Category Archives: Biology

Biology

The IOS Of Synthetic Biology Is Here. And Thanks To This Incubator, The Apps Are Rolling In. – Forbes

and Jess Leber.Johnson Photography, Inc.

A perfumery might seem an unlikely place for the synthetic biology revolution to accelerate in earnest, but thats where Jason Kakoyiannis started to dream it.

Kakoyiannis is the Managing Partner of Ferment, a Ginkgo Bioworks-powered company creation studio. He believes platforms like Ginkgos allow startups to make a beeline to market.

I caught up with him ahead of the SynBioBeta 2023 conference in May, which will feature talks from several of the companies in Ferments portfolio.

We're in an age where biology can be thought of as a manufacturing technology with nanoscale precision, but with scalability on the level of continents, says Kakoyiannis, as he points to an image of South Americas sprawling Amazon rainforest.

Synthetic biology capitalizes on natures amazing ability to make things. Lots of things. From medicines to building materials.

It involves tweaking the DNA of cells, the Amazon-scale nanofactories pioneered by biology, to make products that can be brewed up like beer. Its scaling rapidly thanks to companies like Twist Bioscience and Ginkgo.

We translate the capabilities being built up by platform-type companies such as Ginkgo, who are getting better and better at working with DNA, to find end products that are consciously market oriented, Kakoyiannis explains. Then we build companies that will productize them.

Its like building on the cloud.

Starting out as an artist, Kakoyiannis spent several years as a curator in New York before law school beckoned. After practicing mergers and acquisitions law he then tried his hand at business, finding a passion in the fragrance and flavor industry.

The penny dropped when he was working with Gingko, who along with Bayer formed Joyn Bio to meet a growing demand for biological fertilizers.

That was a lightning strike moment, he says. Other industries and companies, advantaged by synthetic biology and resources in a way to move quickly, could become category defining and category disruptive.

Taking inspiration from company creation studios in biotech and software, such as Third Rock and Idealab, Ferment joins the likes of Indie Bio as an accelerator for synthetic biology startups.

Kakoyiannis focuses on market fit, while partners Brian Brazeau and Jess Leber tackle scalability and technology.

Allonnia is one such Ferment startup. The company creates value from waste and pollutants by identifying and improving microbes that can clean them up.

We want to make sure what we're doing has value, says CEO Nicole Richards. Where can biology have a transformational impact?

Just two years after I reported on Allonnias launch in 2020, they released their first product to clean up 1-4 dioxane in tap water. Two more will follow this year, a biosensor that targets the all-pervasive forever chemical PFAS, and a microbe that harvests heavy metals from mining waste.

Ferment has helped structure what a strategy could look like in this area, and then created the connections, says Richards, who aims to launch ten products by 2030. We've been able to launch products and have a very positive and meaningful impact. Theres nothing like our PFAS sensor out there.

Ayana Bio is another company in Ferments ecosystem that creates high value through high nutrition ingredients such as cacao, saffron and ginseng, using plant cell fermentation.

In a matter of weeks, Ayana Bio brews up plant cells that produce much greater amounts of health benefiting compounds than are found naturally. The product slots perfectly into a plant powder market thats worth billions.

We find a way to make the cells, explains CEO of Ayana, Frank Jaksch. Ginkgo helps with the metabolomics, the proteomics, the genomics, the transcriptomics, so we can identify which plant cells are optimally going in the right direction for what we want.

BiomEdit, an Elanco spin-out developed with Ferment that will leverage Ginkgos expertise on strain optimization, is also set to release its first products. Microbes engineered to boost livestock health and reduce the reliance on antibiotics.

I think in Ferment we found people who share the same mindset about the role of biology, says Aaron Schacht, CEO of BiomEdit. Innovating the role of Gingko technology to make the outcomes of biology more accessible from a product standpoint.

Its this power of the platform that Kakoyiannis believes opens up huge potential for synthetic biology companies.

Theres already this capacity and economy of scale for doing a lot of the sophisticated cell engineering work. A young company can tap into that, focus resources on the productization and product development, he explains.

You might argue that the first waves of biomanufacturing companies were mostly doing what's called technology push, then looking for a market after the fact. Its a classic paradigm for building technology businesses. But it can often mean that market fit comes later, or doesn't come at all.

We're looking to solve not just problems, but hair on fire problems for customers.

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, including Ferment, Ginkgo, Twist, Allonnia, Ayana and BiomEdit, 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.

