Category Archives: Biology

Biology

Structural biologist Helen Berman elected to the National Academy … – USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Helen Berman, professor (research) of quantitative and computational biology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and a member of the Bridge Instituteof theUSC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

The academy is a private, nonprofit institution established during Abraham Lincolns term as U.S. President to recognize members achievement in science and advise the federal government and other organizations on matters of science, engineering and health policy.

Berman, a Professor Emerita at Rutgers University, joined USC Dornsife in January. She is among 120 members and 23 international members elected to the academy this year.

This is a wonderful achievement that comes on top of many honors that Professor Berman received for contributions to the field of computational and structural biology, said Remo Rohs, chair of the Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology and professor of quantitative and computational biology, chemistry, physics and astronomy, and computer science.

The careers of most cell and molecular biologists have been enriched in amazing ways by the work that Helen has performed. Her co-founding of the Protein Data Bank has created the most important dictionary we use in studying the language of life, said Scott Fraser, director of Bridge Institute and Provost Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Physiology and Biophysics, Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Pediatrics, Radiology, Ophthalmology and Quantitative and Computational Biology. The field would be decades behind if not for her visionary efforts.

Berman studies nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, and how proteins interact with them. She also studies collagen, a protein found throughout the body that provides structure and strength to muscles, bones and skin as well as the tissues that connect them.

She says shes driven to pursue her research by a love of learning and discovery, and she tries to foster that drive in others, as well. In my work, I try to balance time between conducting my own research with ways of enabling scientific discovery by others.

She co-founded the Protein Data Bank archive, an international archive that stores all experimentally determined structures of molecules and their complexes. The PDB enabled the important, artificial intelligence-driven breakthrough, AlphaFold. Developed by Googles DeepMind and openly available to the scientific community, AlphaFold can predict the three-dimensional structures or folds of all existing proteins using their amino acid sequence.

This work would not have been possible without Helens groundbreaking contributions, Rohs said.

Berman has also pursued an interest in sharing her work with the public through film and digital arts. She was executive producer of the documentary series Target Zero, which uses high-quality animation to illustrate how anti-HIV drugs work. At USC Dornsife, she is contributing to the World in a Cell project, a collaboration between the Bridge Institute and the USC School of Cinematic Arts that uses virtual reality to provide a view of the inside of a pancreatic beta cell, where insulin is made.

Scientists need to analyze and weigh in on issues as they relate to the public good, she said. We have a responsibility to help educate not only our students but the public at large.

Renowned among her peers, Berman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the International Society for Computational Biology among other organizations. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access in the Life Sciences, the Distinguished Service Award from the Biophysical Society and the DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Read this article:

Structural biologist Helen Berman elected to the National Academy ... - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Biology

Next-generation statistical simulator gives medical and biological … – UCLA Health Connect

UCLA researchers have developed an all-in-one, next-generation statistical simulator capable of assimilating a wide range of information to generate realistic synthetic data and provide a benchmarking tool for medical and biological researchers who use advanced technologies to study diseases and potential therapies. Specifically, the new computer-modeling or in silico system can help researchers evaluate and validate computational methods.

Single-cell RNA sequencing, called single-cell transcriptomics, is the foundation for analyzing genetic makeup (genome-wide gene expression levels) of cells. The introduction of additional omics offered detail on a range of molecular features, and in recent years, spatial transcriptomic technologies made it possible to profile gene expression levels with spatial location information of cell neighborhoods, showing precise locations and movements of cells within tissue.

Thousands of computational methods have been developed to analyze single-cell and spatial omics data for a variety of tasks, making method benchmarking a pressing challenge for method developers and uses, said Jingyi Jessica Li, PhD, a UCLA researcher and professor in statistics, biostatistics, computational medicine, and human genetics. Li is also affiliated with the Gene Regulation research area at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Li leads a research group titled the Junction of Statistics and Biology.

Although simulators have evolved and become more powerful, there are numerous limitations. Few can generate realistic single-cell RNA sequencing data from continuous cell trajectories by mimicking real data, and most lack the ability to simulate data of multi-omics and spatial transcriptomics. We introduced the scDesign3, which we believe is the most realistic and versatile simulator to date, to fill the gap between researchers benchmarking needs and the limitations of existing tools, said Li, senior author of a study published May 11 in Nature Biotechnology.

The UCLA researchers say they believe scDesign3 offers the first probabilistic model that unifies the generation and inference for single-cell and spatial omics data. Equipped with interpretable parameters and a model likelihood, scDesign3 is beyond a versatile simulator and has unique advantages for generating customized in silico data, which can serve as negative and positive controls for computational analysis, and for assessing the goodness-of-fit of inferred cell clusters, trajectories, and spatial locations in an unsupervised way. Goodness-of-fit is a measure of how well a statistical model fits a set of observations.

According to the authors, the systems transparent modeling and interpretable parameters can help users explore, alter, and simulate data. Overall, scDesign3 is a multi-functional suite for benchmarking computational methods and interpreting single-cell and spatial omics data.

