Genetics

The last woolly mammoths on Earth had disastrous DNA – Livescience.com

Dwarf woolly mammoths that lived on Siberia's Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago were plagued by genetic problems, carrying DNA that increased their risk of diabetes, developmental defects and low sperm count, a new study finds.

These mammoths couldn't even smell flowers, the researchers reported.

"I have never been to Wrangel Island, but I am told by people who have that in the springtime, it's just basically covered in flowers," study lead researcher Vincent Lynch, an assistant professor of biological sciences at the University at Buffalo in New York, told Live Science. "[The mammoths] probably couldn't smell any of that."

Related: Mammoth resurrection: 11 hurdles to bringing back an ice age beast

Wrangel Island is a peculiarity. The vast majority of woolly mammoths died out at the end of the last ice age, about 10,500 years ago. But because of rising sea levels, a population of woolly mammoths became trapped on Wrangel Island and continued living there until their demise about 3,700 years ago. This population was so isolated and so small that it didn't have much genetic diversity, the researchers wrote in the new study.

Without genetic diversity, harmful genetic mutations likely accumulated as these woolly mammoths inbred, and this "may have contributed to their extinction," the researchers wrote in the study.

The team made the discovery by comparing the DNA of one Wrangel Island mammoth to that of three Asian elephants and two other woolly mammoths that lived in larger populations on the mainland.

"We were lucky in that someone had already sequenced the [Wrangel mammoth's] genome," Lynch said. "So, we just went to a database and downloaded it."

After comparing the mammoths' and elephants' genomes, the researchers found several genetic mutations that were unique to the Wrangel Island population. The team had a company synthesize these tweaked genes; then, the researchers popped those genes into elephant cells in petri dishes. These experiments allowed the researchers to analyze whether the proteins expressed by the Wrangel Island mammoth's genes carried out their duties correctly, by sending the right signals, for instance, in the elephant cells.

The team tested genes involved in neurological development, male fertility, insulin signaling and sense of smell. In a nutshell, the Wrangel Island mammoths were not very healthy, the researchers found, as none of those genes carried out their tasks correctly.

That said, the study looked at only one Wrangel Island mammoth, so it's possible that this individual's comrades didn't have similar genes. But "it's probably unlikely that it was just this one individual that had these defects," Lynch said.

In fact, the case of the Wrangel Island mammoths is a cautionary tale about what can happen to a population that is too small and therefore lacks genetic diversity, he said.

The findings build on those from a study published in 2017 in the journal PLOS Genetics that found that the Wrangel Island mammoth population was accumulating damaging mutations.

The new study was published online Feb. 7 in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.

Originally published on Live Science.

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The last woolly mammoths on Earth had disastrous DNA - Livescience.com

Genetics

Researchers find genes of mysterious human species that interbred with Africans thousands of years ago – Firstpost

ReutersFeb 17, 2020 09:52:14 IST

Scientists examining the genomes of West Africans have detected signs that a mysterious extinct human species interbred with our own species tens of thousands of years ago in Africa, the latest evidence of humankinds complicated genetic ancestry.

The study indicated that present-day West Africans trace a substantial proportion, some two percent to 19 percent, of their genetic ancestry to an extinct human species what the researchers called a ghost population.

We estimate interbreeding occurred approximately 43,000 years ago, with large intervals of uncertainty, said the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) human genetics and computer science professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the study published this week in the journal Science Advances.

It is unclear if West Africans derived any genetic benefits from the genes of this mysterious population.

Homo sapiens first appeared a bit more than 300,000 years ago in Africa and later spread worldwide, encountering other human species in Eurasia that have since gone extinct including the Neanderthals and the lesser-known Denisovans.

Previous genetic research showed that our species interbred with both the Neanderthals and Denisovans, with modern human populations outside of Africa still carrying DNA from both. But while there is an ample fossil record of the Neanderthals and a few fossils of Denisovans, the newly identified ghost population is more enigmatic.

Asked what details are known about this population, Sankararaman said, Not much at this stage.

We dont know where this population might have lived, whether it corresponds to known fossils, and what its ultimate fate was, Sankararaman added.

Sankararaman said this extinct species seems to have diverged roughly 650,000 years ago from the evolutionary line that led to Homo sapiens, before the evolutionary split between the lineages that led to our species and to the Neanderthals.

The researchers examined genomic data from hundreds of West Africans including the Yoruba people of Nigeria and Benin and the Mende people of Sierra Leone, and then compared that with Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes. They found DNA segments in the West Africans that could best be explained by ancestral interbreeding with an unknown member of the human family tree that led to what is called genetic introgression.

It is unclear if West Africans derived any genetic benefits from this long-ago gene flow.

We are beginning to learn more about the impact of DNA from archaic hominins on human biology, Sankararaman said, using a term referring to extinct human species. We now know that bothNeanderthal and Denisovan DNA was deleterious in general but there were some genes where this DNA had an adaptive impact. For example, altitude adaptation in Tibetans was likely facilitated by a Denisovan introgressed gene.

Welcome to Tech2 Innovate, Indias most definitive youth festival celebrating innovation is being held at GMR Grounds, Aerocity Phase 2, on 14th and 15th February 2020. Come and experience an amalgamation of tech, gadgets, automobiles, music, technology, and pop culture along with the whos who of the online world. Book your tickets now.