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The IOS Of Synthetic Biology Is Here. And Thanks To This Incubator, The Apps Are Rolling In. - Forbes

Biology

Study identifies a new building block in the navigation system of fish; boundary vector cells in central telencephalon of … – EurekAlert

image:Goldfish with recording implant. view more

Credit: Lear Cohen (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Study identifies a new building block in the navigation system of fish; boundary vector cells in central telencephalon of goldfish enable unique encoding of position, documented here for the first time in the largest group of vertebrates

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In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001747

Article Title: Boundary vector cells in the goldfish central telencephalon encode spatial information

Author Countries: Israel, France

Funding: see manuscript

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

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Study identifies a new building block in the navigation system of fish; boundary vector cells in central telencephalon of ... - EurekAlert

Biology

Biology Faculty Petition Following IA Position Reduction and … – The UCSD Guardian Online

An image of proposed BICD courses shows 300 students will be in one remote discussion section for the upcoming 2023-24 school year, according to a screenshot shared with The UCSD Guardian from sources in the biology department. The cuts to discussion sections are a result of the renegotiated UC-UAW contracts which redefined undergraduate roles, requiring undergraduate Instructional Assistants to receive the same pay and benefits as graduate Teaching Assistants. This change inclined some departments to eliminate undergraduate roles as means to manage costs, thereby reducing the number of discussion sections.

When asked about this reclassification of undergraduate IAs and its ensuing reduction on opportunities for undergraduates, UAW Local 2865 President Rafael Jaime provided the following statement to The Guardian:

The new UC-UAW contracts end UC San Diegos long standing practice of misclassifying undergraduate Teaching Assistants as either unpaid students or hourly tutors, the statement read. Undergraduates performing TA work must now be paid as TAs and given the full benefits of TA employment, including tuition and fee remission. In response to this, some UCSD departments have chosen to eliminate the opportunity for undergraduates to serve as instructional assistants by declining to employ undergraduates altogether, and the School of Biological Sciences has eliminated discussion sections entirely. UAW 2865 is disappointed that UC San Diego is choosing to use this moment to divest from classroom education rather than using their vast resources to maintain full employment and support high quality education.

On April 7, a faculty petition signed by 76 members of the department addressed Chancellor Pradeep Khosla and Executive Vice Chancellor Elizabeth Simmons, asking them to provide resources for sufficient IA positions.

Without immediate additional funding from the university to offset the impact of the new UAW contract, the School of Biological Sciences has no alternative but to substantially reduce Instructional Assistant allocations and eliminate traditional (32-person) discussion sections in lecture courses starting in Fall 2023, replacing them with a single discussion section in one zoom room regardless of the size of the class (many of our classes have 300+ students), the petition reads. This dramatic reduction in students instructional support will harm students learning, community-building, success, and retention.

April Letter from BioSci Faculty to Chancellor and EVCMeanwhile, UCSD administrators and the biology department have yet to announce the forthcoming changes, despite dozens of biological sciences faculty speaking out against the issue and the diminishing quality of education at UCSD.

We are deeply concerned about the negative impacts of the impending change on the educational mission of UCSD and on the reputation of the School of Biological Sciences and UCSD as a whole, the petition continues. We urge you to consider the long-term impacts on the quality and equity of the education that UC San Diego provides and to provide our School with additional funding to help ameliorate the dramatic impacts on our students education.

Prior to the faculty petition, two students within the Biology department, Revelle College junior Richard Gao and Eleanor Roosevelt College junior James Garza, began a petition with over 1,200 signatures and endorsed by 11 professors with hopes to raise awareness of the forthcoming matter and to minimize the impact.

As we talked to more and more professors, we kind of realized that [stopping the changes] wasnt feasible, Garza said. So we had an argument over the wording [of the student petition] just to make it so that we minimize the changes as much as possible, just because we know that stopping them isnt really possible, given the whole economic situation.

Both Gao and Garza, who have served as IAs in biology courses, recall that UCSDs outstanding biology program was a deciding factor in choosing UCSD for their education.

As an out-of-state student, I was on the edge about whether the tuition cost was worth attending UCSD, but I believed that the quality of education that UCSDs biology department was known for justified the money, Gao said. Now I only have one year left at UCSD, so these changes will only affect a fraction of my education. However, Im sure that there are countless other out-of-state and even international students that chose to leave their homes and put their education in the hands of UCSD for the same reason, but will now have a significant portion of their academic careers affected by a disappointing lack of guidance and resources due to these changes.