This study was led by Lis student Dongyuan Song, a 4th-year Ph.D. student in the UCLA Interdepartmental Bioinformatics Ph.D. program.

Authors Additional authors include: Qingyang Wang, Guanao Yan, Tianyang Liu, and Tianyi Sun all in Lis research group JSB at UCLA.

Funding This work was supported by the following grants: National Science Foundation DBI-1846216 and DMS-2113754, NIH/NIGMS R01GM120507 and R35GM140888, Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine W. M. Keck Foundation Junior Faculty Award, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative Single-Cell Biology Data Insights Grant (to J.J.L.).

Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests.

Article: Song et al., scDesign3 generates realistic in silico data for multimodal single-cell and spatial omics, Nature Biotechnology DOI: 10.1038/s41587-023-01772-1.

URL upon publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-023-01772-1

Excerpt from:

Next-generation statistical simulator gives medical and biological ... - UCLA Health Connect

Biology

Johns Hopkins scientists get $35 million gift to study the biological roots of cancer metastasis – News-Medical.Net

With a $35 million gift from researcher, philanthropist and race car driver Theodore Giovanis, scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine will study the biological roots of the most fatal aspect of cancer: how it metastasizes, or spreads, through the body.

The contribution, a 15-year commitment, will establish the Giovanis Institute for Translational Cell Biology, dedicated to studying metastasis. The institute's researchers aim to make discoveries that reveal common features of metastasis across cancer types, with the potential to develop new therapies.

Cancer is most dangerous when the disease has spread to many parts of the body, and conventional treatments are not effective enough for patients with metastatic disease. Research in our department has shown that many different cancers use similar molecular tools to spread, and we seek to design treatments to disrupt this process."

Andrew Ewald, Ph.D., new Giovanis Institute director, the Virginia DeAcetis Professor in Basic Cancer Research and Director of the Department of Cell Biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Overall, cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., and some estimates indicate that about two-thirds of cancer deaths are linked to metastasis.

"Understanding fundamental biology drives the majority of medical advances, and this gift is incredibly important for that goal," says Theodore DeWeese, M.D., interim dean of the medical faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Ewald and other researchers have previously received research funding from Giovanis' foundation, the Jayne Koskinas Ted Giovanis Foundation for Health and Policy, named to honor his late wife, who died from metastatic breast cancer in 2010. Giovanis is an advisory board member of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

"I think of myself as someone who wants to make a difference, and I can leverage the work of my foundation to a much broader and more impactful scale by providing this gift to Johns Hopkins," says Giovanis.

Born in Baltimore and a Maryland resident, Giovanis' career spans a long history in hospital system finance and insurance regulation. He led the legal battle for hospitals for a multibillion-dollar settlement in 2012 to correct an error in reimbursement rates for hospitals. He was among the first staff to run the Health Services Cost Review Commission in Maryland, the only state to annually review and set Medicare and Medicaid payment rates for hospitals.

Currently, Giovanis is a professional sports car driver and owner of Team TGM in the International Motor Sports Association.

"Mr. Giovanis' gift will enable collaboration among scientists from many disciplines, including those who specialize in basic biology, clinical treatment of patients, physics, engineering, machine learning and computational medicine," says Ewald, co-leader of the Cancer Invasion and Metastasis Program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

The institute will be housed in the Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins Medicine on the East Baltimore campus. It will include a core group of cross-departmental scientists who focus on fundamental mechanisms of cancer metastasis, and will also award grants to fund metastasis research at Johns Hopkins more broadly.

Here is the original post:

Johns Hopkins scientists get $35 million gift to study the biological roots of cancer metastasis - News-Medical.Net

Biology

First generation Aggie with a passion to learn about wildlife … – AgriLife Today

What started as a plan to study zoology turned into a passion for learning in the Texas A&M Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology for first generation student Sydnee Smith.

Attending college was not something Smith pictured while growing up. Her father, a veteran, passed away when she was a child, and her mother raised Smith and her siblings on her own.

It was not until I was much older that we looked into the possibility of me having a college career, Smith said. I came to learn of all the great benefits available to me to be able to pursue a college degree after all because of my fathers service.

I have been not only able to attend Texas A&M University but also graduate debt free, which is a really big deal in todays world, she said.

Smith sat down with us and shared her experience in the Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and her future plans with a passion for learning and traveling.

I initially began as a zoology major in the College of Arts and Science. The coursework for this major focused on micro concepts like organic chemistry and biochemistry that did not appeal to me as much as I had initially hoped it would.

So, I combed through all the majors the university had to offer and found the Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology. The degree plan consisted of course options like general mammalogy, diversity and evolution of vertebrates, fire ecology and many study abroad options. With the prospects of traveling, fieldwork and specimen identification, I could not have contacted my adviser faster to learn how to change my major.

I never knew that I would enjoy it as much as I do now.

