Past Activities 2019-2020

Hello!! there and how are you?
I am Taye birhanu from Ethiopia. Thank you for facilitating the online discussion, lists of discussion points indicated are very clear and specific, so that sounds great. It is a pleasure for me to participate in this discussion and I had the opportunity to participate the discussions of synthetic biology in 2015 and 2017 too.

I think getting recent technological developments of synthetic biology after 2017 are so hard that least to access new things because of the time interval is   within one year gap since the latest meeting in 2017. But, some reports are published indicating cell free synthetic biology systems for getting more attention and advancing (doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a023853 and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.synbio.2017.02.003) and the range of organisms for cell free protein synthesis is widening from  archaea, prokaryotes, fungi, plants, insects, and mammals (DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201500340).

I´m Leyenis García from Cuba. In relation to Topic 1 I consider that there are no major changes on the applications of synthetic biology since 2017. Studies are carried out on mouse, mosquitoes looking for new populations able to inactivate malaria, plant breeding and domestication of wild crops.

However, we should follow results of some clinical trials phase I and II are completed or ongoing mainly in China and USA, taking into account the presence of anti- Cas 9 inmunology response in humans. Althought they focus this trial on technology effectiveness  ¿a variation on inmunity responses occurs?.

Examples of clinical trails are listed at Archivum Immunologiae et Therapiae Experimentalis in: 
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00005-018-0504-z. REVIEW Application of Genome Editing Techniques inImmunology. Agata O. Zych· Malgorzata Bajor· Radoslaw Zagozdzon.

best regards,

Leyenis

List of upcoming events, may be usefull to obtain information on syntetic biology after the current Forum online:

http://synbioconference.org/2019. 2019 Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution & Design (SEED). June 23-27, 2019. New York, USA. SEED 2019 will focus on advances in science, technology, applications, and related investments in the field of synthetic biology.

http://www.nature.com/natureevents/science/events/78907-The_2nd_International_Conference_Plant_Genome_Editing_Genome_Engineering and http://viscea.org/plant-genome-editing-genome-engineering-ii-july-5-6-2019/. The 2nd International Conference “Plant Genome Editing & Genome Engineering”. 5th - 6th July 2019. Vienna. This two-days event will provide leading academy and industry scientists a platform to communicate recent advances in “Plant Genome Editing & Genome Engineering”, and an opportunity to establish multilateral collaboration.

https://www.aiche.org/sbe/conferences/international-conference-on-crispr-technologies/2019 and https://www.showsbee.com/fairs/CRISPR-Technologies-Conference.html. 3rd International Conference on CRISPR Technologies. September 16-18, 2019. Germany. The CRISPR Tech 2019 conference will bring together academics and industry representatives to highlight the cutting edge of these developments and the most immediate technical and societal challenges. The conference will also discuss the basic features of CRISPR-Cas systems as defense mechanisms found in bacteria and archaea, and how new insights into these systems can give rise to the next generation of technologies.

https://crisprcongress.conferenceseries.com/events-list/crispr-technologies-beyond-genome-editing-and-gene-regulation. CRISPR Cas9 Technology and Genetic Engineering. October 18-19, 2019 Dallas, USA.  Theme: CRISPR Technology to Feed, Fuel and Heal the World.

regards,
Leyenis

In addition to my colleague (#9407). CRISPR technologies are opening up a new world of possibilities for manipulating our genetic information, and using CRISPR to target RNA is opening up new possibilities for treating debilitating RNA-based diseases such as removing toxic RNAs in the brain or defending against RNA-based viruses like influenza or zika.
Furthermore, changes in RNA are temporary and quite different compared to permanent changes caused by DNA, which could be safer. Because RNA messages go up and down over time, which will eventually be able to control when a CRISPR therapeutic is acting, so it's only turn on in the cells that have the toxic RNA. This could lead to safer gene therapies. Patrick Hsu, Ph.D is a Principal Investigator and Salk Helmsley Fellow at the Salk Institute. The Hsu Lab employ an inter-disciplinary approach for discovery-based synthetic biology to develop new avenues for cell design and control with applications in gene and engineered cell therapeutics for neurodegeneration and cancer.

More at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Making a bibliographic review on the advances of synthetic biology in the last year, there are developments of synthetic biology in plants, the first to be recorded synthetic biology for sorghum, in which a synthetic gene was designed β-kafirin (syn β -kaf), altered with 10 introduced proteolytic sites, to produce a new synthetic protein β-kafirin in the endosperm of sorghum, which allowed to increase the protein content in sorghum and greater digestibility.
The key technological advance in this approach was the creation of a synthetic endosperm protein which not only disrupts the protein body but also increases the number of sites for proteolytic attack during the digestion process. The research outcomes highlighted the possible advances at hand through plant synthetic biology.

The complete information is found in the Article:

Increasing protein content and digestibility in sorghum grain with a
synthetic biology approach (Liua et al., 2019).

There are also advances in the production of antivenoms through synthetic biology based on recombinant polyclonal antibodies made in plants (called pluribodies). The strategy used exploits the exclusion of viral superinfection to induce the formation of somatic expression mosaics in agroinfiltrated plants, which allows the expression of repertoires of complex antibodies in a highly reproducible manner.

Furthermore, an improved plant-made antivenom (plantivenom) was formulated using an in vitro selected pluribody against Bothrops asper snake venom toxins and has been shown to neutralize a wide range of toxin activities and provide protection against lethal venom doses in mice.

The complete information is found in the Article:

A synthetic biology approach for consistent production of plant-made recombinant polyclonal antibodies against snake venom toxins (Parreño et al., 2018).