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Researchers find genes of mysterious human species that interbred with Africans thousands of years ago - Firstpost

Physiology

How do body parts grow to their right sizes? – The Week Magazine

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Living things just seem to know how big to grow and how big to grow their sundry parts. A human liver maintains itself at just the right volume to do its job. A fruit fly's wings, on opposite sides of its body, somehow wind up the same size as each other, correctly scaled to sustain flight.

In everyday life, we expect body parts to be in proportion, because they usually are. "You notice if somebody comes up in front of you and one leg is way bigger than the other," says Ben Stanger, a gastroenterologist and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, who has studied organ growth.

But as much as we take this basic aspect of life on Earth for granted, scientists don't fully understand it. How do body parts know when to start and stop growing?

In some cases, cells seem to follow an intrinsic program carried out by the activity of their genes. At other times, cells appear to react to a cacophony of messages they receive from other cells and their environment, turning growth on and off as needed.

A lot of times, they seem to do a little of both. And when they're cancer cells, the whole business has gone awry.

"We don't get it," says Stanger, author of a 2015 article in the Annual Review of Physiology that described mechanisms that control liver growth.

Starting with salamanders

Scientists have been trying to "get it" for a long time. In the 1930s, Yale zoologists Victor Twitty and Joseph Schwind conducted experiments in salamanders, cross-transplanting limb buds from a smaller species, Ambystoma punctatum, with those of a larger but closely related species, Ambystoma tigrinium. In some experiments, the researchers found that taking a limb bud from the small salamander and grafting it onto the larger salamander resulted in an animal with three large limbs and one small one (and vice versa). This suggests that "the information for size was embedded in that group of cells very early on and didn't care what was happening in the animal," Stanger says.

But Twitty and Schwind found in other experiments that nutrition an external regulator also affected limb size. "It's nature and it's nurture," Stanger says. "In biology, it's never either/or."

Developmental biologists soon discovered a variety of ways that organs and structures achieve their ultimate sizes. In one famous 1960s experiment, researcher Donald Metcalf implanted 6 or 12 fetal mouse spleens into individual adult mice whose own spleens had been removed. He found that each implanted spleen grew to a proportional fraction of the size of a normal adult spleen leaving the animal with a normal total amount of spleen material. This suggests that spleen tissue has a way of understanding how much of it there is in relation to the body, says Jamie Davies, an experimental anatomist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. But "really annoyingly," Davies says Metcalf also found that multiple thymus grafts implanted in an adult mouse behave completely differently: Each grows to its full adult size.

Decades later, Stanger found similar growth differences in the mouse liver and pancreas: Cells that give rise to the liver use environmental cues to determine how much the developing organ should grow, while those that form the pancreas follow an "autonomous trajectory" they always achieve a preprogrammed size, no matter what is going on around them.

Pumping the brakes on growth

Scientists have sussed out a reasonable amount of detail about some of the feedback-based programs that direct growth. A protein called myostatin, for instance, helps to suppress muscle growth. When the tissues get large enough to pump out a threshold amount, muscle cells stop growing. The molecular processes that dynamically regulate liver size seem to involve tissues in the gut: When levels of bile acid fall (a sign of reduced liver function), those gut tissues produce factors that disengage a brake on liver growth known as the Hippo pathway. As a result, growth kicks into gear allowing the liver to grow to its proper size. When bile acid levels rise to normal, Hippo comes back on, and liver growth turns off again. And so on.

The Hippo pathway is a super-popular subject of study today, both because of its job in regulating organ size and because of its potential role in controlling cancers. Many questions about it remain unanswered.

Mysteries also remain for cases where instructions for size are baked in, as seen in those early experiments with salamander limbs, says Laura Johnston, a geneticist and developmental biologist at Columbia University Medical Center. Labs are delving into a number of inputs that may play a role in directing cells to grow, from information about cell fates and cell organization that are hardwired in the DNA, to mechanical forces on tissues.

Johnston's own research, some of which she and her coauthors described in a 2009 article in the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, focuses on a phenomenon known as cell competition interactions that lead to the deaths of unfit or unneeded cells. It seems to play a role in stabilizing organ size. When researchers in her lab blocked cell-death mechanisms in the cells that give rise to fruit fly wings, they found that the bell-curve-shaped distribution of wing sizes normally seen in fly populations broke down. A larger-than-usual number of flies developed overly large wings, or overly small ones. It's as if, she says, "the precision of size regulation is lost if the cells can't do these competing interactions."

There's still much to learn out about the deceptively simple, fundamental questions of how an arm matches its corresponding limb or how a liver ends up just the needed size. But the questions have practical ramifications too. Many growth studies today, including myriad explorations of the Hippo pathway, are conducted in the service of understanding and treating cancers. "Researchers are saying, 'Look cancer is development gone wrong, and it's obviously growth-connected, so we really need to understand growth on its own,'" Davies says.

Also interested in organ growth are researchers who want to engineer tissues using stem cells. "There's always the worry that if you build something that will grow up inside the body," Davies says, "will it know when to stop?"

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.