Traveling with the students in my major to Brazil in the Amazon education abroad program hands down. Traveling there was a one-of-a-kind experience. We got to see the most biodiverse biome the Earth has to offer in a way many never will. Visiting local villages, fishing in lakes only known by locals and having an amazing guide helped make the experience so valuable.

This trip really showed me that I made the right call choosing my major; I want to continue to have experiences like this for the rest of my life.

The study abroad trip also provided me the chance to make more like-minded friends on campus. Now that I have spent more time with my classmates, it seems I have a friend in each of my classes, which is always a plus.

My advice is to put yourself out there. Texas A&M has so much to offer great people, professors, clubs, organizations and opportunities. For a while with the pandemic and no friends on campus, I was too scared to attend events alone. I really had to push myself out of my comfort zone to attend different club meetings, socials and open houses. Discovering yourself and your path is worth the momentary discomfort.

Being a transfer student myself, I would also say not to be afraid to reach out to the advisers our campus has to offer. The one-on-one time with my adviser gave me the clarity and comfort I needed to make the switch in majors. By taking advantage of the help they offered to me, I plan to still graduate on time, which has always been a goal of mine.

My coursework has given me the chance to explore different aspects of ecology including fire ecology, population and community ecology, as well as wildlife conservation and resource policy. The plethora of career options that are possible with a degree in my major was almost overwhelming. I am taking classes now that will help me narrow down which path I would be most passionate about while gaining insight into other areas that can benefit me in the future.

While I have not narrowed down my exact career path after college, there are a few areas that have piqued my interest, one of them being conservation and resource policy.

With that being said, I would still love to travel and learn even more in my field of study. I am planning to go on another study abroad trip to New Zealand during the next winter semester. The program would focus more on marine wildlife, which gives me a chance to expand my learning a bit more. I have always had an interest in learning about marine biology since I was a kid. My knowledge in this area isnt very diverse up to this point, so I would love the chance to pursue this study abroad to gain a deeper understanding of this field.

I can say that after graduation I intend to take seasonal positions working in state parks around the country to fill my love for travel and pair it with my educational background.

-30-

More:

First generation Aggie with a passion to learn about wildlife ... - AgriLife Today

Biology

Graduating human biology major creates opportunities for North … – USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

In spring semester 2021, Woori Lee took the general education philosophy course The Meaning of Life.

A human biology major who plans to go to medical school after graduating this spring from USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Lee had already satisfied her general education requirements. But she enrolled in the online, 150-student class to learn more about what to value in life.

The year before provides a good clue about one of her top priorities.

Lee immigrated to the United States from South Korea when she was 17, and her grandfather is a North Korean immigrant who came to the U.S. in the 1950s. This family history drove her longtime interest in helping refugees from her grandfathers isolated home country.

So in summer 2020, she co-founded a nonprofit, Aurora NK, with fellow USC Dornsife student Jay Lee, who at the time was president of the student club Liberty in North Korea at USC.

Aurora NK provides tutoring, legal aid and health care assistance to North Korean refugees by pairing native English-speaking college students, lawyers and health care professionals with North Korean refugees.

Woori Lee was inspired to launch Aurora NK after the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered many resources for those in need.

Woori is one of the most independently motivated and psychologically mature undergraduates Ive ever met, said Stephen Finlay, adjunct professor of philosophy who taught The Meaning of Life (PHIL 168g) course Lee attended.

Her hearts wish is to make a difference improving the lives of others.

Lee was a junior in high school when her family moved from Seoul to Los Angeles. Her father is an architect, and her mother is a homemaker. She has a brother, 23.

While her family established new roots in Los Angeles, Woori finished high school at a boarding school near Chicago.

Ive always been really interested in policy, international relations and political science, she said. Since I was young, I would ask questions like why is the Korean peninsula divided and why are North Korean refugees discriminated against in South Korea?

Lee joined her family in Los Angeles for college because of the high concentration of North Korean refugees here and because of USC Dornsifes reputation as a haven for top international relations scholars.

I was really lucky because at USC I found so many like-minded people who want to help North Korean refugees and who really want to change the world, Lee said. So many opportunities just came to me at USC.

Since 2020, Aurora NK has grown into an international network of more than 600 volunteer English tutors and over 500 North Korean refugees.

In addition to tutoring services, Aurora NK provides citizenship and immigration resources for North Koreans living in the United States and South Korea.

The nonprofit also helps refugees navigate the byzantine U.S. health care system and connects them with free clinic services. Many immigrants from North Korea struggle with nightmares, PTSD and other mental health issues, Lee said.

Wooris a super passionate and driven person, Jay Lee said. Her compassion for the North Korean people is second to none, and one thing that sets her apart is that even while working tirelessly to support this underrepresented population, shes always trying to learn more.

Even though Woori is devoted to studying health and science, she makes a genuine effort to learn more about policy so that she can better serve others, added Lee, who earned an MA in public diplomacy and now works at USC Dornsifes Korean Studies Institute. As the leader of Aurora, shes always envisioning greater things for the organization, and shes never afraid to dream big.

