https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLkIhUHFazg
From the brave Ukrainian biohacker D. Dantseva of Yanelab
For more videos see her YT channel is here:
https://www.youtube.com/@Yanelab
Please send her a Christmas gift here patreon.com/yanelab so she can build more cool stuff!
David checks the 2nd gene gun that he built for leaks prior to it's departure from CCL to Hector's lab. If there is any leakage in the tubing or valves, helium, being of low density, will escape. It is this low density of He, combined with its properties of being non-reactive, non-toxic, inert and diffusible that make it a good choice as a propellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-M1hp6w2sc
Here's Daria Dantseva speaking at Biohack the Planet. From her experiences, she has something of great importance to communicate with us about the crucial role biohacking can play in the 21st century. Bravo, Daria.
Here's Sesan and Hector in the lab. What are they doing?
Do you know that everyone at project GRFT is a volunteer?
Meet Anthony, one of our diligent and hard working volunteers.
A group of friends of project GRFT at Oakland's Counter Culture Labs say hello to you.
Our team of volunteers is shooting rice embryos with the gene gun on Saturdays at Counter Culture Labs.
Sreenivas and Nathaniel from Johns Hopkins University have joined us for the Summer. They provided the first version of the plasmid containing the griffithsin construct which we have been cloning on Fridays. The work on Saturday is to get a layer of plasmid to adhere by forming an adsorption ionic bond with 0.7 micron Au microparticles. This procedure has an element of timing, including vortexing and centrifuging, while keeping everything cool. Here Anthony prepares a centrifuge. The rotor is chilled in a freezer before centrifuging.
First the Au microparticles are washed multiple times with cold
ethanol. The last wash is done with a pH
9.0 borate buffer.
Nathaniel has the pipettes ready with tips and lined up, he will quickly add plasmid, CaCl2, and protamine and vortexed immediately.
This kept cold while allowing to rest for 10
minutes. During this time precipitation
occurs.
After centrifuging the supernatant is removed and the
precipitate is re-suspended in pure ethanol.
Then the particles are carefully pipetted into the cartridges which will be loaded into the gene gun. Here David instructs Sreenivas on the cartridge loading.
The ethanol needs
time to evaporate and then the cartridges can be loaded into the gene gun.
Here’s a closer look at the cartridges after loading.
Rice embryos are placed between 2 wire screens in the nozzle
of the gene gun.
Sreenivas opens the valve to allow the helium gas to fill
the measuring tube of the gene gun before firing.
David furiously takes notes on all of this.
After a wet winter, we're glad that the rainy season is over.
On project GRFT, we are working with rice.
Some varieties of rice have been used frequently in plant molecular biology because the are easier to transform. Transformation is a cellular process where the host organism takes up a DNA plasmid.
Then the host will express the proteins as desired.
In the project we're doing the chosen host organism is rice, Oryza Japonica, var. Nipponbare
Here volunteer Lina prepares rice for plating out.
We have been improving the process and now the rice when plated out is ready for particle bombardment in one week.
"Griffithsin and its synthetictrimeric tandemer (3mG) are under animal trial, showing promising results."
reference from Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/30/world-dangerously-unprepared-for-next-pandemic-ifrc
A refresher for those who have been reading these posts or an introduction to those who are new here follows:
GRFT, or Griffithsin is an antiviral lectin. It has shown to inhibit infection by a number of viruses while being itself nontoxic. Project GRFT has a goal of producing GRFT by expression of the gene (derived from a red seaweed) in Oryza (rice). As rice is a widely grown food crop in many countries of the world, this method has the potential to empower farming communities with limited resources a means to combat viral outbreaks that will undoubtedly occur in the future. We feel that our efforts support global public health, a basic human right.
It should be noted that both Griffithsin and rice are considered nontoxic and safe.
Project GRFT is a group of friends who are volunteering to develop technology to do large scale global biomanufacturing of GRFT through plant molecular biology.
Project GRFT does not have as its intent to produce pharmaceuticals but rather to provide the raw material for biomanufacturing which we may perhaps call "GRICE"
As a project of Counter Culture Labs we have non-profit status and we always welcome your donations, both of money and in-kind donations such as supplies (petri dishes, reagents, etc.).
We are now working in three fully functional laboratories.
One is located at Counter Culture Labs in Oakland, California
Another is located in Baltimore Maryland at Johns Hopkins University
The newest lab is located near Modesto, California
This is our effort to respond to the challenge described in the Red Cross warning.
