O papel da ortogonalidade na expansão do código genético: mero acaso, fortuita necessidade ou design inteligente?

The Role of Orthogonality in Genetic Code Expansion

by Pol Arranz-Gibert 1,2,†,Jaymin R. Patel 1,2,† andFarren J. Isaacs 1,2,*OrcID

1 Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

2 Systems Biology Institute, Yale University, West Haven, CT 06516, USA

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

† These authors contributed equally to this work.

Life 2019, 9(3), 58; https://doi.org/10.3390/life9030058

Received: 20 June 2019 / Revised: 1 July 2019 / Accepted: 1 July 2019 / Published: 5 July 2019

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Modelling Life-Like Behavior in Systems Chemistry)

Abstract

The genetic code defines how information in the genome is translated into protein. Aside from a handful of isolated exceptions, this code is universal. Researchers have developed techniques to artificially expand the genetic code, repurposing codons and translational machinery to incorporate nonstandard amino acids (nsAAs) into proteins. A key challenge for robust genetic code expansion is orthogonality; the engineered machinery used to introduce nsAAs into proteins must co-exist with native translation and gene expression without cross-reactivity or pleiotropy. The issue of orthogonality manifests at several levels, including those of codons, ribosomes, aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, tRNAs, and elongation factors. In this concept paper, we describe advances in genome recoding, translational engineering and associated challenges rooted in establishing orthogonality needed to expand the genetic code. 

Keywords: genetic code expansion; translation; nonstandard amino acids; genome recoding; ribosome engineering; orthogonality; protein engineering

FREE PDF GRATIS: Life

Em busca da arqueologia galática

In Pursuit of Galactic Archaeology: Astro2020 Science White Paper

Melissa Ness (Columbia/Flatiron), Jonathan Bird (Vanderbilt), Jennifer Johnson (Ohio State University), Gail Zasowski (University of Utah), Juna Kollmeier (Carnegie), Hans-Walter Rix (MPIA), Victor Silva Aguirre (Aarhus), Borja Anguiano (University of Virginia), Sarbani Basu (Yale), Anthony Brown (Leiden), Sven Buder (MPIA), Cristina Chiappini (AIP), Katia Cunha (NOAO), Elena Dongia (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Peter Frinchaboy (TCU), Saskia Hekker (MPI for Solar system research), Jason Hunt (Toronto), Kathryn Johnston (Columbia), Richard Lane (PUC), Sara Lucatello (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova), Szabolcs Meszaros (ELTE Gothard Astrophysical Observatory)Andres Meza (UDD), Ivan Minchev (AIP), David Nataf (JHU), Marc Pinsonneault (Ohio State University), Adrian M. Price-Whelan (Princeton), Robyn Sanderson (UPenn/Flatiron)Jennifer Sobeck (University of Washington), Keivan Stassun (Vanderbilt), Matthias Steinmetz (AIP), Yuan-Sen Ting (IAS/Princeton/OCIW), Kim Venn (Victoria), Xiangxiang Xue (NAOC)

(Submitted on 11 Jul 2019)

Source/Fonte: The K2 Galactic Archaeology Program

The next decade affords tremendous opportunity to achieve the goals of Galactic archaeology. That is, to reconstruct the evolutionary narrative of the Milky Way, based on the empirical data that describes its current morphological, dynamical, temporal and chemical structures. Here, we describe a path to achieving this goal. The critical observational objective is a Galaxy-scale, contiguous, comprehensive mapping of the disk's phase space, tracing where the majority of the stellar mass resides. An ensemble of recent, ongoing, and imminent surveys are working to deliver such a transformative stellar map. Once this empirical description of the dust-obscured disk is assembled, we will no longer be operationally limited by the observational data. The primary and significant challenge within stellar astronomy and Galactic archaeology will then be in fully utilizing these data. We outline the next-decade framework for obtaining and then realizing the potential of the data to chart the Galactic disk via its stars. One way to support the investment in the massive data assemblage will be to establish a Galactic Archaeology Consortium across the ensemble of stellar missions. This would reflect a long-term commitment to build and support a network of personnel in a dedicated effort to aggregate, engineer, and transform stellar measurements into a comprehensive perspective of our Galaxy.

FREE WHITE PAPER: arxiv

Colocando o "bang" no Big Bang!