The changes will not only impact undergraduates but graduate teaching assistants as well. Revelle College senior Vincent Le explained his decision to attend another university after a professor notified him of the upcoming cuts. Le was prepared to commit to a Masters program at UCSD in hopes of attaining a teaching assistant position that would pay for his tuition. But as professors began sharing the news, Le decided otherwise.

I was willing to forgo my scholarship and Directors award at a prestigious university to continue pursuing my passion for teaching at UCSD, Le said. Because of people like [one of his biology professors] who were willing to share information from behind the scenes, I was able to make an informed decision. Because otherwise if I stayed here I would be giving up on other choices.

Le, who has been an IA in six courses, said that he feels abandoned by the universitys decision to deal away IA positions.

After being told that theyre doing cuts, I felt in a way betrayed by the school because I put two years of effort into teaching students and it was one of my biggest enjoyments and it was a great way for me to develop skills that we wouldnt as students, he said. And now were losing that.

This feeling of betrayal has been amplified by administrators lack of transparency.

The lack of transparency [is unfair] Garza remarked. Because if I had known something this drastic was happening, it probably would have affected my decision. A 300-person discussion is not a discussion anymore.

The Guardian reached out to representatives of the School of Biological Sciences but was not provided with a comment prior to the publishing of this article.

The UCSD Guardian will continue to update this story as it progresses. For more information on the strike and its aftermath, read the article series published on The UCSD Guardian website.

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Biology Faculty Petition Following IA Position Reduction and ... - The UCSD Guardian Online

Biology

Three integrative biology grad students recognized by the National … – Oklahoma State University

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Media Contact: Elizabeth Gosney | CAS Marketing and Communications Manager | 405-744-7497 | egosney@okstate.edu

Two College of Arts and Sciences graduate students, Sam Miess and Olivia Aguiar, recently received the reputable National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and another CAS graduate student, Hailey Freeman, received an honorable mention.

All three Oklahoma State University students participate in varying research fields within the Department of Integrative Biology. They are the only students at OSU to receive this distinguished honor for 2023.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is considered the most prestigious and competitive fellowship for any STEM graduate student. There are approximately 2,500 awardees out of an estimated 13,000 applicants.

Aguiar is a first-year masters student from Massachusetts conducting research with Dr. Barney Luttbeg in the Department of Integrative Biology. She is researching predation risks in aquatic systems.

Aguiar earned her undergraduate degree as an honors student at UMass Dartmouth. She completed her undergraduate thesis over a joint research project studying how predation risk improves marine snails lifespan, which received publication. At OSU, she is specifically researching the consistency of predation risk responses throughout a Physa snails lifespan. She intends to connect the risk responses to other types of risk like insecticide for Physa snails.

According to Aguiar, the mentorship from both her graduate and undergraduate programs contributed greatly to her success as a student and her fellowship application.

Because I am a first-generation American and being the only person pursuing science and a Ph.D. in my family it was hard finding out all the opportunities available for masters students, Aguiar said. But receiving this fellowship has been such a dream because I can solely focus on my thesis, research and education. In the future, I want to pay it forward and be a resource to future science students.

Miess is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Integrative Biology. He is from Wisconsin and graduated with his bachelors degree from Northern Michigan University.

He studies aquatic bugs such as beetles, crayfish and leeches. He looks at how different aquatic bug species interact with each other and other bug communities and how researchers can use these interactions to assess, rehabilitate and manage aquatic systems.

Miess knows receiving the fellowship will help him extend the possibilities of accomplishments during his Ph.D.

The fellowship frees up time for me to focus on my research, because its a tedious process, Miess said. Also, its great because people recognize its prestige, which will open doors for me. I can participate in side projects and mentor other students.

Freeman is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Integrative Biology. She is researching the interactions between the immune response, the gut microbiome, and behavior in house sparrows, and then compares them with other immune responses across latitudes. She is specifically investigating how the gut microbiome and boldness behavior can mediate pathogen exposure and prevent future infections.

The recognition Freeman received from the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship honorable mention fortifies her research.

Their recognition gave me confidence in my research, and it reaffirms that I am on the right path in my field of study, Freeman said.