Finlay said that in his more than 20 years of teaching general education courses, Woori Lee stands out.

I havent met anyone I found more admirable than Woori, for her combination of intellectual curiosity and humanitarian dedication. I have no doubt that Woori is going to leave the world a better place than she found it.

Aurora NK now is active on the East Coast and in the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong, India and South Korea.

Although her eyes are set on becoming a doctor, Lees heart always will remain on helping North Korean refugees.

Recently, she learned she was a finalist for aSamuel Huntington Award, which provides $30,000 for a public service project run by graduating seniors.

At USC, Lee also served as vice president of the WorldMed Club, a student organization that meets to understand, discuss and tackle critical issues in global medicine.

Her big goal is to help advance health care in North Korea. To that end, she plans to earn a masters degree in public policy or public health.

She says her time at USC Dornsife has a lot to do with her drive.

My professors at USC provided me an incredible amount of support, opportunity and guidance, said Lee, who in her limited spare time enjoys figure skating, boxing and yoga. The USC community really shaped me into the person I am now and always challenges me to think about what I can do to help others and just make the world a better place.

See the original post here:

Graduating human biology major creates opportunities for North ... - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Biology

Gain-of-function research is a routine and essential tool in all biology research, say scientists – Phys.org

This article has been reviewed according to ScienceX's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

trusted source

written by researcher(s)

proofread

The term "gain of function" is often taken to refer to research with viruses that puts society at risk of an infectious disease outbreak for questionable gain. Some research on emerging viruses can result in variants that gain the ability to infect people but this does not necessarily mean the research is dangerous or that it is not fruitful. Concerns have focused on lab research on the virus that causes bird flu in 2012 and on the virus that causes COVID-19 since 2020. The National Institutes of Health had previously implemented a three-year moratorium on gain-of-function research on certain viruses, and some U.S. legislatures have proposed bills prohibiting gain-of-function research on "potentially pandemic pathogens."

The possibility that a genetically modified virus could escape the lab needs to be taken seriously. But it does not mean that gain-of-function experiments are inherently risky or the purview of mad scientists. In fact, gain-of-function approaches are a fundamental tool in biology used to study much more than just viruses, contributing to many, if not most, modern discoveries in the field, including penicillin, cancer immunotherapies and drought-resistant crops.

As scientists who study viruses, we believe that misunderstanding the term "gain of function" as something nefarious comes at the cost of progress in human health, ecological sustainability and technological advancement. Clarifying what gain-of-function research really is can help clarify why it is an essential scientific tool.

To study how a living thing operates, scientists can change a specific part of it and then observe the effects. These changes sometimes result in the organism's gaining a function it didn't have before or losing a function it once had.

For example, if the goal is to enhance the tumor-killing ability of immune cells, researchers can take a sample of a person's immune cells and modify them to express a protein that specifically targets cancer cells. This mutated immune cell, called a CAR-T cell thereby "gains the function" of being able to bind to cancerous cells and kill them. The advance of similar immunotherapies that help the immune system attack cancer cells is based on the exploratory research of scientists who synthesized such "Frankenstein" proteins in the 1980s. At that time, there was no way to know how useful these chimeric proteins would be to cancer treatment today, some 40 years later.

Similarly, by adding specific genes into rice, corn or wheat plants that increase their production in diverse climates, scientists have been able to produce plants that are able to grow and thrive in geographical regions they previously could not. This is a critical advance to maintain food supplies in the face of climate change. Well-known examples of food sources that have their origins in gain-of-function research include rice plants that can grow in high flood plains or in drought conditions or that contain vitamin A to reduce malnutrition.

Gain-of-function experiments are ingrained in the scientific process. In many instances, the benefits that stem from gain-of-function experiments are not immediately clear. Only decades later does the research bring a new treatment to the clinic or a new technology within reach.

The development of most antibiotics have relied on the manipulation of bacteria or mold in gain-of-function experiments. Alexander Fleming's initial discovery that the mold Penicillium rubens could produce a compound toxic to bacteria was a profound medical advance. But it wasn't until scientists experimented with growth conditions and mold strains that therapeutic use of penicillin became feasible. Using a specific growth medium allowed the mold to gain the function of increased penicillin production, which was essential for its mass production and widespread use as a drug.

Research on antibiotic resistance also relies heavily on gain-of-function approaches. Studying how bacteria gain resistance against drugs is essential to developing new treatments microbes are unable to evade quickly.

Gain-of-function research in virology has also been critical to the advancement of science and health. Oncolytic viruses are genetically modified in the laboratory to infect and kill cancerous cells like melanoma. Similarly, the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine contains an adenovirus altered to produce the spike protein that helps the COVID-19 virus infect cells. Scientists developed live attenuated flu vaccines by adapting them to grow at low temperatures and thereby lose the ability to grow at human lung temperatures.

By giving viruses new functions, scientists were able to develop new tools to treat and prevent disease. CAR-T cell therapy involves giving a patients immune cells an increased ability to target cancer cells.

