Danielle Gerhard

From synthetic biology and gene therapy to data storage and biofuel production, the demand for synthetic DNA is rising.Chemical synthesisPhosphoramidite oligonucleotide synthesis is the gold-standard method for generating synthetic DNA. Scientists use the method to assemble modified nucleotides—phosphoramidite nucleosides—with the help of chemicals.1 © nanoclustering.com(1) Chemicals remove the 5’-hydroxyl protecting group.The nucleosides are rich in exposed hydroxyl and amino groups, s…

ABOVE: Researchers generated various epithelial organoids, including lungs, using progenitor cells found in amniotic fluid. Giuseppe Calà, Paolo De Coppi, Mattia Gerli Moments after birth, a baby takes a first breath as the placenta, which has served as the fetus’ lungs during gestation, transfers responsibility to the baby’s own organs. However, for patients born with congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), a rare condition where the diaphragm fails to close, causing impaired lung development,…

ABOVE: When it comes to the human genome, scientists opt for well studied genes, neglecting thousands of known and conserved genes with unknown function in the process. Modified from © istock.com, erhui1979, Natallia Yatskova; designed by Luiza Augusto In the last two years, scientists achieved two genomic milestones: the complete sequences of the human non-Y genome and, just this past August, that of the Y chromosome.1,2 With the final pages of the human genetic playbook complete, plenty of my…

ABOVE: Accusations of alleged image duplication and reuse in papers by a prominent researcher at Harvard Medical School are currently under investigation. ©iStock, jxfzsy In early February, microbiologist and science integrity consultant Elisabeth Bik released reports from her latest investigation into a suspected case of scientific misconduct. In her report, she outlined 59 instances of alleged image duplication or reuse in papers published by Khalid Shah, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical S…

ABOVE: As director of the Center for Genome Engineering and associate director of Shared Resources, Comprehensive Cancer Center at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Shondra Pruett-Miller oversees genome editing technologies available to the hospital’s. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Shondra Pruett-Miller, a biochemist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, found her calling during her first year of graduate school at the University of Texas, Southwestern. In 2003, during the depa…