Story By: Allie Putman, CAS Student Intern | allie.putman@okstate.edu

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Three integrative biology grad students recognized by the National ... - Oklahoma State University

Biology

Biologists compare and select most effective and nontoxic biocides for mobile toilets and dump wells – 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:

by Russian Foundation for Basic Research

In agriculture, country houses and many other places without central sewerage, people use mobile toilets or dump wells. To prevent the foul smell in the bench-holes and during transportation of the contents to wastewater treatment facilities, biocides are added, which are chemical compounds that stop the activity of microorganisms.

However, biocides can harm the environment and hinder the work of wastewater treatment facilities. Toxic biocides can also make waste unsuitable for further use as biofertilizers and biofuel production. Russian scientists have proposed the solution to this problem in the journal Biology.

In Russia, about 22.6% of citizens live without central sewerage (according to Rosstat of 2019). In rural areas, this figure rises to 66.5%. Vacuum trucks pump out waste from dump wells and mobile toilets and take it to wastewater treatment facilities. Biocides, such as quaternary ammonium compounds and biguanide derivatives, help prevent the activity of odor-causing microorganisms during storage and transport of waste.

Biocidal agents based on these compoundsfor example, Latrinaare very effective, but make the waste toxic because they decompose very slowly. Thus, they can harm the environment and kill microorganisms in wastewater treatment facilities. Scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences compared various popular biocides and selected among the most effective ones, which are those that decompose into non-toxic components soon after they have fulfilled their function.

"In dump wells and mobile toilets, urea decomposes slowly, emitting ammonium, which makes the environment alkalineits pH can grow up to 910. Biocides that decompose in an alkaline environment help to accomplish two goals at once: at first, they lower the activity of harmful bacteria, then break up and thus don't harm the environment. We checked the results after 10 daysthe period that is needed, for example, for full admission of toilets on main-line trains," says Yuriy Litti, Ph.D, of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Scientists selected six biocides that have no smell, are non-toxic in the used concentration and decompose when pH exceeds 7. Together with his colleagues, Yuriy Litti tested the effect of these biocides on the microorganisms, and also checked how well these agents decompose in the presence of alkaline during 10 days.

From six often-used biocides, four turned out to be more environmentally sound: Bronopol (30 mgl), Sharomix (500 mg/l), sodium percarbonate (6 g/l), and the biocidal agent on the base of 2,2 -dibro-3-nitrilopropionamide (500mg/l). Whereas popular biocidal agents like, for example, Latrina, remain for a long time in the environment and do not decompose. Silver citrate and sodium salt of dehydroacetic acid were excluded from the experiment, although they also decompose rapidly in the alkaline environment. They were required in too high a dosage, so the scientists decided that, given the high cost, these options are very expensive for consumers.

"In an alkaline environment, when pH reached 9, the minimal concentration of Bronopol , Sharomix ,and 2,2 -dibro-3-nitrilopropionamide necessary for stopping the growth of harmful microorganisms, increased by 1.5 to four times. It's useful for our purposes, because by decomposition of urea during its transportation, pH only grows. In the future we plan to study in more detail how selected biocides work not only in the laboratory, but in real conditions. If successful, vacuum cleaners will know which products work best and cause less damage to the environment," said Yuriy Litti.

More information: Nataliya Loiko et al, Biocides with Controlled Degradation for Environmentally Friendly and Cost-Effective Fecal Sludge Management, Biology (2022). DOI: 10.3390/biology12010045

Provided by Russian Foundation for Basic Research

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Biologists compare and select most effective and nontoxic biocides for mobile toilets and dump wells - Phys.org

Biology

Unconventional Paths: Merging computation and biology – Scope – Scope

Unconventional Paths: Stories of Stanford Medicine faculty, researchers and physicians whose journeys into medicine followed nontraditional routes

When Purvesh Khatri was a high school student in India, he wasn't shy about his disdain for biology. "I really hated it," said Khatri, PhD, now an associate professor of medicine and biomedical data science at the Stanford School of Medicine.

The irony of his career arc -- which currently has him sleuthing out genetic signatures of various biological or disease traits -- isn't lost on Khatri. He never envisioned himself digging deep into biological data. For a while, he was set on becoming an engineer -- but not because he had great interest in pursuing that field, either.

When Khatri was a young adult in India in the 1990s, his mom told him there were only two acceptable career paths if he wanted an arranged marriage. "She said I could be a doctor or an engineer, or no one would want me to marry their daughter," recalled Khatri. "And since I hated biology, I went the engineering route."

