Bacteria may rule the planet and they certainly rule our gut. Will engineering help us or be our downfall?

The World Health Organization recently defined bacteria resistance to antibiotics as one of the most significant dangers to public health and food safety.

According to researchers, given that beneficial and pathogenic bacteria have fought each other over resources and nutrients since the dawn of time (and can be used to grow food on Mars), they have developed a variety of sophisticated mechanisms that neutralizes their competition. That is one reason why people swallow poop pills. We didn’t make this up! 

Understanding the mechanisms that mediate these bacterial wars will enable their utilization and conversion into new tools that will be used to treat diseases caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In the Tel Aviv University study, researchers ‘borrowed’ a toxin injection system – known as a Type 6 Secretion System – from a pathogenic bacterium and introduced it into a ‘friendly’ bacterium, Vibrio natriegens. This ‘friendly’ bacterium is not harmful to humans or animals and can survive and reproduce under a variety of conditions. The injection system is similar to a poisoned arrow shot from a bacterium towards neighboring bacteria.

Toxins carried on the arrow then mediate the elimination of competing bacteria. With the help of central regulator protein that they identified, researchers were able to produce an ‘operating switch’ for the system and cause it to ‘turn on’ only in response to recognizing desirable environmental conditions. In addition, researchers proved it possible to control the type and amount of toxins that are loaded on the arrow, thus adjusting the system’s killing range.

Dr. Dor Salomon explains, “The system that we built allows us to engineer ‘good’ bacteria that can recognize pathogenic bacteria, attack them with toxins and neutralize them. We know how to change and control every component in the system and create a bacterium that neutralizes different strains of bacteria. This is proof of feasibility, showing that we have the knowledge and ability to create bacteria that take advantage of this killing system and may serve as antibiotic treatments. Such bacteria could replace the classic antibiotics that we currently use in a variety of scenarios”.

According to Dr. Salomon, researchers created the prototype in a bacterium occurring naturally in salt water. Therefore, it is particularly efficient at neutralizing bacteria are pathogens found in fish and other marine creatures used for food. “The system in its current form is predominantly suited for preventing and treating bacterial infections that affect the production of food from marine animals. Fish and other seafoods constitute a major food source in many regions around the world. Their productivity is severely impaired as a result of bacteria-borne diseases”, continues Dr. Salomon.

“Since we want to avoid pouring antibiotics into aquaculture farms, a biological solution such as the one we have developed is an effective alternative. Moreover, our system can also be adapted to treat pathogenic bacteria in humans, farm animals, plants and the environment”, he concludes.

The post Will engineering bacteria save us? appeared first on Green Prophet.

A team of Hebrew University researchers have successfully used genetic engineering as a first step to what one day may allow scientists to genetically repair damaged brain circuits.  The process, which was performed in tiny translucent C. elegans worms, saw the introduction of synthetically engineered connections (or synapses), as a means for bypassing missing connections between neurons in an impaired brain.  

The team, led by Dr. Ithai Rabinowitch, a Neurobiologist in the Faculty of Medicine at Hebrew University, applied the genetically engineered bypass to repair a failed odor response in the worms due to neuronal loss.  With the synthetic bypass network in place, the worms successfully responded to the odor stimuli, a behavior that was diminished in the absence of the genetically engineered “fix.”

The study, published in Cell Systems was jointly led by Dr. Jihong Bai of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

“While this is a discovery that has so far been limited to a tiny worm, it opens the door for potential applications that may be relevant down the road to humans,” Dr. Rabinowitch said.  “At present, various approaches are used for addressing human brain damage, including brain-computer interfaces that are based on external electronics rerouting information flow between intact brain regions. 

This research indicates a new potential route for addressing brain damage, whether caused by direct physical trauma or stroke or other neurological disease, through genetically engineered changes in brain connectivity that can serve as biological neural bypasses.”

The researchers say that the species chosen, C. elegans, measuring about a millimeter long, is very beneficial for biological research. Compared to us, the worm has a very simple nervous system, and yet it is a multi-cellular animal sharing many similarities with us. According to Dr. Rabinowitch the next steps will involve deeper testing of the broader biological impact of genetically inserted neuronal connections and also applying the approach to other neural circuits and other organisms.

“In studying this tiny worm, we were able to advance our theory in an organism that has only several hundred neurons as opposed to the tens of billions neurons in the human brain,” he says.  “Our great hope is that as this study advances and is applied more broadly in the worm’s nervous system and in other organisms, we will one day be looking at genetic therapies based on synthetic brain rewiring as possible treatments for devastating brain disease and damage.”

The post See-through worm repairs brains appeared first on Green Prophet.

