Someone in france has eaten a glowing lamb

In a bizarre series of events a person (or people) in France may have eaten a green fluorescent lamb.

The so called ‘Green Sheep’ was developed for medial trials researching heart transplants. The transgenic animal itself has the GFP gene inserted. This causes the production of a protein which glows green under UV light as well as making the skin somewhat transparent. The lamb appears to have been sold to a slaughterhouse late last year before being bought by an individual, presumably for eating.

France and the EU in general is suspicious of genetic modification. These animals are tightly controlled and regulated, so how did this happen? It is thought that the individuals involved had some malicious intent. There has been a history of very active anti-GM activists in the EU, perhaps this is another case.

A very strange series of events but I’ll make a prediction now: consumption of this lamb will not cause any adverse health effects.

More coverage at The Local and The Verge

EUSynBioS writing

I’ve written a piece for The European Association of Synthetic Biology Students and Postdocs (EUSynBioS). It’s about a recent document regarding SynBio regulation released by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology which informs member of parliament in the UK. This is the first of my writing which has been featured anywhere other than my blog so I’ve got to thank them for the opportunity.

Read the piece here

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A new kill-switch to destroy genetically modified organisms

A paper published yesterday in Nature communications describes the development of a new kill-switch which could be used to control genetically modified organisms. Ensure they and their genes are not accidentally released into the environment. Targeted DNA degradation using a CRISPR device stably carried in the host genome describes work by researchers at the Synthetic Biology Center at MIT.

One of the main issues surrounding genetic modification is the possible or purposeful release of them. The fear being that their genes could escape. For this reason kill-switches have been developed. These are built into the organism and make it unlikely for a organism to survive outside of tightly controlled lab conditions. An example is ensuring that a bacteria needs a certain food source which is uncommon in nature. If it escapes from the lab for some reason the organism will die. While these are good systems there is an issue. When the organism dies often its DNA, which can be very stable, may remain in the environment. This new system aims to overcome this.

The system takes an input. In the paper they used arabinose (a kind of sugar) because the systems which processes arabinose in bacteria are well understood. This input causes a device known as CRISPR to chop out a specific part of the bacterial genome and degrade it. CRISPR is the key to this system. Essentially it is a collection of molecules which allows a specific section of DNA to be targeted. In this case the synthetic or modified genes could be targeted for destruction.

While this paper used arabinose as the input it would be easy to imagine any number of inputs. How about bacteria which died once exposed to light, oxygen or seawater? The researchers also propose this as a benefit for companies looking to protect the intellectual properties of organism they have developed. The genetic systems which have taken time and money to develop could be destroyed if they leave the lab or once they’ve preformed their duty in the environment.

This is exciting, if early, research. Better safety mechanisms mean it is more likely that synthetic or modified organisms will be accepted.

Sounds like an iGEM project to me

A team at Berkley working along side the US Department of Energy and University of California report the development of an artificial photosynthetic system. The system works by harvesting electrons from sunlight using nanowires. These electrons are used by Sporomusa ovata to reduce the carbon dioxide into acetate. E. coli are then used to produce useful chemicals. Their system reports an efficiency of 0.38% over a lifespan of 200 hours.

Full paper can be found here