Fortunately for Khatri, the lesser of those original evils led him to a life partner -- he met his wife while tutoring her for an engineering class they shared. And though he got "bored" of engineering, it came in handy for his second career: The nexus of biology and computational science, where he applies data science to immunology and genetics.

Some 20 years after his first foray into biology, Khatri is now a leader in computational immunology, a field in which researchers use massive amounts of data to reveal and predict how the human immune system works and how it will act when confronted with disease or infection.

Among his research feats, he's devised a genetic test that detects sepsis -- bodywide inflammation caused by infection -- early, an assessment that gauges a person's immune response as signals of tuberculosis infection, and a test that helps doctors predict which patients with pulmonary fibrosis, an often lethal lung disease, are at most severe risk for lung failure. And it was all done by sifting through and gleaning insights from enormous amounts of data.

Someone now at the forefront of this important convergence of data and medical science once wanted little part of either -- and doubted that he belonged among the leaders of the movement. An ability to adapt to new realities has taken Khatri on quite the journey.

Khatri moved around a lot when he was a kid because of his dad's job, which involved fixing failing banks. But what some might see as an early life of instability, Khatri internalized as a means to hone agility and adaptability -- key life skills that would serve him well.

After finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering at Saradar Patel university in India, Khatri harnessed that adaptable spirit and made the 8,000-mile move to the United States to earn his master's degree in computer science at Detroit Wayne State University. The decision presented immediate obstacles. "I couldn't afford the tuition. My dad took an early retirement and gave me what he could," Khatri said. "But it wasn't even enough for two semesters tuition." He was committed, though: He worked jobs on campus while attending school.

Three months into his pursuit of a degree, Khatri hit a slump. "I couldn't go the software route. It was just boring to me," he said. Fortunately, his advisor was also looking to change course to pursue bioinformatics. He told Khatri he would keep mentoring him and funding his research. "And I told him, 'If you're funding my work, I'll do whatever you want,'" Khatri said. So, Khatri became a budding bioinformaticist.

While working toward his master's degree, Khatri was particularly prolific in publishing papers. His advisor suggested he keep on the research track and pursue a PhD. Game to level up, he completed his doctoral degree in 2006, establishing a data analytics platform that, unbeknownst to him, would clinch him a spot as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford Medicine, another 2,400 miles across the map.

A Stanford Medicine professor had used a tool Khatri developed to analyze his data, and he had heard through the science grapevine that Khatri was looking for a position in research. That researcher, Atul Butte, now a professor of bioinformatics at UC San Francisco, offered Khatri a position in his lab. But Khatri had one small request before packing up and moving across the country.

"I wanted to put my skills in computational biology to the test," Khatri said. "Whatever I did computationally, I wanted there to be a path to validation in some experimental system." Khatri joined two labs -- one that harnessed computational biology to analyze data, and one that focused on organ transplantation. Khatri's first big research question centered on the role of the immune system in organ transplantation, how and why organ rejection happened in patients, and how new drugs could curb such rejection.

With a foot in both camps -- computational and biological -- Khatri began to explore new uses of data to understand how the immune system worked. As he dug deeper into the niches of immunology, Khatri's data science background kicked in. He recognized the immune system as a complex piece of hardware, and the differing immune cells as various sensors that picked up signals to turn the hardware on or off. That kind of search-and-alert system is called a distributed sensor in the engineering world, and it seemed to Khatri uncannily similar to how the immune system works. Immune cells patrol the body for signs of foreign invaders or microbial dangers, and when they detect a threat, they send signals to activate the immune system's defenses.

"If there's one thing I'm proud of, it's that," said Khatri. "Using my engineering background to help create a new way of thinking around the immune system."

Khatri began to think about the immune system as its own diagnostic tool. Immune cells act up only if something's amiss, and he found that certain genetic signatures associated with the immune system could act as a marker for different types of immune activity. Keen to apply this line of thinking to better understand how the immune system responds after a solid organ transplant, he analyzed gene activation post-transplant, discovering a set of 11 genes that, when activated in a specific way, flagged organ rejection with the same level of accuracy as a physician. And it could all be done through a simple blood test. That test was able to predict organ rejection before doctors were able to detect it through a biopsy.