Nonlinear Dynamics of Preheating after Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings

Rachel Nguyen, Jorinde van de Vis, Evangelos I. Sfakianakis, John T. Giblin, Jr., and David I. Kaiser

Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 171301 – Published 25 October 2019

Source/Fonte: MIT News

ABSTRACT

We study the postinflation dynamics of multifield models involving nonminimal couplings using lattice simulations to capture significant nonlinear effects like backreaction and rescattering. We measure the effective equation of state and typical timescales for the onset of thermalization, which could affect the usual mapping between predictions for primordial perturbation spectra and measurements of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation. For large values of the nonminimal coupling constants, we find efficient particle production that gives rise to nearly instantaneous preheating. Moreover, the strong single-field attractor behavior that was previously identified persists until the end of preheating, thereby suppressing typical signatures of multifield models. We therefore find that predictions for primordial observables in this class of models retain a close match to the latest observations.

Revised 10 September 2019Received 10 June 2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.171301

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.

Published by the American Physical Society

FREE PDF GRATIS: Phys. Rev. Lett.

Evolução: de uma "simples" bactéria até Beethoven

A ciência não revela a verdade!

Science Does Not Reveal Truth

Paul M. Sutter Contributor 

Science

Astrophysicist | Agent to the Stars

If the results can change, is it really true? FREE FOR COMMERCIAL USE (VIA PIXABAY)

What is truth?

It's a pretty popular question, apparently going back several thousand years. And over the centuries and millennia many people have tried to seek out the truth. Or reveal it. Or grapple with the truth. Or wrestle with it. Or at the very least come to terms with it.

And while science is a powerful force in understanding the way the world works, it is not truth.

To draw the distinction, there are facts. There are things we observe about the world around us. We observe the shifting of light from distant galaxies. We observe the mutations over generations in DNA. We can see chemicals combine and interact.

But science itself isn't just a collection of facts about the natural world. That's only part of the story. The bigger part of the story is what we do with those facts. And what we do is try to interpret them and understand them, and fold them into a larger picture that we can use to make predictions about the behavior of those same systems in the natural world.

And all our models and theories are representations and approximations of reality as we see it. That is not truth.

The biggest giveaway is that scientific theories change with time. As we acquire new information or new data, we have to update all of our beliefs. And how can a belief be true if it is subject to change at a moment's notice?

...

Read more: Forbes

Ciência, desprezo e cinismo: cientificismo na nova geração

Science, Scorn, and Cynicism

Scientism in the new generation

By William A. McConnell, Contributing Opinion Writer

William A. McConnell ’21 is a Mathematics concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.

Source/Fonte: Thesaurus Plus

It’s an understatement to say that modern science has been the most transformative tool in the human toolkit over the last millennium. From our transportation systems to our digital playthings, we are a society built on the shoulders of science.

We are also a society that has embraced this tool with passion. In elementary school I remember memorizing the scientific method, admiring the genius of Isaac Newton and Marie Curie, and watching with awe my first science experiment, a baking soda and vinegar volcano. STEM education is the stated center of U.S. education policy. News outlets, responding to public demand, now regularly utilize the statistics and studies that their forebears once flippantly labeled nerd-stuff. And wherever we go, we encounter technology, each device quietly advertising to us the power of this tool we call science.

Yet, as (somebody other than, it turns out) Mark Twain famously put it, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” And thus, amidst this science-oriented backdrop, the doctrine of scientism — “the promotion of science as the best or only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values” — has emerged. It has done so throughout society, but especially in the most significantly exposed segment of the population, the younger generations, the longer educated, and the less religious. We’ve internalized our cultural love of science so that we increasingly tend towards believing that human knowledge is driven by science and science alone, that most questions need to be answered empirically, and that most phenomena can be explained with sufficiently complex physical accounts.

The first problematic symptom of scientism we can identify is the scorn that it often engenders for other modes of thinking. The religious arena best illuminates this scorn. At some point we all probably have seen, or have been, the person who confidently bashes on religion for having no evidence behind it. “Evidence” needs no adjective — for of course it is only evidence of the scientific sort that counts. And thus the ship of scientism leaves behind the religious, with an amused chuckle and a petulant puff of steam. My point here is less to initiate a metaphysical conversation about god/God than it is to illustrate how our scientism often precludes us from even getting to a starting point for such a conversation.

This same attitude possesses conversations that deal with topics like free will, morality, the nature of the mind, and the nature of gender. These questions do not ask for experiments but for reason, for examples and analogies, for theories of the meanings of words, for hypotheticals and counterfactuals, for powerful explanations, and for reflections on our own lived experiences. Yet our capacity and propensity to think along these lines fade as we become more and more convinced that truth in this world can be reduced to science. We become mired in the kind of thinking that says free will and morality cannot exist in an entirely physical universe, and that minds and gender can be reduced to the physical processes underlying them. We skip the humanities for the hard sciences, supposedly the only place where real, productive thinking takes place.

