A solar-powered airplane finished crossing the United States on Saturday, landing in New York City after flying over the Statue of Liberty during its historic bid to circle the globe, the project team said. The spindly, single-seat experimental aircraft, dubbed Solar Impulse 2, arrived at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport at about 4 a.m. local time after it took off about five hours beforehand at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania, the team reported on the airplane's website. Such a pleasure to land in New York! For the 14th time we celebrate sustainability," said the project's co-founder Andre Borschberg on Twitter after flying over the city and the Statue of Liberty during the 14th leg of the trip around the globe. The Swiss team flying the aircraft in a campaign to build support for clean energy technologies hopes eventually to complete its circumnavigation in Abu Dhabi, where the journey began in March 2015. The solar cr...
Prof George Church and colleagues used a technique called Crispr to alter the DNA of pig cells to create a better match for humans. The early work, in the journal Science, aims to address concerns about rejection and infection by viruses embedded in pig DNA. If successful, it could be an answer to the shortage of human donor organs. Years more research is needed before genetically modified pigs could be bred to grow organs for people.
Gene editing
Crispr is a relatively new scientific tool that lets scientists snip and play around with the code of life - DNA. Prof Church, from Harvard University, used it to inactivate a retrovirus present in the pig cell line.This porcine endogenous retrovirus is potentially risky because it can infect human cells - at least in the lab. In tests on early pig embryos, Prof Church was able to eliminate all 62 copies of porcine endogenous retroviruses from the pig cells using Crispr. Next, he checked if the modified pig cells would still easily pass the retrovirus on to human cells. They did not, although there was still a small amount of transmission. Prof Church says the discovery holds great promise for using animal organs in people - what doctors call xenotransplantation.
Prof Church, who part-owns a company that wants to develop modified pigs to grow organs, said: "It was kind of cool from two stand points. "One is it set a record for Crispr or for any genetic modification of an animal, and it took away what was considered the most perplexing problem to be solved in the xenotransplantation field. "With immune tolerance, that completely changes the landscape as well.
"These two things, immune tolerance and now getting rid of all the retroviruses, means we have a clear path." Dr Sarah Chan, an expert from the University of Edinburgh, said: "Even once the scientific and safety issues have been addressed, we should be mindful of the possible cultural concerns and societal impacts associated with more widespread use of pig organs for human transplantation. "Nonetheless, the results of the study are valuable both as a proof of principle and a potential step towards therapeutic advances in this area of much-needed research."
Comments
Post a Comment