As Khatri's work as a postdoc progressed, others in his field took notice. Butte and others encouraged Khatri to pursue this marriage of computation and immunology and to grow the nascent field. Butte also told Khatri he should apply for a faculty position. "But I didn't apply for it. I didn't think I was worthy of the position," Khatri said. "I didn't think I had the track record to be a faculty member at Stanford."

Then Khatri received a note informing him that the application reviewers were awaiting his materials. His adaptable spirit kicked in and he scrambled to put an application together overnight. "It was way past the deadline," he recalled.

That was 10 years ago, and suffice to say, Khatri earned that faculty position. The vision he has for his lab -- harnessing massive amounts of data to glean insights into the human body and predict how it will act and respond -- has produced more than 120 papers and more than 30 patents. He's uncovered genetic signatures that delineate viral infections from bacterial infections as well as a biomarker that predicts an individual's flu susceptibility, and he has used data to show how drugs already approved by the Food and Drug Administration could be repurposed to fight other conditions.

"My lab doesn't use beakers or microscopes; we don't do experiments. We repurpose what's out there," Khatri said. "The whole idea is to leverage publicly available data to advance human immunology and improve patient care through the right diagnosis at the right time."

Read more Unconventional Paths storieshere.

Photo by Norbert von der Groeben

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Unconventional Paths: Merging computation and biology - Scope - Scope

Biology

Growing into her own: Sarah Davis ’23 discovers her passion for … – Pacific Lutheran University

How does your interest in plant sciences intersect with your interest in food and the environment?

Food is the most important resource on this planet, and without proper understanding of how extended periods of drought or flooding impact crop yield, we get into dangerous territory with our food security. The other aspect of this to take into account is sustainability, accessibility and outreach to growers and consumers. With more research, the long-term impacts of farming and agricultural techniques can be found, and more responsible farming techniques can be implemented to help protect food growth and security. Outreach is another important component of plant biology and agriculture, because there are many misconceptions about genetic engineering in plants in particular, so direct communication between growers, scientists and consumers is needed.

Anything else youd like to share?

The PLU biology/science department has been absolutely phenomenal in supporting my learning. I specifically want to mention that it has been empowering to have so many women on the biology department staff, which has really inspired me to continue pursuing a graduate degree as well as make me feel more confident in my own ability to be a woman in STEM. Two professors in particular Dr. Laurie-Berry and Dr. Ellard-Ivey have helped shape my academic interests as well as helped me become the student and person I am today.

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Growing into her own: Sarah Davis '23 discovers her passion for ... - Pacific Lutheran University

Biology

Drugs give biology’s favourite worms the munchies too – Nature.com

In this genetically engineered C. elegans, neurons that respond to cannabinoids appear green.Credit: Stacy Levichev(CC BY-SA)

Roundworms exposed to cannabis chemicals get the munchies a persistent hunger for tasty food just like people do, a study has found. When under the influence, Caenorhabditis elegans worms choose to feed for longer than normal, and show a stronger preference for their favourite high-quality foods over less nutritious options.

The study, published on 20 April in Current Biology1, suggests that the mechanism by which cannabis affects appetite evolved more than 500 million years ago, when the evolutionary paths of C. elegans and humans diverged. This commonality across the animal kingdom suggests that C. elegans could be used to study how cannabis affects the human nervous system.

The more we know at a basic level about drug physiology, the more healthy our society will ultimately be, says Shawn Lockery, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon in Eugene who led the research.

Lockery and his colleagues were inspired to carry out the experiments after the state of Oregon legalized the recreational use of cannabis in 2015. We had marijuana on the brain, in a conceptual sense, he says.

Cannabinoid molecules derived from the cannabis plant bind to the same receptors as molecules naturally found in the body, called endocannabinoids. Those receptors are found in the brain and many other tissues, and the endocannabinoid system is thought to regulate key functions, such as sleep, memory, anxiety and eating.

The research group already specialized in food-choice assays that involve putting C. elegans in a T-shaped maze containing two food options and observing which the worms choose to approach. To investigate the behavioural effects of cannabinoids, the researchers immersed the worms in a solution of the endocannabinoid anandamide before placing them in the maze.

Video of C. elegans worms in a T-maze (at 180x speed). Nutritionally superior food is at the end of the left arm; inferior food is at the end of the right arm. Credit: Aaron Schatz(CC BY-SA)

At first, it was just a quick test. We soaked the worms just to see if they would we were hoping get the munchies, Lockery said.