It sounds like something from a book about the perils of the future, a future that is strangely today reality: The seed-engineering company Monsanto genetically engineers seeds to have desirable traits that make them hearty or the plants resistant to the effects of herbicides like Roundup. But when farmers buy and use these seeds they must sign away rights to use the seeds of future generations. After all, Monsanto is investing in the biotechnology (the company reasons) and it needs to ensure future business for its investment.

Holding back the use of one’s self-made seeds sounds almost as bizarre as bottled air in the Lorax, or the bottling of water. But in the case of water, bottled O2 and seeds: these things do happen in our polluted world.

Environmentalists typically are against the practices of Monsanto, claiming that there are certain inalienable rights people and farmers have when they buy seeds. Some farmers in Egypt have resisted Monsanto’s GM maize, while a new company from Israel called Morflora claims to have a new way of washing seeds to avoid Monsanto’s ethical problems altogether. But farmers need to think about their future, and profits. They buy Monsanto seeds because in some markets it is the only way to stay relevant.

So far Monsanto has been a winner in cases against farmers it has taken to court who have gone against the company’s terms, recounts a recent story in the New York Times. Now an American farmer Vernon Hugh Bowman, from Indiana has gone against Monsanto by using soy seeds produced by his crop. The trick: he bought his own seeds back from a grain elevator which sells the seeds for animal food.

According to the Times article: “the 75-year-old farmer from southwestern Indiana will face off Tuesday against the world’s largest seed company, Monsanto, in a Supreme Court case that could have a huge impact on the future of genetically modified crops, and also affect other fields from medical research to software.”

Bowman pleads that he honored Monsanto’s agreement and didn’t use the seeds from his harvest and noted that the contract he signed didn’t make provisions for him buying the same seeds back from another party. He told the NYT that he didn’t want to pay Monsanto huge sums of money for their soy seeds because he planted his crop late in the season, after the wheat harvest, and that it was bound to fail.

He lost to a district court hearing in 2007, and had to pay Monsanto more than $80,000 for infringing on patents owned by the company.

But now Bowman who is planning to fight till the end says, “I was prepared to let them run over me, but I wasn’t getting out of the road.”

Once the beans are sold to the grain elevator, Bowman claims that Monsanto has no more rights to them. And this is what he is bringing with him to court.

He is being helped by lawyers working pro bono.

The question about patenting living organisms has long been considered immoral, but it is the only legal tool in place that can support and grow the biotechnology industry, proponents for the industry argue.

Sources say that any Supreme Court ruling on this new case could have monumental impacts on the biotechnology industry.

I have to note that the seeds in question are ones Monsanto produces to make crops tolerant to Roundup (a Monsanto product ), a strong herbicide that kills weeds but not the crop. Roundup has also been linked to birth defects and God knows what else. Were more farmers to return to permaculture methods of farming, ones that use organic-friendly and natural pesticides, and sometimes heirloom seeds, all this business of Monsanto would be irrelevant.

Yet when I say this people I know who argue for genetic engineering they say GMOs are the only choice for feeding a hungry world. What do you say?

Image of  Vernon Hugh Bowman via the NYT

Update 2013: United States Supreme Court patent decision in which the Court unanimously affirmed the decision of the Federal Circuit that the patent exhaustion doctrine does not permit a farmer to plant and grow saved, patented seeds without the patent owner’s permission. Vernon lost.

The post Small American Farmer Sends Monsanto Seed Patents to Supreme Court appeared first on Green Prophet.

Israel-based Agro-tech company Rosetta Green has been chosen by international seed manufacturer Bayer CropScience AG for collaboration on a project that will help improve cotton crop for farmers. Rosetta Green, which also manufactures biofuels using  algae, has developed microRNA genes that can replace the need for environmentally harmful pesticides, by making certain crops, like cotton resistant to bugs that would kill them.

Last April, the California Israel Chamber of Commerce selected 10 Israeli clean tech companies to present at the 2011 CICC Cleantech Tour and Showcase, one of which was Rosetta Green.

A subsidiary of Rosetta Genomics (Nasdaq: ROSG), Rosetta Green’s microRNAs work by manipulating the controls of key traits in plants and algae. The company claims that its micro RNA genes that improve the oil content from algae and can make crops more resilient in times of drought.

The company’s technology may have been sparked by the 1990 discovery that microRNA acts as a “master genome regulator” in plants and mammals, as reported at the time by Israel Innovation News. Using that information, Rosetta Green has managed to manipulate the microRNA of cotton, corn, soybeans, and other crops.

“Such developments could significantly increase the areas where crops can be grown and gradually grow more and more crops in arid areas with limited water availability or access to brackish water only,” Rosetta Green’s CEO Amir Avniel said in a statement.

::Rosetta Green

The post Rosetta Green’s Cotton Goes Global appeared first on Green Prophet.