Scientism cuts deeper, however, in the way that it inherently devalues the individual. It denies the capabilities of an individual mind, and the meaning of an individual existence, thus cultivating repressed cynicism about the world.

...

Read more here: The Crimson

Sondando a complexidade: abordagens termodinâmica e mecânica computacional para estudos das origens

Research article

Probing complexity: thermodynamics and computational mechanics approaches to origins studies

Stuart J. Bartlett and Patrick Beckett

Published:18 October 2019 https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2019.0058

Abstract

This paper proposes new avenues for origins research that apply modern concepts from stochastic thermodynamics, information thermodynamics and complexity science. Most approaches to the emergence of life prioritize certain compounds, reaction pathways, environments or phenomena. What they all have in common is the objective of reaching a state that is recognizably alive, usually positing the need for an evolutionary process. As with life itself, this correlates with a growth in the complexity of the system over time. Complexity often takes the form of an intuition or a proxy for a phenomenon that defies complete understanding. However, recent progress in several theoretical fields allows the rigorous computation of complexity. We thus propose that measurement and control of the complexity and information content of origins-relevant systems can provide novel insights that are absent in other approaches. Since we have no guarantee that the earliest forms of life (or alien life) used the same materials and processes as extant life, an appeal to complexity and information processing provides a more objective and agnostic approach to the search for life's beginnings. This paper gives an accessible overview of the three relevant branches of modern thermodynamics. These frameworks are not commonly applied in origins studies, but are ideally suited to the analysis of such non-equilibrium systems. We present proposals for the application of these concepts in both theoretical and experimental origins settings.

FREE PDF GRATIS: Interface Focus

The Gene Emergence Project - artigos de David L. Abel com revisão por pares

The Gene Emergence Project is one of the programs of The Origin-of-Life Science Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)3 science and education foundation with corporate headquarters near NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center just off the Washington, D. C. Beltway in Greenbelt, MD. 113 Hedgewood Drive, 20770-1610 Fax 301-441-8135 

Dr. Abel is a life-origin specialist with scores of peer-reviewed science journal publications. He is the Editor of The First Gene: The Birth of Programming, Messaging and Formal Control.

Dr. Abel is the Director of the Gene Emergence Project of the Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc. His specialties are Proto-Biocybernetics and Proto-Biosemiotics.

His latest book is Primordial Prescription: the Most Plaguing Problem of Life-Origin Science

Many of Dr. Abel's science journal papers are downloadable from http://lifeorigin.academia.edu/DrDavidLAbel

Most of his peer-reviewed science journal papers also downloadable from http://www.researchgate.net/

The Origin-of-Life Science Foundation should not be confused with "creation science"or "intelligent design" groups. It has no religious affiliations of any kind, nor are we connected in any way with any New Age, Gaia, or "Science and Spirit" groups. The Origin-of-Life Science Foundation, Inc. is a science and education foundation encouraging the pursuit of natural-process explanations and mechanisms within nature. The Foundation's main thrust is to encourage interdisciplinary, multi-institutional research projects by theoretical biophysicists and origin-of-life researchers specifically into the origin of genetic information/instructions/message/recipe in living organisms. By what mechanism did initial genetic code arise in nature? The primary interest of The Gene Emergence Project is to investigate the derivation of functional monomeric sequencing at the rigid covalent-bond level. This must occur prior to any selection for phenotypic fitness.

Fitting with the project's highly interdisciplinary nature, its advisors include biochemists, molecular biologists, biophysicists, information theorists, artificial life and intelligence experts, exo/astrobiologists, mathemeticians, and origin-of-life researchers in many related fields. Please feel free to e-mail or write us opinions, advice, and critiques, particularly of the tentative rules themselves. We are developing as broad and as deep a root system within the scientific community as possible.

The Foundation believes that advisors' personal metaphysical persuasions are none of our business. Science is about "How?" Questions addressing "How?" are about mechanism. As a science foundation, we are interested in models of mechanism consistent with naturally-occuring biochemical phenomena and sound information theory. We welcome as advisors competent scientists from widely respected universities and laboratories around the world whose interest and experience extends to origin-of-life queries.

The Foundation welcomes tax-deductible donations to be used for the promotion of scientific inquiry into the origin of genetic prescriptive information (instruction).

The Fundamental Questions for Life Origin Research -

How did molecular evolution generate metabolic recipe and instructions using a representational symbol system?

