as they got closer.

Experimental data for the outer shell showed that no microwaves were scattered or “lost” and that all were directed into a core that absorbs them, converting the microwaves to heat.  The scientists collected further experimental data for microwaves at different incident angles. Results from these showed that regardless of angle, the core thus acting like a Black hole absorbed 99 per cent of microwaves.

Whereas this device doesn’t absorb matter like a black hole, it successfully mimics the spiralling motion that incoming matter takes as it is absorbed and traps light/electromagnetic waves, much like it’s far larger namesake. The team of scientists hope to take this work further and produce a similar absorber for visible light and different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.

This work is published in New Journal of Physics.

Cheng, Q, Cui, T.J, Jiang, W.X and Cai, B.G. An omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber made of metamaterials. New Journal of Physics 12 (pp10-21)

 

COMMENT: Venter – pioneer or playing God?

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Rhiannon Pursall


Will May 2010 be heralded as a milestone when the so-called ‘miracle of life’ was recreated by a boffin in a lab coat with four bottles of chemicals? Will we soon witness armies of specially designed creatures, cleaning up our oil spills and making medicine? Has the world of biology secured an almighty up-man-ship on that of robotics? 

Dr. Craig Venter and colleagues at the J. Craig Venter Institute, Maryland, USA, have created what has been dubbed the first “synthetic life form”. Which is what, then? In a nutshell, a genome (a kind of biological instruction booklet) was created on a computer and put into a cell. This cell was then controlled by the synthetic instructions, and reproduced to make more cells.

For over a decade, the Venter squad have been testing, developing and perfecting the process that ultimately yielded the ‘synthetic life’ breakthrough. They have worked with various types of the bacterium Mycoplasma, a very useful organism for geneticists as it is relatively simple. It is comprised of the smallest set of genes of any known life form that can be maintained in the laboratory – and so serves as an excellent place to start before moving onto bigger life forms. 

Firstly, the researchers grew the instructions that they designed (the ‘synthetic genome’) using a part of genetic machinery taken from yeast. They then ‘booted up’ the instructions in a bacterium. They stressed their method was revolutionary because it began by creating a synthetic genome on the computer, then worked up to making this genome control an organism. In contrast, other genetic engineering processes, such as genetic modification of plants, alter existing genomes.

The end result of Venter’s project is somewhat underwhelming to one hoping for little alien creatures akin to the London Olympic mascots. Contrary to rumour, “new life” was not made: they did not construct an artificial body controlled by totally new genes. They arranged an existing set of genes in a slightly different order, and put them into a pre-existing body. The name says it all – far from futuristic and techie, the new organism is disappointingly referred to as “Mycoplasma mycoides JCVI-syn1.0”…aka simply a form of the bug Mycoplasma mycoides, which infects goats. 

In their article in Science, Venter’s team admit they started small in terms of their chosen biological organism, but it is the lessons learned and techniques developed that are something to get excited about. Such progressions could in the future bring the idea of creating ‘useful’ living beings closer to reality. So the project should neither be dismissed as a fuss over nothing nor proclaimed the start of humans “playing god”. It is simply a great example of the scientific process: an idea was formed, and through years of hard work something remarkable was unearthed, serving as a platform for a multitude of research to further progress the idea.  

Understandably, the results sent thunderous alarm bells ringing, notably the fear that new life forms released upon Earth could have catastrophic effects. At the extreme end are somewhat exaggerated ideas such as “one mistake in a lab could lead to millions being wiped out by a plague, in scenes reminiscent of the Will Smith film I Am Legend” (The Daily Mail, 21st May 2010). Pause for thought: given that this research was “thwarted for many weeks” by getting a single unit wrong, in a gene made up of over a million units, accidentally producing some killer superbug that can live and breed seems highly unlikely. 

The scientists behind this important landmark project have been represented as evil conspirators by some – according to Dr David King of the watchdog Human Genetics Alert, “what is really dangerous is these scientists’ ambitions for total and unrestrained control over nature” (The Daily Telegraph, 20th May 2010). Another pause for thought: ‘unrestrained’ is very doubtful to be used to describe future work in this field, with the plethora of ethics hurdles faced by researchers. Also, haven’t science’s previous ambitions to gain “control over nature” lead to some pretty amazing feats, such as fertility treatment and organ transplant? Of course, concerns are very real, valued, and deserve attention. President Obama said that Venter’s work raises, as yet unspecified, “genuine concerns” and has ordered the White House bioethics committee to conduct a review on synthetic biology (New York Times, 20th May 2010).

The next steps are to make instructions for bacteria to make a vaccine. This could herald the beginnings of something amazing, and in Venter’s words, “we are limited mostly by our imaginations”. 

For now, let us dilute the hysteria with a touch of reality: no one knows how complicated the next stage will be, or how long it will take. Considering it took 15 years to make the pioneering footstep, Frankenstein-esque creations are unlikely to be breaking free from laboratories and throwing the natural world into chaos just yet.


The original work is published by Daniel Gibson et al. in the May 20th edition of Science Express and will appear in an upcoming print issue of the peer-reviewed journal Science.