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Credit: Weizhi Ji, Kunming University of Science and Technology
Investigators in China and the United States have injected human stem cells into primate embryos and were able to grow chimeric embryos for a significant period of time up to 20 days. The research, despite its ethical concerns, has the potential to provide new insights into developmental biology and evolution. It also has implications for developing new models of human biology and disease. The work appears April 15 in the journal
Cell. As we are unable to conduct certain types of experiments in humans, it is essential that we have better models to more accurately study and understand human biology and disease, says senior author Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences. An important goal of experimental biology is the development of model systems that allow for the study of human diseases under in vivo conditions.
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IMAGE: a, PE rates at endogenous on-target and off-target sites. b, Experimental design and work flow of whole-genome sequencing. c, d, Numbers of SNVs (c) and Indels (d) identified by WGS. view more
Credit: IGDB
Prime editing (PE), a search-and-replace CRISPR-based genome editing technique, has great potential for gene therapy and agriculture. It can introduce desired base conversions, deletions, insertions, and combination edits into target genomic sites. Prime editors have been successfully applied in animals and plants, but their off-target effects, which can be a major hindrance to real-life application, have not been thoroughly evaluated until now.
Prof. GAO Caixia from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology (IGDB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and her research team recently performed a comprehensive and genome-wide analysis of the off-target effects of PEs in rice plants.
(
B) Photograph of a typical TBVA hydrogel. (
C) Photographs of water droplets on the hydrogels shaped with a PTFE mold. (
D) Contact angle evolution of a water droplet on TBVA3 over time. (
E) Water contact angles on TBVA3 molded by different substrates. Tensile stress-strain curves (
F) and elongations at break (
G) of the hydrogels. TBVA is the abbreviation of the borate ester polymer hydrogels, whereas TBVA3 is the hydrogel sample prepared by using 4.0 wt % of cross-linker. Error bars represent the SD for
n = 5 measurements at each data point.
TBVA hydrogels were processed into square pieces with a flat surface using poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) molds. The as-obtained hydrogel samples display a nontransparent appearance (Fig. 1B) and hydrophobic surfaces (Fig. 1C). The contact angles of water on the hydrogel surfaces are 134.0° ± 2° (TBVA1), 139.4° ± 3° (TBVA2), 131.9° ± 2° (TBVA3), and 121.2° ± 3° (TBVA4). A control sample prepared by cross-linking PVA o
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IMAGE: An N-rich primary tropical forest at the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve in southern China, where the first long-term simulated N deposition research site was established (in 2002) in China. view more
Credit: SCBG
In a new study, Dr. LU Xiankai and his colleagues from the South China Botanical Garden (SCBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) found that tropical forests can capture carbon dioxide (CO
2) into soils and thus reduce emitted CO
2. But how exactly do tropical forest soils capture atmospheric CO
2?
Current knowledge of forest soil carbon sequestration mainly focuses on temperate and boreal forests, where most ecosystems are nitrogen-limited, and an increase in nitrogen supply can enhance net primary productivity (NPP) and subsequent soil carbon sequestration.