Gain-of-function approaches are needed to advance understanding of viruses in part because these processes already occur in nature.

Many viruses that infect such nonhuman animals as bats, pigs, birds and mice have the potential to spill over into people. Every time a virus copies its genome, it makes mistakes. Most of these mutations are detrimentalthey reduce a virus's ability to replicatebut some may allow a virus to replicate faster or better in human cells. Variant viruses with these rare, beneficial mutations will spread better than other variants and therefore come to dominate the viral populationthat is how natural selection works.

If these viruses can replicate even a little bit within people, they have the potential to adapt and thereby thrive in their new human hosts. That is nature's gain-of-function experiment, and it is happening constantly.

Gain-of-function experiments in the lab can help scientists anticipate the changes viruses may undergo in nature by understanding what specific features allow them to transmit between people and infect them. In contrast to nature's experiments, these are conducted in highly controlled lab conditions designed to limit infection risk to laboratory personnel and others, including air flow control, personal protective equipment and waste sterilization.

It is important that researchers carefully observe lab safety to minimize the theoretical risk of infecting the general population. It is equally important that virologists continue to apply the tools of modern science to gauge the risk of natural viral spillovers before they become outbreaks.

A bird flu outbreak is currently raging across multiple continents. While the H5N1 virus is primarily infecting birds, some people have gotten sick too. More spillover events can change the virus in ways that would allow it to transmit more efficiently among people, potentially leading to a pandemic.

Scientists have a better appreciation of the tangible risk of bird flu spillover because of gain-of-function experiments published a decade ago. Those lab studies showed that bird flu viruses could be transmitted through the air between ferrets within a few feet of one another. They also revealed multiple features of the evolutionary path the H5N1 virus would need to take before it becomes transmissible in mammals, informing what signatures researchers need to look out for during surveillance of the current outbreak.

Perhaps this sounds like a semantic argument, and in many respects it is. Many researchers would likely agree that gain of function as a general tool is an important way to study biology that should not be restricted, while also arguing that it should be curtailed for research on specific dangerous pathogens. The problem with this argument is that pathogen research needs to include gain-of-function approaches in order to be effectivejust as in any area of biology.

Oversight of gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens already exists. Multiple layers of safety measures at the institutional and national levels minimize the risks of virus research.

While updates to current oversight are not unreasonable, we believe that blanket bans or additional restrictions on gain-of-function research do not make society safer. They may instead slow research in areas ranging from cancer therapies to agriculture. Clarifying which specific research areas are of concern regarding gain-of-function approaches can help identify how the current oversight framework can be improved.

Original post:

Gain-of-function research is a routine and essential tool in all biology research, say scientists - Phys.org

Biology

Dad changes adopted child’s name, gives it to ‘miracle’ biological son instead: ‘People like you shouldn’t adopt’ – New York Post

Lifestyle

By Eleanor Katelaris, Kidspot

May 11, 2023 | 12:01pm

A man has been slammed in anonline parenting forumafter he admitted to changing his adopted sonsnameafter the birth of his biological miracle baby.

He believes that his firstborn blood son should carry down the familynameas its gone back five generations.

Taking to the thread, the man wrote: Am I the ahole for changing my adopted sons name back to his original birth name after my bio son was born? (pregnancy and birth were kinds of a miracle).

He explained: My name is August V. My name goes back five generations now and it was always my plan to make my son August VI.

My wife and I were horrified to find out I was essentially firing blanks and was told I would essentially never be able to father kids heartbreaking.

We started the adoption process right away looking in mostly foreign countries so it would go faster, and we were able to adopt a baby boy from Vietnam. His first name was Thien but my wife agreed to change his name to August VI. We also agreed we would let nature take its course because miracles can happen.

Seven years later, a miracle did happen and my wife turned up unexpectedly pregnant. I decided with my wifes agreement that because we now have a bio son, it is better to give the firstborn biological son the family name.

The dad then clarified that even though their adopted sons official name was August VI, he preferred to be called Thien by almost everyone.

He also claimed that their seven-year-old didnt understand or care about the name change, as his friends already knew him by that name.

Nonetheless, they had to inform the school about the change, which resulted in the news spreading throughout their community.

Were now essentially social pariahs and the subject of massive gossip accusations of not loving Thien enough, he said.

Weve heard it all through closed mouth hushed tones. Its gotten so bad. Am I the ahole? he asked.

The dads confession sparked significant backlash on the platform, with hundreds of comments criticizing him.

Ultimately, he took his post down but the comments still remain.

You are the -hole. People like you really shouldnt adopt, one user remarked.

Another chimed in, sarcastically asking, Are you also looking at the return policy on your oldest son or did the fine print get ya on the adoption?

No way this is real. Either way, youre the ahole, another quipped.

Youre the ahole. You dragged your kid to a legal proceeding to make sure he knows his place will always be less than your bio son, another user analyzed.

Then another said: Oh well, I guess the commodity baby isnt needed anymore now that you procreated.