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How do body parts grow to their right sizes? - The Week Magazine

Physiology

How the pros handle training during their period – Canadian Running Magazine

Women have a bigger presence in sport than ever before and Dina Asher Smith, the reigning 200m world champion, is using her platform to discuss a topic that was once tabooa womans period and its possible training implications.

RELATED: The birth control pill: what runners need to know

Womens experience while training with their periods varies enormously from person to person. While some women find themselves needing to take time away from sport, others barely notice a change in their bodies. If youre someone who has struggled while training through your period, Asher-Smith has some good advice.

Kristy Sale is an exercise physiologist with a focus on female physiology. She acknowledged on Twitter last week that more research is needed in this area (something shes personally working to move forward). In the meantime, her best advice for women training through their period is to listen to their bodies and make reasonable adjustments where necessary (and also to keep in mind that everyones body is different).

Sale also gave Asher-Smith a shout out, endorsing the sprinters approach to training on her period.

RELATED: WATCH: Gwen Jorgensen on periods and competition

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How the pros handle training during their period - Canadian Running Magazine

Cell Biology

Cell biology storm provides a view of the choreography of life – WLNS

New findings by the National Institutes of Health show a lack of assistance for young people battling opioid addiction.

Only 1 in 3 people aged 13-22 who survived an opioid overdose received any kind of follow-up addiction treatment.

The study of over 3,600 young people also showed that less than 2 percent received one of three approved medications for opioid use disorder.

The findings reported in JAMA Pediatrics come from Rachel Alinsky, an adolescent medicine and addiction medicine fellow at Johns Hopkins Childrens Center, Baltimore.

Alinsky used data on more than 4 million mostly low-income adolescents and young adults whod been enrolled in Medicaid for at least six months in 16 states. The sample included 3,606 individuals whod been seen by a doctor and diagnosed with opioid poisoning. A little over half of them were female and most were non-Hispanic whites.

Nationally more than 4,000 fatal opioid overdoses occurred in people between the ages of 15 and 24 in 2016.

Nonfatal opioid overdoses for teens and young adults lead to more than 7,000 hospitalizations and about 28,000 emergency department visits in 2015.

Heroin accounted for about a quarter of those overdoses. The rest involved other opioids, most often prescription painkillers.

Some overdoses from heroin might have been caused by fentanyl, according to researchers. The use of fentanyl, often mixed with heroin, was on the rise in the studys final years, but it was rarely included in drug tests at the time.

Opioid addiction rewires the brain so will power alone is simply not sufficient to achieve and sustain recovery, according to the NIH. After one overdose, the risk of dying from another one rises dramatically. So, it is critical to get those who survived an overdose into effective treatment right away, according to the NIH Director.

Less than 20 percent of young people in the sample received a diagnosis of opioid use disorder. 68.9 percent did not receive addiction treatment of any kind, while 29.3 percent received behavioral health services alone and only 1.9 percent received one of three approved medications for opioid use disorder. The three approved medications are buprenorphine, naltrexone, or methadone.

Researchers suggest pediatricians might be inexperienced in diagnosing and treating opioid addiction. Adding, even when a problem is recognized, doctors sometimes struggle to take the next step of connecting young people with the proper addiction treatment facilities.

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Cell biology storm provides a view of the choreography of life - WLNS

Cell Biology

Stem Cell Therapy Contract Manufacturing Industry, 2019-2030 – Availability of Cutting-Edge Tools & Technologies has Emerged as a Differentiating…

Dublin, Feb. 17, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Stem Cell Therapy Contract Manufacturing Market, 2019-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report features an extensive study on contract service providers engaged in the development and manufacturing of stem cell therapies. The study features in-depth analyses, highlighting the capabilities of various stem cell therapy CMOs

Advances in the fields of cell biology and regenerative medicine have led to the development of a variety of stem cell-based therapies for many cardiovascular, oncological, metabolic and musculoskeletal disorders. Driven by the revenues generated from stem cell therapies, the regenerative medicine market is anticipated to generate revenues worth USD 100 billion by 2030.

With a promising pipeline of over 200 stem cell therapy candidates, it has become essential for developers to scale up the production of such therapeutic interventions. Given that stem cell therapy manufacturing requires highly regulated, state-of-the-art technologies, it is difficult for stakeholders to establish in-house expertise for large-scale manufacturing of stem cell therapies.

As a result, stem cell therapy developers have begun outsourcing their manufacturing operations to contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs). Specifically, small and mid-sized players in this sector tend to outsource a substantial proportion of clinical and commercial-scale manufacturing processes to contract service providers. In addition, even big pharma players, with established in-house capabilities, are gradually entering into long-term business relationships with CMOs in order to optimize resource utilization and manage costs.

According to a recent Nice Insight CDMO survey, about 55% of 700 respondents claimed to have collaborated with a contract service provider for clinical and commercial-scale product development requirements. Considering the prevalent trends, we believe that the stem cell therapy manufacturing market is poised to grow at a steady pace, driven by a robust pipeline of therapy candidates and technological advances aimed at mitigating challenges posed by conventional methods of production. Amidst tough competition, the availability of cutting-edge tools and technologies has emerged as a differentiating factor and is likely to grant a competitive advantage to certain CMOs over other players in the industry.

