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Mastering the Art of Food Photography: Tips and Techniques

Food photography is a captivating and essential aspect of the culinary world, blending the art of visual storytelling with the science of cooking. It involves capturing the beauty, texture, and essence of food in a way that entices the viewer and evokes a sensory experience. As an expert in Food and Cooking, I will guide you through the fundamentals of food photography…

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DNA-based bacterial parasite uses completely new DNA-editing method

Top row: individual steps in the reaction process. Bottom row: cartoon diagram of the top, showing the position of each DNA and RNA strand.

Enlarge / Top row: individual steps in the reaction process. Bottom row: cartoon diagram of the top, showing the position of each DNA and RNA strand. (credit: Hiraizumi, et. al.)

While CRISPR is probably the most prominent gene-editing technology, there are others, some developed before and since. And people have been developing CRISPR variants to perform more specialized functions, like altering specific bases. In all of these cases, researchers are trying to balance a number of competing factors: convenience, flexibility, specificity and precision for the editing, low error rates, and so on.

So, having additional options for editing can be a good thing, enabling new ways of balancing those different needs. On Wednesday, a pair of papers in Nature describe a DNA-based parasite that moves itself around bacterial genomes through a mechanism that hasn't been previously described. It's nowhere near ready for use in humans, but it may have some distinctive features that make it worth further development.

Going mobile

Mobile genetic elements, commonly called transposons, are quite common in many speciesβ€”they make up nearly half the sequences in the human genome, for example. They are indeed mobile, showing up in new locations throughout the genome, sometimes by cutting themselves out and hopping to new locations, other times by sending a copy out to a new place in the genome. For any of this to work, they need to have an enzyme that cuts DNA and specifically recognizes the right transposon sequence to insert into the cut.

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IV infusion enables editing of the cystic fibrosis gene in lung stem cells

Abstract drawing of a pair of human hands using scissors to cut a DNA strand, with a number of human organs in the background.

Enlarge (credit: DrAfter123)

The development of gene editing tools, which enable the specific targeting and correction of mutations, hold the promise of allowing us to correct those mutations that cause genetic diseases. However, the technology has been around for a while nowβ€”two researchers were critical to its development in 2020β€”and there have been only a few cases where gene editing has been used to target diseases.

One of the reasons for that is the challenge of targeting specific cells in a living organism. Many genetic diseases affect only a specific cell type, such as red blood cells in sickle-cell anemia, or specific tissue. Ideally, to limit potential side effects, we'd like to ensure that enough of the editing takes place in the affected tissue to have an impact, while minimizing editing elsewhere to limit side effects. But our ability to do so has been limited. Plus, a lot of the cells affected by genetic diseases are mature and have stopped dividing. So, we either need to repeat the gene editing treatments indefinitely or find a way to target the stem cell population that produces the mature cells.

On Thursday, a US-based research team said that they've done gene editing experiments that targeted a high-profile genetic disease: cystic fibrosis. Their technique largely targets the tissue most affected by the disease (the lung), and occurs in the stem cell populations that produce mature lung cells, ensuring that the effect is stable.

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