I cant believe any judge would approve the name change under those circumstances, even if there are parents vile enough to request such a thing. If true that poor kid is growing up feeling inferior to your bio child, commented someone else.

Your new kid gets the family name because hes your real kid. You made it very clear that you see him as your adopted son not worthy of the family name because hes not your family, a different member replied.

Great way to show your adopted child that biology trumps all. Shame on you and your wife, one man concluded.

Load more...

https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/i-changed-my-adopted-sons-name-so-my-miracle-biological-baby-could-use-it/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

Continued here:

Dad changes adopted child's name, gives it to 'miracle' biological son instead: 'People like you shouldn't adopt' - New York Post

Biology

Biologists discover thousands of migrating songbirds in Angeles National Forest – LA Daily News

A Swainsons thrush is shown by Banding Station co-leader, Lauren Hill, at the Bear Divide Banding Station in the Angeles National Forest on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. Jasmine Minott of Los Angeles takes a cell phone photo. The spot is attracting more than 50,000 songbirds in just a few months. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

In a nondescript spot in the western Angeles National Forest known as Bear Divide, Ben Szanto on Tuesday, May 9, walked quickly, carrying in a cloth pouch a songbird he plucked from mesh nets that had been stretched across the mountainous ledge.

Szanto, 28, of Mar Vista, blew on the live birds feathers to uncover its muscle-to-fat ratio and placed it on a scale, as a team of scientists hurriedly jotted down physical traits. By quickly affixing a band with a unique serial number to the leg of this Swainsons thrush, its forever coded with vitals and its migration spot data that can be downloaded by the next person who finds the banded bird.

A Swainsons thrush is shown by Banding Station co-leader, Lauren Hill, at the Bear Divide Banding Station in the Angeles National Forest on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

A Swainsons thrush is shown at the Bear Divide Banding Station in the Angeles National Forest on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

A Swainsons thrush is released by Banding Station co-leader, Lauren Hill, at the Bear Divide Banding Station in the Angeles National Forest on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Chris Spurgeon, program manger, Pasadena Audubon Society talks about bird migration at the Bear Divide Banding Station in the Angeles National Forest on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Chris Spurgeon, program manger, Pasadena Audubon Society talks about bird migration as he points out antennas that can identify birds with transmitters on them near the Bear Divide Fire Station in the Angeles National Forest on Tuesday, May 9, 2023. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

A sign announcing the Bear Divide Bird Banding Operation In Progress sits on Tuesday, May 9, 2023 at the entrance to the place in the western Angeles National Forest that has been attracting thousands of migrating songbirds this spring. (photo by Steve Scauzillo/SCNG).

Where the mighty San Gabriel Mountains crouch down to only 1,500-foot elevation north of Lake View Terrace, thousands of migrating songbirds fly every day in the spring on their journey to Northern California, and some fly as far as Alaska. This recently discovered migration phenomenon has tickled the fancy of bird watchers and launched new scientific studies of bird migration in Los Angeles County.

It is the ability to watch songbirds actively migrating which is really unique, explained Ryan Terrill, assistant professor of biology at Cal State University, Stanislaus and science director at the Klamath Bird Observatory in Ashland, Oregon. The birds fly by in swarms like bees, dozens at a time, making Bear Divide the most amazing spot to watch migrating songbirds in California, experts said.

If you see a dozen Western Tanagers, Id say that was an awesome bird-watching day, Terrill said during an interview on Monday, May 8. Here, you can see 3,000 of them.

Scientists didnt even know that songbirds migrated during the day, he said. That changed in 2019 when Terrill heard about this place when he was doing post-doctorate work at Occidental College in Eagle Rock. He started visiting the spot in the forest to witness it himself. That led to an official bird-banding and bird-counting operation beginning in 2021 that continues today, staffed by graduate students from several colleges including Occidental, UCLA, Loyola Marymount, Cal State Los Angeles and Colorado State.

It was very shocking, Terrill said. This is a really unique, weird and cool place and it is so close to Los Angeles. Holy cow! We couldnt believe it.

From Feb. 19 to May 11, trained observers counted 52,494 birds and 139 species, according to the Bear Divide Migration Count website. The numbers are off the charts. On some days, spotters counted as many as 20,000 birds, Terrill said. With that volume of birds, it gives us a study pattern, he said.

Beside biologists, everyday bird watchers are flocking there, said Chris Spurgeon, program manager with Pasadena Audubon Society. He will lead a special Mothers Day bird walk to Bear Divide on May 14.

On a day when there are a lot of birds moving through, you could see 100 times more birds than youd see in any place in California, Spurgeon said. It is great for bird watchers.

Lauren Hill, co-leader of the Bear Divide Banding Station, said on Tuesday that she enjoys sharing with everyday folks. Its become a place where scientists and hikers merge.

We met a couple last year and she was pregnant. They came back this year with their baby, Hill said, as clouds began covering the mountain. The Swainsons thrush was the last bird tagged on Tuesday. Like the other birds, it was released within a minute, she said. With the kids, when they see us release the bird, you can tell it is a monumental moment.