One of the key objectives of the report was to estimate the future size of the market. Based on parameters, such as increase in number of clinical studies, target patient population, anticipated adoption of stem cell therapies and expected variation in manufacturing costs, we have provided an informed estimate of the likely evolution of the market in the mid to long term, for the period 2019-2030.

Amongst other elements, the report includes:

In order to provide a detailed future outlook, our projections have been segmented on the basis of:

Key Topics Covered

1. Preface

2. Executive Summary

3. Introduction

4. Market Overview

5. Regulatory Landscape

6. Stem Cell Therapy Contract Manufacturers in North America

7. Stem Cell Therapy Contract Manufacturers in Europe and Asia-Pacific

8. Partnerships and Collaboration

9. Contract Manufacturing Opportunity Assessment

10. Capacity Analysis

11. Demand Analysis

12. Market Forecast

13. Key Performance Indicators

14. Concluding Remark

15. Executive Insights

16. Appendix 1: Tabulated Data

17. Appendix 2: List of Companies and Organizations

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rktm8d

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.comLaura Wood, Senior Press Managerpress@researchandmarkets.comFor E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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Stem Cell Therapy Contract Manufacturing Industry, 2019-2030 - Availability of Cutting-Edge Tools & Technologies has Emerged as a Differentiating...

Cell Biology

Synthetic Biology Market to Witness a CAGR of 23.9% Through 2020-2025 – Increasing Demand for Protein Therapeutics & Personalized Medicine, Increasing…

DUBLIN, Feb. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Synthetic Biology Market by Tools (Oligonucleotides, Enzymes, Synthetic Cells), by Technology (Gene Synthesis, Bioinformatics), by Application (Tissue Regeneration, Biofuel, Renewable Energy, Food & Agriculture, Bioremediation) - Global Forecast to 2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global synthetic biology market is projected to reach USD 19.8 billion by 2025 from USD 6.8 billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 23.9%.

This report analyzes the market for various synthetic biology market and their adoption patterns. It aims at estimating the market size and future growth potential of the synthetic biology market and its subsegments. The report also includes an in-depth competitive analysis of the key players in this market, along with their company profiles, product offerings, and recent developments.

Factors such as the increasing demand for synthetic genes and synthetic cells, wide range of applications of synthetic biology, declining cost of DNA sequencing and synthesizing, increasing R&D funding and initiatives in synthetic biology, and increasing investments in the market are propelling the growth of this market. However, rising biosafety, biosecurity, and ethical concerns related to synthetic biology are likely to hamper the growth of this market.

The oligonucleotides and synthetic DNA segment is expected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period

Based on tools, the market has been segmented into oligonucleotides and synthetic DNA, enzymes, cloning technology kits, chassis organisms, xeno-nucleic acids, and synthetic cells. In 2019, the oligonucleotides and synthetic DNA segment is expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

This can be attributed to factors such as the rising demand for synthetic DNA, synthetic RNA, and synthetic genes, which are used in a wide range of applications, such as pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, personal care, flavors and fragrances, probiotics, green chemicals, and industrial enzymes.

The genome engineering segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

On the basis of technology, the market is segmented into gene synthesis, genome engineering, cloning, sequencing, site-directed mutagenesis, measurement and modeling, microfluidics, nanotechnology, bioinformatics technologies.

The genome engineering segment is expected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period due to factors such as the increasing use of engineering technologies for manipulating complex genomes, growing therapeutics development for cancer and other diseases, and the increasing technological advances in CRISPR-toolbox and DNA synthesis technologies.

The industrial applications segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Based on application, the synthetic biology market is segmented into medical, industrial, food & agricultural, and environmental applications. The industrial applications segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR owing to the rising applications of synthetic biology in producing renewable energy, biomaterials & green chemicals, and enzymes.

The Asia Pacific is projected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period

The synthetic biology market is divided into North America, Europe, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. In 2019, North America accounted for the largest share of the synthetic biology market.

However, the APAC region is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period owing to the growth in the number of pharmaceutical & biopharmaceutical companies, the increasing number of healthcare & life science facilities, and increasing requirements for regulatory compliance in pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies, growing number of international alliances, heavy funding for synthetic biology research, and strong government support.

Furthermore, the increasing focus on the Asia Pacific markets due to their low-cost manufacturing advantage also provides growth opportunities for manufacturers.

Key Topics Covered

1 Introduction

2 Research Methodology

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights 4.1 Market Overview4.2 Asia Pacific: Market, By Application4.3 Market: Geographic Growth Opportunities4.4 Market, By Region (2018-2025)4.5 Market: Developed vs. Developing Markets

5 Market Overview 5.1 Introduction5.2 Market Dynamics5.2.1 Drivers5.2.1.1 Wide Range of Applications of Synthetic Biology5.2.1.2 Rising R&D Funding and Growing Initiatives in Synthetic Biology5.2.1.3 Declining Cost of DNA Sequencing and Synthesizing5.2.1.4 Increasing Investments in the Market5.2.2 Restraints5.2.2.1 Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Ethical Concerns5.2.3 Opportunities5.2.3.1 Rising Need for Fuel Alternatives5.2.3.2 Increasing Demand for Protein Therapeutics and Personalized Medicine5.2.3.3 Increasing Research in Synthetic Drugs and Vaccines5.2.4 Challenges5.2.4.1 Standardization of Biological Parts