How did prebiotic nature set all of the many configurable switch-settings to integrate so many interdependent circuits?

How did inanimate nature sequence nucleotides to spell instructions to the ribosomes on how to sequence amino acids into correctly folding proteins?

How did nature then code these instructions into Hamming block codes to reduce noise pollution in the Shannon channel?

What programmed the error-detection and error-correcting software that keeps life from quickly deteriorating into non-life?

In short, which of the four known forces of physics organized and prescribed life into existence? Was it gravity? Was it the strong or weak nuclear force? Was it the electromagnetic force? How could any combination of these natural forces or force fields program decision nodes to prescribe future utility? 

Why and how would a prebiotic environment value, desire or seek to generate utility?

Can chance and/or necessity program or prescribe sophisticated biofunction?

Life is utterly dependent upon the steering of reaction sequences into biochemical pathways and cycles.

Life pursues the goal of staying alive. All known life is cybernetic, meaning controlled. Life's most prominent attribute is programming and tight regulation at every turn. Yet programming, prescription, control and regulation are all formalisms, not mere physicodynamic interactions. The programming of life is what makes life unique [1-3]

Metabolism First models cannot sustain themselves as perpetual motion machines, even in open environments, without heritable formal instructions needed to circumvent locally and temporarily 2nd Law organizational and useful energy deterioration.

Prescription and programming arise only out of Decision Theory, not Stochastic Theory.

How did prebiotic nature program the first decision nodes? Only Choice-Contingent Causation and Control (CCCC) could possibly program a genome and epigenome.

The peer-reviewed literature referenced in this website provides valuable background information showing why life-origin theorists struggle to generate a model or theory that addresses any of the most important questions of life origin.

An additional book of interest is: Programming of Life, by Johnson, D.E., Big Mac Publishers: Sylacauga, Alabama, 2010; p 127.

As células da mitocôndria funcionam muito parecido com pacote de baterias Tesla: mero acaso, fortuita necessidade ou design inteligente?

Individual cristae within the same mitochondrion display different membrane potentials and are functionally independent

Dane M Wolf

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Graduate Program in Nutrition and Metabolism, Graduate Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
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Mayuko Segawa

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Arun Kumar Kondadi

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

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Ruchika Anand

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

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Sean T Bailey

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-6960

Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

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Andreas S Reichert

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

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Alexander M van der Bliek

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6211-5765

Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Department of Biological Chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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David B Shackelford

Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Marc Liesa

Corresponding Author

E-mail address: mliesa@mednet.ucla.edu

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5909-8570

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

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Orian S Shirihai

Corresponding Author

E-mail address: OShirihai@mednet.ucla.edu

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8466-3431

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Graduate Program in Nutrition and Metabolism, Graduate Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

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Dane M Wolf

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Graduate Program in Nutrition and Metabolism, Graduate Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
Search for more papers by this author

Mayuko Segawa

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Search for more papers by this author

Arun Kumar Kondadi

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Search for more papers by this author

Ruchika Anand

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Search for more papers by this author

Sean T Bailey

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8051-6960

Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
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Andreas S Reichert

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
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Alexander M van der Bliek

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6211-5765

Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Department of Biological Chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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David B Shackelford

Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Search for more papers by this author

Marc Liesa

Corresponding Author

E-mail address: mliesa@mednet.ucla.edu

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5909-8570

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Search for more papers by this author

Orian S Shirihai

Corresponding Author

E-mail address: OShirihai@mednet.ucla.edu

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8466-3431

Department of Medicine (Endocrinology), Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Graduate Program in Nutrition and Metabolism, Graduate Medical Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
Search for more papers by this author

• *Corresponding author. Tel: +1‐310‐206‐7319; E‐mail: mliesa@mednet.ucla.edu

*Corresponding author. Tel: +1‐617‐230‐8570; E‐mail: OShirihai@mednet.ucla.edu 

EMBO J (2019)e101056https://doi.org/10.15252/embj.2018101056

Abstract

The mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨ_m) is the main driver of oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). The inner mitochondrial membrane (IMM), consisting of cristae and inner boundary membranes (IBM), is considered to carry a uniform ΔΨ_m. However, sequestration of OXPHOS components in cristae membranes necessitates a re‐examination of the equipotential representation of the IMM. We developed an approach to monitor ΔΨ_m at the resolution of individual cristae. We found that the IMM was divided into segments with distinct ΔΨ_m, corresponding to cristae and IBM. ΔΨ_m was higher at cristae compared to IBM. Treatment with oligomycin increased, whereas FCCP decreased, ΔΨ_m heterogeneity along the IMM. Impairment of cristae structure through deletion of MICOS‐complex components or Opa1 diminished this intramitochondrial heterogeneity of ΔΨ_m. Lastly, we determined that different cristae within the individual mitochondrion can have disparate membrane potentials and that interventions causing acute depolarization may affect some cristae while sparing others. Altogether, our data support a new model in which cristae within the same mitochondrion behave as independent bioenergetic units, preventing the failure of specific cristae from spreading dysfunction to the rest.