Some birds will get a tiny transmitter put on their back so land antennas can record their whereabouts, part of the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus is Latin for movement).

There are 1,500 Motus listening stations in North America, most of them in the eastern U.S. Of those, 44 are in California, but only two are in Los Angeles County, Spurgeon said.

Pasadena Audubon received a permit from the U.S. Forest Service to place two antennas on an abandoned laundry building down the road from the Bear Divide Fire Station in November 2022, the first Motus device operating in the county. The group is hoping for an 80% reimbursement for its expenditures of about $9,000, from the Forest Service, Spurgeon said.

On Tuesday, Spurgeon flipped open the box that gets signals from passing birds that are wearing a transmitter. He punched the buttons to make sure it was working. So far, no birds have been detected, he said. Thats probably because so few birds have transmitters, since the program is so new in California, he said.

The other Motus station was installed April 3 and April 4 at the Los Angeles Zoo, the first in the city of Los Angeles, explained spokesman Carl Myers in an email. The zoo is collaborating with the Southern Sierra Research Station and Pasadena Audubon.

The L.A. Zoo station will be able to capture signals transmitted from birds flying in eastern Griffith Park, the Verdugo Hills, and south into East Los Angeles, Myers explained. This is an important flyway path for birds migrating north to south and looking for low-lying routes among the mountainous landscape surrounding Los Angeles, he wrote.

Knowing where birds fly to, where they stop for rest or for foraging, could help preserve bird migration sites, said Spurgeon.

By having transmitters on the birds that fly past receiving stations, you get much more information about their precise movements, he said. Scientists are learning that songbirds migrate in steps, stopping to eat and rest at points on their journey, like humans on a road trip. Some of these are vital places that we need to protect, he added.

Songbirds flying north found Bear Divide because it is the path of least resistance, being a low elevation spot in the 700,176-acre Angeles National Forest that forms the northern edge of Los Angeles County, Spurgeon said.

If you are flying along a lower elevation spot, it makes it easier. At lower elevations, the birds dont have to go up and over the mountains, especially the San Gabriels which are 7,000 to 10,000 feet high.

No one knows exactly why small songbirds migrate during the day. Ornithologists once thought they only took to the air on their migration journey at nighttime.

Theres a theory. Say they land somewhere in Los Angeles County, say in a parking lot of Trader Joes. They say, I am going to take off and fly at dawn to find another resting spot, Spurgeon said. When they fly over Bear Divide, at lower elevation than other parts of the Angeles, they expend less energy, he explained.

The discovery of the songbird migration and the installation of Motus stations could signal a new understanding of smaller birds, researchers said. More Motus stations are proposed along the coast of California, said Spurgeon.

Check back in a decade. We will have hundreds of transmission stations, he said.

View original post here:

Biologists discover thousands of migrating songbirds in Angeles National Forest - LA Daily News

Biology

Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) & Cell and Molecular … – School of Public Health

The Health Sciences Office of Research and Graduate Education will host itsBehavioral and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) & Cell and Molecular Biology and Biomedical Engineering (CBTP) T32 Spring Symposium on May 17.

The theme of this years symposium is Science Communication: Effectively Communicating Research and Increasing Science Literacy.

Emily Calandrelli, the host and co-executive producer of the hit Netflix series Emilys Wonder Lab and WVU alumna, will be the keynote speaker.

WVU School of Public Health Associate ProfessorDanielle Davidov, PhD, will join Calandrelli and other WVU experts for a panel discussion.

Learn more and RSVP by visiting the Research and Graduate Education's website.

Excerpt from:

Behavioral and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) & Cell and Molecular ... - School of Public Health

Biology

Synthetic Biology Is Set To Explode, But Only Once This Huge Bottleneck Is Gone – Forbes

Matt Hill, CEO and Founder of Elegen Bio.

Elegen Bio

What better way to celebrate DNA Day than to get up close and personal with the four letter code with trillion dollar potential? And a startup that may have a key to unlock it.

Elegen is going to provide the manufacturing capability to allow other companies to do whatever they want.

Thats the vision of Matt Hill, CEO and Founder of Elegen Bio, who Im catching up with ahead of his talk at the SynBioBeta Conference this May.

Hill and Elegen are on a mission to remove a huge bottleneck from synthetic biology. The DNA code that were still to fully crack.

Its worse than punch cards, he says, equating synthetic biology now to computing almost a century ago. It's slow, it's expensive, it's cumbersome.

The manufacturing of DNA is a critical bottleneck, and it's holding back the entire field of synthetic biology as well as the rest of the life sciences.

Hill believes that long DNA, written with speed and accuracy, is what synthetic biology needs - and thats exactly what Elegen offers.

Elegen is a company that writes DNA. Theyre among a suite of companies such as Twist Bioscience, Genscript, Integrated DNA Technologies and more.

Writing DNA involves replicating the sequence of DNA code, made up of the bases we know as A, T, G and C. Accuracy is key to ensure the correct products, like enzymes, are made in cells.