6 Synthetic Biology Market, By Tool 6.1 Introduction6.2 Oligonucleotides & Synthetic DNA6.2.1 Oligonucleotides and Synthetic Dna to Dominate the Market During the Forecast Period6.3 Enzymes6.3.1 Development of Enzymes has Helped in Evolving New Therapies for A Range of Diseases6.4 Cloning Technology Kits6.4.1 Need for the Creation of Artificial Dna Along With Their Assembly is Driving the Growth of the Segment6.5 Synthetic Cells6.5.1 Synthetic Cells Will Allow Tailoring Biologics and Its Adoption is Expected to Grow in the Coming Years6.6 Chassis Organisms6.6.1 Increasing Demand for Fossil Fuels is Likely to Propel the Demand for Chassis Organisms6.7 Xeno-Nucleic Acids6.7.1 Xnas are Increasingly Researched With the Growing Demand for Breakthrough Medicine

7 Synthetic Biology Market, By Technology 7.1 Introduction7.2 Gene Synthesis7.2.1 Gene Synthesis to Dominate the Market During the Forecast Period7.3 Genome Engineering7.3.1 Increasing Demand for Synthetic Dna and Genes is Expected to Drive Market Growth7.4 Sequencing7.4.1 Ngs Technology is Rapidly Becoming an Indispensable and Universal Tool for Biological Research7.5 Bioinformatics7.5.1 Use of Bioinformatics Technologies is Increasing With the Rising Need for Data Management and Curation7.6 Cloning7.6.1 Cloning Aids in Building New Genetic Modules/Pathways, Enabling Rapid Advances in Research Across Various Industries7.7 Site-Directed Mutagenesis7.7.1 Wide Applications in Genetic Engineering, Dna Assembly, and Cloning Technologies is Driving This Segment7.8 Measurement & Modeling7.8.1 Computational Modeling is Aiding the Growth of the Segment During the Forecast Period7.9 Microfluidics7.9.1 Droplet Microfluidics is Gaining Wide Recognition in the Field of Synthetic Biology7.1 Nanotechnology7.10.1 Convergence Between Synthetic Biology and Nanotechnologies Aid in Building Complex Bodies

8 Synthetic Biology Market, By Application 8.1 Introduction8.2 Medical Applications8.2.1 Pharmaceuticals8.2.1.1 In 2019, the Pharmaceuticals Segment Accounted for the Largest Share of the Medical Applications Market8.2.2 Drug Discovery and Therapeutics8.2.2.1 Cancer Detection & Diagnostics8.2.2.1.1 With Rising Investments for Cancer Research, the Market for Synthetic Biology is Expected to Grow for This Segment8.2.2.2 Other Drug Discovery and Therapeutic Applications8.2.3 Artificial Tissue & Tissue Regeneration8.2.3.1 Bio-Synthesis8.2.3.1.1 Bio-Synthesis is Dominating the Market With Its Increasing Adoption in Creating Artificial Genomes8.2.3.2 Stem Cell Regulation8.2.3.2.1 Use of Synthetic Biology in Stem Cell Regeneration and Reprogramming Somatic Cells is Expected to Drive Market Growth8.2.3.3 Other Artificial Tissue and Tissue Regeneration Applications8.3 Industrial Applications8.3.1 Biofuel and Renewable Energy8.3.1.1 Advantages of Using Genetically Engineered Organisms for the Synthetic Production of Biofuels is Driving Market Growth8.3.2 Industrial Enzymes8.3.2.1 Textile Industry8.3.2.1.1 Synthetic Biology is Being Applied in the Textile Industry to Replace Traditional Raw Materials8.3.2.2 Paper Industry8.3.2.2.1 Enzymes are Being Increasingly Used in the Pulp and Paper Industry8.3.2.3 Other Industries8.3.3 Biomaterials & Green Chemicals8.3.3.1 Silk-Based Proteins are A Type of Biomaterial Prepared Through Synthetic Biology8.4 Food & Agriculture8.4.1 Synthetic Biology Techniques are Applied in the Food and Agriculture Industry to Produce Metabolites, Health Products, and Processing Aids8.5 Environmental Applications8.5.1 Bioremediation8.5.1.1 Owing to the Growing Severity of Environmental Problems, It has Become Necessary to Develop Cost-Effective, On-Site Methods for Environmental Monitoring and Bioremediation8.5.2 Biosensing8.5.2.1 Biosensor Applications Commonly Make Use of Microalgae Owing to Their High Reproductive Rates and Ease of Culturing Due to Their Microscopic Size

