While many questions about vaults remain, including whether they serve as cargo transporters for the cell, their large, hollow interiors have led some scientists to see the nanobarrels as potential tools for the delivery of biomaterials. A variety of strategies for encapsulating biomaterials already exists, including viruses, liposomes, peptides, hydrogels, and synthetic and natural polymers, but the use of these materials is often limited by insufficient payload, immunogenicity, lack of targeting specificity, and the inability to control packaging and release. Vaults, on the other hand, possess all the features of an ideal delivery vehicle. These naturally occurring cellular nanostructures have a cavity large enough to sequester 100s of proteins; they are homogeneous, regular, highly stable, and easy to engineer; and, most of all, they are nonimmunogenic and totally biocompatible.

Can’t wait until MRA losers figure this out

Remember Dolly, the cloned sheep? Back in Glory Season, I speculated that it would be difficult to clone mammals and that hence there might still be some (slight) need for males, even in a hyper feminist world. Well, we’ve seen some ups and downs since. Dolly seemed to suggest that tech empowered female humans will be able to dispense with us hairy-inseminators in the future – and at times I admit, I wouldn’t blame em.

Only then Dolly died young, sickened with many diseases of aging and with shortened chromosomes, suggesting that a cloned mammal inherits some of the aging clock of the parent and does not reset its embryonic timer back to zero! Baaaah! So much for parthenogenesis and eliminating males.

Only now … another reversal! It seems 12 more Dolly clones are doing just fine, with no sign of premature senescence. So maybe it just took a better process. Sorry guys. Your services are no longer needed. (Except maybe for amusement and moving some furniture, now and then.) Try to tidy up a bit on your way out, hm?

2023-07-31:

For the first time, scientists have used genetic engineering to trigger ‘virgin birth’ in female animals that normally need a male partner to reproduce.

Previously, scientists have generated young mice and frogs with no genetic input from a male parent. But those offspring were made by tinkering with egg cells in laboratory dishes rather than by giving female animals the capacity for virgin birth, also known as parthenogenesis.
To identify the genes that underlie parthenogenesis, Sperling and her colleagues sequenced the genomes of two strains of the fly Drosophila mercatorum: one that reproduces sexually and another that reproduces through parthenogenesis. The researchers then compared gene activity in eggs from flies capable of parthenogenesis with that in eggs from flies capable of only sexual reproduction to identify the genes at work during one process but not the other.

The comparison allowed the authors to identify 44 genes that were potentially involved in parthenogenesis. The researchers altered the equivalent genes in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, which usually cannot reproduce asexually.

After altering various combinations of genes, the scientists hit on a combination that induced parthenogenesis in 11% of female fruit flies. Some of the offspring of these genetically engineered flies were also capable of parthenogenesis.

Although the parthenogenetic flies received genes only from their mothers, they weren’t always clones of their parent. Some had 3 sets of chromosomes, whereas eggs laid by mothers reproducing through parthenogenesis usually have only 2.

Biology needs a taste of Morgan’s pre-fly days, when scientists studied a panoply of organisms. By focusing on 7 animals out of 9m species on Earth, we are missing a huge chunk of interesting biology. “We are due for a renaissance. We have narrowed our focus to a handful of organisms that statistically are highly unlikely to encompass the gamut of biological activity on the planet.”