Hill says Elegens ENFINIA DNA technology - a modular, systems based approach that targets methods, hardware and software alike - sets them apart.

We produce full length DNA up to 7000 bases with 99.999% per base accuracy in seven business days, he says. Right now there's nothing on the market that comes even close to that.

Hill explains that complexity is another thing Elegen is tackling, writing the parts of DNA that are tough to manufacture but can play an important role in a living cell.

There are certain features of DNA such as runs of the same DNA bases, or repeats, that are difficult to make, explains Hill. We have technologies in development that can improve on this. Its a big deal for a lot of companies. Instead of having to reconfigure the DNA, to get the molecules that they actually need.

A big barrier for making DNA is cloning, which despite decades of advances to date is still a hugely time consuming task for many synthetic biology startups.

A lot of the useful products that can be made using synthetic biology, new cancer medicines for example, can require five, ten, twenty or even more biochemical steps. Multiple enzymes working together.

More or less the same number of genes need to be stitched together, along with the other DNA ingredients that turn them on in the cell, to produce the desired enzymes that go on to make the medicines we want.

We have new methods that streamline the cloning step dramatically and make it very high throughput, says Hill. When you're talking about things like biosynthetic gene clusters, that's absolutely an area where we unlock capability and speed.

I spoke to Quentin Dudley, an expert in metabolic engineering at Speculative Technologies, an organization I wrote about earlier this year thats pioneering new innovation systems. He told me how useful this could be for startups.

"When you want to metabolically engineer an organism, you often make genetic constructs that are ten thousand or more DNA base pairs," says Dudley. When you have a long metabolic pathway or very large multi domain enzymes, it's really hard to order DNA parts that big off-the-shelf so you need to stitch various DNA fragments together yourself.

He explains that synthetic biology startups often do this sort of thing in house with limited resources, which takes time.

A lot of the existing assembly strategies are hierarchical, Dudley explains. It can take up to a month to deliver a final vector with several rounds of assembly and quality control steps. When you can custom order 7000 base pairs of DNA with very few errors, maybe you have to stitch just two or three components together in one step instead.

Youre shaving half the time off at least.

Its a boost that Hill believes will allow startups to focus more on the product.

Manufacturing DNA is not something that needs to be replicated across a thousand companies, says Hill. You have all these young companies out there trying to solve really challenging clinical problems.

Our technology allows them to progress very quickly from screening onto scale up and very rapidly into the clinic.

Hill stresses that this technology is going to help some of society's biggest problems.

This really unlocks areas like personalized cancer vaccines, says Hill. You dont have 18 or 24 months to make these things, you have to act quickly. You need to create the molecules in an order of weeks to help the patient.

mRNA vaccines, too, could be brought much faster to clinical use.

The companies we work with in pharma see DNA as a key bottleneck in being able to rapidly move from the earliest stage to a clinically deployable vaccine, he continues. The potential is huge.

But how big can Elegen go?

For plant biotechnology, getting molecules that are even bigger could be game changing.

The bacteria that you use to introduce genes into plants, Agrobacterium, the size of those DNA inserts natively can be up to 60 thousand DNA base pairs, explains Dudley. For plant engineering, we havent necessarily been doing that because we run into size limits of what our DNA assembly strategies and organisms can handle. The maximum size plasmid you can get in E. coli is 15 or 20 thousand.

"With large fragments of DNA on order, we can can get to that 60 thousand size."

For Hill, that sort of length is certainly within scope.

Right now, we can get up to 20 thousand in a roughly similar time frame, about a week and a half, says Hill. When you talk about very, very long DNA, 30, 40, 50 thousand DNA bases, this is an ideal material to be used in that process.

Crucially, for Hill and Elegen, the most important thing of all is creating a platform for companies to thrive.

I don't think we can comprehend how rapid high quality DNA and programmability in biology will actually transform everything, says Hill, positioning synthetic biology on a cusp similar to that of computer technology not so long ago. Elegen is solving a crucial part of the supply chain.

Thank you to Peter Bickerton for additional research and reporting on this article. Im the founder of SynBioBeta and some of the companies I write about, such as Elegen, are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest.

I am the founder and CEO of SynBioBeta, the leading community of innovators, investors, engineers, and thinkers who share a passion for using synthetic biology to build a better, more sustainable universe. I publish the weekly SynBioBeta Digest, host the SynBioBeta Podcast, and wrote Whats Your Biostrategy?, the first book to anticipate how synthetic biology is going to disrupt virtually every industry in the world. I also founded BetaSpace, a space settlement innovation network and community of visionaries, technologists, and investors accelerating the industries needed to sustain human life here and off-planet. Ive been involved with multiple startups, I am an operating partner and investor at the hard tech investment fund Data Collective, and I'm a former bioengineer at NASA. I earned my PhD in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry from Brown University and am originally from the UK.

See the original post:

Synthetic Biology Is Set To Explode, But Only Once This Huge Bottleneck Is Gone - Forbes