Gene Editing Tool CRISPR—"Zoo" Welcomes You

About 2% of the world's children are allergic to eggs. They are also unable to accept a lot of routine vaccinations, because the vaccinations are produced by eggs.

Molecular biologists feel that the problem can be solved by powerful crispr genome editing. Most egg allergies are caused by one of the 4 proteins in the egg. When a gene, encoding one of the proteins, is changed, the protein can not be triggered in the serum of the allergic person. The use of CRISPR to edit chicken genes can get eggs that do not cause allergic reactions.

The team hopes to hatch the first generation of genetically modified chicken as a validation of the concept later this year. However, in order to be approved for the listing of the genetically modified eggs, it needs a long period of time.

Chicken is just one of a group of animals that will soon be transformed. Today, the tools owned by researchers can only manipulate a small part of the class of animal genes, and this process is usually not highly efficient and easy. With the advent of CRISPR, they are able to change the genes of many organisms more precisely and simply. In the past two years, when scientists tried to use CRISPR in such as agriculture, pharmaceutical production&recovery and disappeared species, the prospect for editing genes of monkey, mammoth elephant, mosquitoes and other animals is frequently reported in the newspapers. Animals that have been transformed by CRISPR have even been sold as pets in the market.

Regulators, however, are still planning on how to treat such animals, especially those that are used as food or to be released into the wild. Concerns about safety and ecological impact are everywhere. Even the US National Intelligence Director is involved, and said that the easy access to genome editing, low-cost and rapid development, will increase the risk to create harmful biological agents.

The rapid application of CRISPR in animals provides opportunities for researchers and policy makers in the discussion. Such discussions will help determine which CRISPR applications will be most useful to humans, other species and science, and highlight the limits of the technology.

Progress in the Detection of Liver Disease of Mass Spectrometry Technology

Liver disease is a serious hazard to human health disease. Its etiology is complicated, including infection, tumor and other common factors, as well as including special autoimmune factors, congenital diseases, etc. Clinical most common chronic liver disease is cause by hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) and there are 3.7 billion and 1.3 million patients in the world. Chronic hepatitis often slow progress to liver fibrosis or cirrhosis and may eventually develop to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Hepatic cell cancer has a high mortality rate. According to the World Health Organization, each year around the world there are 600 000 people died of HCC. In addition to virus infection, drug and poison damage, malnutrition and alcoholism, metabolic disorders and other factors are also the main reasons of liver disease.

Mass spectrometry technology development status

Gas chromatography - mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and Liquid Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS) technology are the most commonly used detection methods. Especially the technology has attracted wide attention of scholars in the metabonomics research value. Metabonomics study mostly the endogenous small molecules within the relative molecular weight of 1000. It usually uses nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) technologies to separate and detect human urine or plasma metabolites in biological sample spectra, and determine the pathological and physiological state of birth of the object and find out the related biomarkers combined with pattern recognition method. Compared to proteomics research, metabolite molecular detection is easier, and more suitable as markers of disease.

The application of mass spectrometry in the detection of alcoholic liver disease

Some scholars found part protein or metabolite molecules with ALD diagnosis through conditional mouse model establishment of alcohol dependence and mass spectrometric detection. They used proteomics technology of alcohol induced mouse model for analysis of differential protein expression. They extracted cytoplasmic membrane of liver cells, and detected by using bidirectional technology and iTRAQ technology. As a result, a total of 15 different proteins were detected, and the keratin - 8 was tested for significance in two different methods. They thought the molecules might play a role in the liver damage by alcohol.

Research methods of biological evolution and point mutation

During the long development process system, a point mutation provides the material for the biological evolution. At present, molecular biology experiments are used to construct the mutant gene, and to study the directed evolution of the organism.

Biological evolution
Virus achieves the diversity and evolution through gene mutation (spontaneous mutation and induced mutation), chromosome aberration (transfer, insertion, deletion, recombination, rearrangement, etc.) and natural selection. In general, the DNA virus survives with the host, whereas the RNA virus uses a variety of hosts—when faced with a risk of the host, it transfers to another host to replicate.

There are at least about 400,000 species of plant species that have been experienced the evolution from aquatic to terrestrial life and from the lower plant to the higher plant. Plants that can't leave the water—the eukaryotic algae; the transitional land plant—the moss; the terrestrial plant—the vascular plant.

The evolution of the human species is related a variety of environmental factors, including temperature adaptability evolution, UV radiation adaptive evolution, sunshine time adaptive evolution, precipitation adaptive evolution, hypobaric hypoxia adaptive evolution, environmental pathogens adaptive evolution and environmental sources adaptation evolution, etc.

point mutation

Oligonucleotide induced gene point mutation

A gene is cloned into a plasmid vector. A pair of primers are synthesized by artificial synthesis of a pair of primers. The mutation is located near the center of the primer, and the two ends have enough sequences to guarantee their pairing and PCR amplification.

In vitro induction of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)

Including error prone PCR, DNA shuffling, staggered extension, DNA family shuffling, RD-PCR reorganization, messy, temporary template fitted technology, single stranded DNA mediated family shuffling and fusion PCR.

Conclusion and prospect

Evolution is an inevitable result of any living being in constant development and change. Molecular biology has provided powerful means and methods for the research of directed evolution. But it also has problems. For example, accidentally, DNA mutation will continue towards opposite human evolution direction. Once these mutations escape the control of the immune system, they will cause cancer.