9 Synthetic Biology Market, By Region 9.1 Introduction9.2 North America9.2.1 US9.2.1.1 The US Dominates the North American Market9.2.2 Canada9.2.2.1 Strong Research Infrastructure and Availability of Funding Will Support Market Growth9.3 Europe9.3.1 UK9.3.1.1 The UK Holds the Largest Share of the European Market9.3.2 Germany9.3.2.1 The Rapidly Growing Pharmaceutical Market is Expected to Drive Market Growth9.3.3 France9.3.3.1 Research Across All Industries is Strongly Supported By the Government9.3.4 Denmark9.3.4.1 Denmark has the Third-Largest Commercial Drug-Development Pipeline in Europe9.3.5 Switzerland9.3.5.1 Market Growth is Primarily Driven By the Well-Established Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Industry in the Country9.3.6 Spain9.3.6.1 Spain has A Well-Established Network of Research Centers, Universities, and Hospitals, Which Form an Ideal Environment for Research9.3.7 Italy9.3.7.1 Growth in This Market is Mainly Driven By Increasing Life Science R&D in the Country, Funded By Both Public and Private Organizations9.3.8 Rest of Europe9.4 Asia Pacific9.4.1 Japan9.4.1.1 Large Number of Research Initiatives Towards the Development of Precision Medicine Supporting Market Growth9.4.2 China9.4.2.1 Growth in R&D to Enhance the Technological Capabilities in the Country, Thereby Driving the Demand for High-Quality Research Tools9.4.3 Australia9.4.3.1 Increasing Focus of the Healthcare System on Precision Medicine to Offer Significant Growth Opportunities9.4.4 India9.4.4.1 Increasing Pharma R&D and Government Funding in the Biotechnology Industry are the Major Factors Driving Market Growth9.4.5 Rest of Asia Pacific9.5 Latin America9.5.1 Strong Pharmaceutical Industry in the Region to Provide Significant Growth Opportunities9.6 Middle East and Africa9.6.1 Increasing Partnerships Among Global Players With Government Organizations in the Region to Support Growth

10 Competitive Landscape 10.1 Overview10.2 Market Share Analysis10.2.1 Synthetic Biology Market, By Key Players, 201810.3 Competitive Leadership Mapping10.3.1 Visionary Leaders10.3.2 Innovators10.3.3 Dynamic Differentiators10.3.4 Emerging Companies10.4 Competitive Situation and Trends10.4.1 Product Launches10.4.2 Expansions10.4.3 Acquisitions10.4.4 Other Strategies

11 Company Profiles 11.1 Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.11.1.1 Business Overview11.1.2 Products Offered11.1.3 Recent Developments11.2 Merck KGaA11.3 Agilent Technologies Inc.11.4 Novozymes A/S11.5 Ginkgo Bioworks11.6 Amyris Inc.11.7 Intrexon Corporation11.8 Genscript Biotech Corporation11.9 Twist Bioscience11.10 Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI)11.11 Codexis Inc.11.12 Synthego Corporation11.13 Creative Enzymes11.14 Eurofins Scientific11.15 Cyrus Biotechnology Inc.11.16 Other Major Companies11.16.1 Atum11.16.2 Teselagen11.16.3 Arzeda11.16.4 Integrated DNA Technologies Inc.11.16.5 New England Biolabs

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9yuhf0

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Synthetic Biology Market to Witness a CAGR of 23.9% Through 2020-2025 - Increasing Demand for Protein Therapeutics & Personalized Medicine, Increasing...

Anatomy

Greys Anatomy season 16: 5 best moments from Save the Last Dance for Me – Netflix Life

Greys Anatomy is taking quite an interesting route in its 16th season. There has been a lot of back and forth with its storyline and plot, and Im not sure its making a whole lot of sense. Its unclear how theyre going to tackle the Alex Karev angle. I mean, is he just going to be at his mothers house forever? And just never going to answer Jo but answer Richards text? What are you doingGreys Anatomy?

And then theres the whole Pac-North and Grey-Sloan merger. Is thisreallynecessary? And if all the doctors were going to come back to Grey-Sloan, whyd they leave in the first place? It seems counterproductive at this point.

As we head inch closer and closer towards the season 16 finale, I hope that we get more clarification on Alex Karev, and I sincerely hope that Justin Chambers gets the farewell his character deserves. Hes one of the originals!

Theres a lot to discuss from this weeks episode, Save the Last Dance for Me, so lets get right into it!

Bravo,Greys Anatomy for giving us a character like Dr. Lauren Riley. But not just for the character, but for the fact that the actress that plays her, Shoshannah Stern is deaf. I love it when a series is inclusive and diverse in every imaginable way, and bringing in Stern was the perfect touch to this episode.

Dr. Riley was brought in, under false pretenses, by DeLuca to help treat Suzanne (Sarah Rafferty). The case is a mysterious one, and it seems like no one knows how to get to the bottom of it. Which is why Dr. Riley is brought in as she is a master diagnostician.

Of course, her methods are unconventional, but it just might be the way to figure out whats going on with Suzanne.

Ah, yes, the typicalGreys Anatomy plot twist that we all definitely saw coming. After Alex, Richard, Maggie, and Owen left and went to Pac-North, the whole story was getting so weird. I say weird because it was inevitable that they would all find their way back to Grey-Sloan.

Which is why I dont quite understand why we had to deal with all of that just for it to end up the way it has. After getting in a fight with Richard, Catherine decided to buy out Pac-North out of spite, just so Grey-Sloan could absorb it.

To fight back, Bailey and company decide to take the reins back in their control and away from Koracick and Catherine. They laid out their terms and left Koracick no choice but to accept it.

Not sure we had to take the route we did to get here, but at least everyone is back!

This is my favorite part of this weeksGreys Anatomy episode, hands down. Levis patient of the week was an elderly woman who had very little time left to live. She and her husband met while dancing and spent their lives together as dance enthusiasts.