FREE PDF GRATIS: EMBO J

Espécies na era da discordância: Relatório do Encontro e Introdução

Species in the Age of Discordance: Meeting Report and Introduction

Matthew H. Haber, Department of Philosophy, School of Biology, and Center for Quantitative Biology, Carolyn Tanner Irish Humanities Bldg Room 402, 215 S Central Campus Dr, Salt Lake City UT, 84112, USA
Email: matt.haber@utah.edu

Daniel J. Molter, Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, USA

Email: dan.molter@utah.edu Skip other details (including permanent urls, DOI, citation information)

SUBJECT TERMS Conference Discordance Genealogical Discordance Phylo-evo-devo Phylogenetics Species


Article Type: Article

Volume 11, No. 012, 2019 

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ptpbio.16039257.0011.012

Permissions

Received 20 May 2019; Accepted 20 May 2019 

Source/Fonte

Abstract

In 2017, three interdisciplinary workshops were held on whether and how biological discordance might impact our views on species. Though the prompting focus of these workshops was genealogical discordance, the precise sense of ‘discordance’ was left intentionally ambiguous. This was to encourage an examination of the question from many different perspectives and to foster connections across disciplines. Participants included philosophers, historians, and other social scientists, alongside a range of biologists representing microbiology, population genetics, phylogenetics, invasion biology, herpetology, and ecology, among other areas. Here, context is provided for those workshops and to help motivate why biological discordance generates useful interdisciplinary research problems, along with brief summaries of the workshop papers included in this special issue.

Part of the special issue Species in the Age of Discordance, guest-edited by Matthew H. Haber and Daniel J. Molter. 

FREE PDF GRATIS: Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology 

Cientistas apoiam a desobediência civil em massa para forçar ação climática!

Scientists endorse mass civil disobedience to force climate action
Matthew Green

LONDON (Reuters) - Almost 400 scientists have endorsed a civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing governments to take rapid action to tackle climate change, warning that failure could inflict “incalculable human suffering.”

Julia Steinberger, an ecological economist at Britain's University of Leeds, endorses mass civil disobedience to pressure governments to tackle climate change at a protest at London's Science Museum, Britain October 12, 2019. Louise Jasper/Handout via REUTERS

In a joint declaration, climate scientists, physicists, biologists, engineers and others from at least 20 countries broke with the caution traditionally associated with academia to side with peaceful protesters courting arrest from Amsterdam to Melbourne.

Wearing white laboratory coats to symbolize their research credentials, a group of about 20 of the signatories gathered on Saturday to read out the text outside London’s century-old Science Museum in the city’s upmarket Kensington district.

“We believe that the continued governmental inaction over the climate and ecological crisis now justifies peaceful and non-violent protest and direct action, even if this goes beyond the bounds of the current law,” said Emily Grossman, a science broadcaster with a PhD in molecular biology. She read the declaration on behalf of the group.

“We therefore support those who are rising up peacefully against governments around the world that are failing to act proportionately to the scale of the crisis,” she said.

The declaration was coordinated by a group of scientists who support Extinction Rebellion, a civil disobedience campaign that formed in Britain a year ago and has since sparked offshoots in dozens of countries.

...

READ MORE HERE: Reuters

!FUIMOS DISEÑADOS! Información genética. Marcos Eberlin

Construindo um modelo melhor da retina

Tissue Engineering: Building a better model of the retina

Milica Radisic 

University of Toronto, Canada

INSIGHT Oct 4, 2019

DOI: 10.7554/eLife.51183

Retina-on-a-chip combines the benefits of organoids and organ-on-a-chip engineering.

Each chip has a vascular-like compartment (red) which is separated from the four organoid compartments above by a porous membrane. Schematic diagram (right) showing the various layers of cells in the retinal organoid (top) and the retinal pigment epithelium cells (RPE; yellow).

Image credit: Achberger et al. (CC BY 4.0)

Abstract

Researchers have combined organ-on-a-chip engineering with the benefits of organoids to make improved models of the human retina.

FREE PDF GRATIS: eLIFE