The worms that received this endocannabinoid bath did seem to develop a bigger appetite. When in the maze, they showed a stronger preference for nutritionally superior bacteria than did their sober peers, and spent more time eating. Worms under the influence also showed less interest in nutritionally inferior bacteria. These effects showed up only in C. elegans that had working endocannabinoid receptors.

The thing that surprised me was how tightly it all fit together, says Lockery.

In subsequent experiments, the researchers tested endocannabinoids on worms genetically engineered to have human cannabinoid receptors. The modified worms responded in the same way. The researchers pinpointed the effect of cannabinoids to one of the main food-detecting olfactory neurons, which, in worms given the drug, became more sensitive to the odours of preferred food and less sensitive to the smells of inferior food.

Past research has shown that cannabinoids cause this kind of hedonic feeding in mammals other than humans, including rats and primates. The latest work adds C. elegans to the list, indicating that cannabinoid receptors and cannabinoid-influenced behaviours evolved a long time ago, says Kent Berridge, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

We did know that neurotransmitters are ancient and conserved going way, way back, Berridge says. But that it has this same function of promoting eating, especially, in this case, nutrient-rich foods thats remarkable.

The similarities suggest that C. elegans could provide a cost-effective way to model how cannabis-derived compounds affect the nervous system in people.

Cannabis research will continue to expand as the drug becomes legal in more regions, says Anne Hart, a neuroscientist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It used to be that studying these compounds was really hard, says Hart. Were going to learn a lot more in this field over the next five or ten years as you let researchers figure out how these compounds really work.

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Drugs give biology's favourite worms the munchies too - Nature.com

Biology

Synthetic biology meets fashion in engineered silk – Science Daily

Scientists have long been intrigued by the remarkable properties of spider silk, which is stronger than steel yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. Now, Fuzhong Zhang, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has made a significant breakthrough in the fabrication of synthetic spider silk, paving the way for a new era of sustainable clothing production.

Since engineering recombinant spider silk in 2018 using bacteria, Zhang has been working to increase the yield of silk threads produced from microbes while maintaining its desirable properties of enhanced strength and toughness.

Higher yields will be critical if synthetic silk is to be used in everyday applications, particularly in the fashion industry where renewable materials are much in demand to stem the environmental impacts that come from producing an estimated 100 billion garments and 92 million tons of waste each year.

With the help of an engineered mussel foot protein, Zhang has created new spider silk fusion proteins, called bi-terminal Mfp fused silks (btMSilks). Microbial production of btMSilks have eightfold higher yields than recombinant silk proteins, and the btMSilk fibers have substantially improved strength and toughness while being lightweight. This could revolutionize clothing manufacturing by providing a more eco-friendly alternative to traditional textiles. The findings were published April 14 in Nature Communications.

"The outstanding mechanical properties of natural spider silk come from its very large and repetitive protein sequence," Zhang said. "However, it is extremely challenging to ask fast-growing bacteria to produce a lot of repetitive proteins.

"To solve this problem, we needed a different strategy," he said. "We went looking for disordered proteins that can be genetically fused to silk fragments to promote molecular interaction, so that strong fibers can be made without using large repetitive proteins. And we actually found them right here in work we've already been doing on mussel foot proteins."

Mussels secrete these specialized proteins on their feet to stick to things. Zhang and his collaborators have engineered bacteria to produce them and engineer them as adhesives for biomedical applications. As it turns out, mussel foot proteins are also cohesive, which enables them to stick to each other well, too. By placing mussel foot protein fragments at the ends of his synthetic silk protein sequences, Zhang created a less repetitive, lightweight material that's at least twice as strong as recombinant spider silk.

The yields on Zhang's material increased eightfold compared with past studies, reaching 8 grams of fiber material from 1 liter of bacterial culture. This output constitutes enough fabric to test for use in real products.

"The beauty of synthetic biology is that we have lots of space to explore," Zhang said. "We can cut and paste sequences from various natural proteins and test these designs in the lab for new properties and functions. This makes synthetic biology materials much more versatile than traditional petroleum-based materials."

In coming work, Zhang and his team will expand the tunable properties of their synthetic silk fibers to meet the exact needs of each specialized market.

"Because our synthetic silk is made from cheap feedstock using engineered bacteria, it presents a renewable and biodegradable replacement for petroleum-derived fiber materials like nylon and polyester," Zhang said.

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Synthetic biology meets fashion in engineered silk - Science Daily