As one final gesture, the husband asks Levi to help him plan a ballroom dance for his dying wife, and its all the feels. My heart was sinking and exploding all at the same timeand it was simply beautiful.

For a while, Amelia and Links storyline was the most interesting to me. We have Amelia who has made great strides in her life and finally comes across a nice guy like Link. So it was really infuriating when her pregnancy is turned into an it might be Owens kid plot point. Was this really necessary?

Couldnt we just let Amelia be happy for once?

Heres to hoping that the paternity test says something other than Owen.

Greys Anatomyneeds to address Justin Chambers exit in a proper way! He is one of the original cast members from day one, and it would be an incredible shame if Karevs exit was just chalked up to him running away from Seattle.

So far, thats the only inclination we have in regards to Karevs character. The show has started planting seeds of his absence by showing that he wont answer Jos texts (but conveniently answers Richards?) and then by showing the very apartment at the end of the episode.

Can we please make sure this is not the way Alexs story ends?

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Greys Anatomy season 16: 5 best moments from Save the Last Dance for Me - Netflix Life

Human Behavior

Prehistoric Engravings Offer Clues to the Evolution of Symbolism and Art – Newsweek

From prehistoric rock art to Beyonc's pregnancy photographs, symbolism and art are a key aspect of human behavior and have been since the very beginningbut how it evolved has so far mystified scientists.

To shed light on this facet of human history, researchers writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences conducted a variety of experiments on ochre and ostrich eggshell fragments collected from Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter, both in South Africa, aged between 52,000 and 109,000 years old.

The choice of Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter came down to the fact that they have artefacts displaying engraving practices throughout a 30,000 year period, enabling scientists to determine how they have changed over an extended period of time. The oldest pieces feature simple patterns with parallel lines, but become more complex, shifting to cross-hatchings displaying greater symmetry, as time wore on.

This trend towards more intricate patterns may show how the images evolved into more effective "tools of the mind," the researchers say. In contrast to instrumental tools, like stone axes, which are used to change the environment, tools of the mind serve cognitive processes, such as communication and aesthetic enjoyment. These scratchings could be the prehistoric equivalent of a bare brick feature wall or Picasso print.

In five tests, the researchers show that markings are more salient, more memorable, more reproducible and more suggestive of style and human intent the more recent they are.

The first tested saliencyhow noticeableeach of the images were. Participants were shown patterns from artefacts collected in the Blombos Cave and Diepkloof Rock Shelter in one eye and flickering colors in the other. The researchers found that the younger the engraving, the less time it took for the patterns to permeate the participants' consciousness. While older images took on average 2.27 seconds, later images took on average 1.82 seconds.

The second study involved intentionality with participants having to rate which of two images was more likely to have been created by a human. The third required participants to replicate the images they had just seen from memory. The fourth, measuring cultural traditions, instructed participants to say whether or not a target image came from the same site (the Blombos Cave or Diepkloof Rock Shelter) as competitor images.

The researchers found the younger the engraving, the more likely it was that participants believed it had been intentionally created, the more memorable (and easy to reproduce) they found it and the more likely they were to recognize it as coming from a specific site.

There was just one factor tested that did not appear to improve as time went on. The researchers tested discriminability by presenting each participant with a target and two competitor images. The target image matched one of the competitors and the participants had to work out which one as quickly as possible. There appeared to be no differences in response times based on age or location of the engravings, suggesting the "style-signifying" elements found in the fourth experiments were passive and not active.

"That is, they evolved as a side effect of transmission and reproduction more than an explicit intention to communicate group identity, which would imply an effort to actively differentiate styles between groups," the study's authors wrote.

Taken as a whole, the results suggest the engravings were created for aesthetic purposes "evolving" to become easier to remember and imitate, the study's authors propose. They add it would be interesting to delve deeper into this hypothesis by involving a more diverse set of participants to find out if the same rules apply.

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Prehistoric Engravings Offer Clues to the Evolution of Symbolism and Art - Newsweek

Human Behavior

Love Is Blind Is Offensive to Human Dignity, Which Is Key to Its Success – The New Yorker

Before the emergence of The Bachelor as a venerable schlock-culture institution, before the advent of any sort of matrimonial reality show that might inspire a satire like Unreal, before the special-event salaciousness and spectacular moral violence of Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, there was the syndicated sensation Blind Date. My roommate and I would nightly feast to this program, which was hosted by the affable and precise Roger Lodge, over pizza, on a Zenith decked with rabbit ears.

Between 1999 and 2006, the original Blind Date secreted fourteen hundred and forty episodes. There were two segments to each episode; there were two complete strangers on a date in each segment. This was an anthology of pitched woo and swapped spit, performed in honest and vulgar American manners, by tender pioneers in the burgeoning craft of onscreen self-commodification. As I recall, a typical date might involve the players practicing watercolors, or more likely body painting, then breaking both bread and codes of tasteful conduct over dinner, and then repairing to the hot tub. All the while, the screen would burble with graphicscartoonish thought bubbles, chyron-height color commentary, subtext translated in subtitleswhich shaped each date into a pulp narrative by way of commenting on it. Heckling the daters with annotations, the show managed to talk its trash and have it, too.

In November, a revival of Blind Date dbuted, with the comedian Nikki Glaser as its presenter and voice-over jester. The series, rentering a changed world, is thirsty to stay contemporary. The daters are far more polished than their generational elders, because they know how to act natural on camera, or how to act unnatural in a way that comes naturally. There is an emphasis on matchups that are all-inclusive, queer-friendly, body-positive. A press release says that the next airing will feature the first out transgender woman in Blind Date history, and I expect the show to treat her with the same amount of respect as everyone else, which is not very much. I flipped on an episode at random and found myself chaperoning Chelsea (30, realtor) on her rendezvous with David (47, hotel manager). When producers nudge her to explain why she wanted to be on the show, Chelsea says, Im on a blind date today because Patty from Millionaire Matchmaker wouldnt call me back. Glaser and the graphics team go to work mocking her as a bimbo and him as a man-bunned creep. David is bringing a full-on dirty-old-man vibe, and, against all odds, Chelsea seems into it, Glaser says. Love makes no effing sense.

Love Is Blind, on Netflix, is the logical flowering of a Blind Date model in a Bachelor world. An instant classic among quickie-wedding reality shows, its like The Dating Gamethe foundational Chuck Barris text of sight-unseen matchmakingextrapolated into a conceptual space that combines vibes from 90 Day Fianc, on TLC, and The Lobster, by Yorgos Lanthimos. The hook of Love Is Blind is that these contestants court over the course of about a business week, each without knowing what the other looks like, then meet face to face, then get married about four weeks later. It enhanced my appreciation of Love Is Blind to learn that its creators also make Married at First Sight, on Lifetime. On that one, a matchmaking panel (a relationship expert, a sociologist, a pastor brandishing marriage-counselling credentials) sets up heterosexual couples to be introduced at the altar; eight weeks later, the couples decide whether or not to divorce. Its a reliable recipe for cart-before-the-horse disasters. When I read that Married at First Sight reports a seventy-two-per-cent divorce rate, I admired the figure as impressively low.

The premise of Love Is Blind is promoted as a utopian innovation. Your relationship will begin by forming an intimate bond with nothing to distract you, a co-host, Nick Lachey, says. No social-media stalking, no Hinge-avatar superficiality. The contestants join Nick and his lovely wife, Vanessa, in referring to the setup as an experiment, and to the set as a facility; the programs forebears seem to include not only Big Brother but also B.F. Skinner.

At the core of the facility are two rows of small rooms called pods, which are paired off at partitions, through which strangers share their hopes and dreams and pleasant banalities. The skylight of each pod is in the shape of a long octagon, the silhouette of an emerald-cut engagement ring. In the overhead view, we gaze through the skylights like a God who somewhat regrets having wrought humanity and yet is about to binge the whole season.

Six couples emerge from the pods and embark on a getting-to-know-you jaunt to Cancn, in advance of setting up house in a suitably bland apartment complex in Atlanta. The stars are Cameron and Lauren. Cameron is a white guy in a navy suit. His field is computer science, so he sounds persuasive when dimplishly discussing how the experiment removes confounding variables from the mating game. Lauren is a black woman whose work as a content creator requires a colorful assortment of bodycon dresses. She voices the kind of sanity and self-awareness that makes the show palatable and even interesting, as when expressing incredulity at the whole thing. The scene of the big reveal, in which he is visibly nervous about what she will look like and she is visibly smoking hot, is deftly edited. Cameron and Lauren worry about facing challenges as an interracial couple, a theme that the show approaches with respect and without seriousness. Love Is Blind spends much effort teasing Camerons first meeting with Laurens father, as if some charged moment might transpire. The old man merely gives Cameron a protective inspection, like Spencer Tracy frisking Sidney Poitier with gruffness.

Theres an amazing tonal volatility to Love Is Blind. Slabs of crass exploitation abut moments of deep sentiment. There are touching scenes of human vulnerability and harrowing sequences of people lying to themselves at length. Vast idiocies of human behavior provoke moments of thoughtful reflection. The warped glass of the show magnifies universal quirks of human behavior into light comic grotesques. Some of these fiancs, who do adore saying the word fianc, are openly immersed in on-the-job training for reality-TV stardom. At various moments, the show warrants comparison to an unfortunate improv exercise, a better S.N.L. sketch, a decent bikini comedy, a Cassavetes screaming match, a treasure trove of raw anthropological data, and a cry for help. The errors of production and execution, as when producers force these people to picnic on an unseasonably cold day, are bracing. The sixth episode features the greatest moment in the moving-picture history of wholesale-priced Merlot: Jessica, a regional manager, readjusts her grudging snuggle with fianc Mark, a fitness instructor to whom she is not attracted, so that she can her share her glass of wine with her golden retriever. The season finale includes a shot of a bride sprinting down a country road in her gown, booking it like a track star, tresses and train rippling as she flees.

That Love Is Blind is morally offensive to human dignity is key to its artistic success. One sees the clear potential to build it into a significant franchise. Im imagining future seasons, and a Black Mirror crossover episode, and an expansion of the formula into a speed-dating service whereby single people, dating blind, grope for meaning in the darkness.

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Love Is Blind Is Offensive to Human Dignity, Which Is Key to Its Success - The New Yorker