Impact Of Biotechnology Research Articles

Somatic Biotechnologies in the System of Social Values of Modern Russian Society

The paper is devoted to analyzing the impact of somatic biotechnologies on the system of social values of modern society. In the paper «somatic» refers to such technologies that relate to the genetic modification of the human body or its functional systems carried out in various ways. The authors attempt to analyze the main directions of transformation of social institutions of modern Russian society, taking into account advantages and disadvantages of the new technological revolution. Attention is drawn to the risks that biotechnologies pose to society and the state as a whole. The authors substantiate the necessity of participation of the state and various social groups in the development of an optimal strategy reflecting the interests of all stakeholders, based on transparency and trust. The paper indicates that it is necessary to determine the levels of permissible human exposure to various concomitant factors when using biotechnologies. This will require a normative rethinking of the entire concept of human and civil rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation that includes the right to life, its values, the principles of the inalienable fundamental human rights and freedoms, their belonging to everyone from birth, the right to privacy, the right to personal and family secrets, dignity and good name.It is important at the regulatory level to consolidate the legal regime of genetic data about a person in the system of social values, prohibit discrimination based on genetic uniqueness, and develop requirements for medical organizations using somatic biotechnologies. The resolution of future problems involves a theoretical rethinking and normative regulation of new forms of work that will appear in the future, as well as new types of property. The ideas of motherhood and childhood, as well as families, will require new content, which will affect the most important values of society and demand active involvement of the state.

The Future of Food.

The global food systems face significant challenges driven by population growth, climate change, geopolitical conflicts, crises, and evolving consumer preferences. Intending to address these challenges, optimizing food production, adopting sustainable practices, and developing technological advancements are essential while ensuring the safety and public acceptance of innovations. This review explores the complex aspects of the future of food, encompassing sustainable food production, food security, climate-resilient and digitalized food supply chain, alternative protein sources, food processing, and food technology, the impact of biotechnology, cultural diversity and culinary trends, consumer health and personalized nutrition, and food production within the circular bioeconomy. The article offers a holistic perspective on the evolving food industry characterized by innovation, adaptability, and a shared commitment to global food system resilience. Achieving sustainable, nutritious, and environmentally friendly food production in the future involves comprehensive changes in various aspects of the food supply chain, including innovative farming practices, evolving food processing technologies, and Industry 4.0 applications, as well as approaches that redefine how we consume food.

Promising Applications of Biotechnology: Boosting Health, Agriculture and Environmental Sustainability

The scientific paper explores the promising applications of biotechnology in three key areas: health, agriculture, and environmental sustainability. It highlights the crucial role of biotechnology in improving human health, ranging from advanced therapies to innovative drug discovery, offering new hope in the treatment of complex diseases. In addition, it examines the transformative impact of biotechnology on agriculture, presenting advances in genetically modified crops to increase productivity, resistance to pests and adverse climatic conditions, promoting global food security.
 The article also delves into the role of biotechnology in environmental sustainability, highlighting how biotechnology technologies are contributing significantly to the reduction of the ecological footprint through the development of biofuels, bioplastics, and bioremediation methods. Detailed analysis of these developments shows the transformative potential of biotechnology in improving the quality of human life, food security, and environmental preservation.

Millet's Role as a Climate Resilient Staple for Future Food Security: A Review

This review comprehensively examines the role of millets as a sustainable and resilient food source in the context of global climate change and escalating food security challenges. Millets, a group of small-seeded grasses traditionally grown in semi-arid regions of Africa and Asia, are re-emerging as crops of significance due to their remarkable adaptability to harsh environmental conditions and their rich nutritional profile. The review begins by outlining the various types of millets, including pearl, finger, and foxtail millet, and their geographic distribution, emphasizing their adaptability to diverse climatic conditions. It then delves into the nutritional aspects of millets, highlighting their high content of dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and essential amino acids, making them a potent solution to combat malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies prevalent in many developing regions. A critical focus is placed on the climate resilience of millets. Their exceptional drought tolerance, ability to thrive in poor soil conditions, lower water, and nutrient requirements compared to staple crops like wheat and rice, and resistance to pests and diseases underscore millets' potential as sustainable crops in increasingly unpredictable climatic scenarios. This resilience not only promises to bolster food security but also contributes to sustainable agricultural practices. It explores the challenges and limitations in millet cultivation, processing, consumer acceptance, and market integration. It highlights the current gaps in millet-focused agricultural policies, the need for improved processing technologies, and strategies to enhance consumer appeal and marketability. Innovations in millet breeding for enhanced traits, advances in processing technologies, and the impact of biotechnology and climate-smart agricultural practices are examined. These technological and scientific advancements present opportunities for overcoming existing challenges and enhancing the role of millets in global food systems. Also presents case studies from various countries, particularly India, illustrating successful initiatives in millet cultivation, integration into national food policies, and community-led efforts. These examples offer valuable insights into practical approaches for promoting millets.

Philosophical & bioethical boundaries in current biotechnologies: human enhancement and welfare biology

The aim of this paper is to conduct a descriptive and normative exploration of the most intriguing current biotechnologies. Firstly, biotechnological means capable of enhancing humans will be described, including the possibility of transferring the mind to a non-biological device. Secondly, the emerging discipline of welfare biology will be explored, subjecting it to a theoretical stress test. Well-founded concerns regarding the potential impact of biotechnologies exist, with a particular emphasis on the speculative nature of mind uploading. In contrast to large-scale welfare biology, small-scale welfare biology seems entirely plausible to reduce wild animal suffering.

Metabolic engineering of Synechococcus elongatus 7942 for enhanced sucrose biosynthesis

The capability of cyanobacteria to produce sucrose from CO2 and light has a remarkable societal and biotechnological impact since sucrose can serve as a carbon and energy source for a variety of heterotrophic organisms and can be converted into value-added products. However, most metabolic engineering efforts have focused on understanding local pathway alterations that drive sucrose biosynthesis and secretion in cyanobacteria rather than analyzing the global flux re-routing that occurs following induction of sucrose production by salt stress. Here, we investigated global metabolic flux alterations in a sucrose-secreting (cscB-overexpressing) strain relative to its wild-type Synechococcus elongatus 7942 parental strain. We used targeted metabolomics, 13C metabolic flux analysis (MFA), and genome-scale modeling (GSM) as complementary approaches to elucidate differences in cellular resource allocation by quantifying metabolic profiles of three cyanobacterial cultures – wild-type S. elongatus 7942 without salt stress (WT), wild-type with salt stress (WT/NaCl), and the cscB-overexpressing strain with salt stress (cscB/NaCl) – all under photoautotrophic conditions. We quantified the substantial rewiring of metabolic fluxes in WT/NaCl and cscB/NaCl cultures relative to WT and identified a metabolic bottleneck limiting carbon fixation and sucrose biosynthesis. This bottleneck was subsequently mitigated through heterologous overexpression of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase in an engineered sucrose-secreting strain. Our study also demonstrates that combining 13C-MFA and GSM is a useful strategy to both extend the coverage of MFA beyond central metabolism and to improve the accuracy of flux predictions provided by GSM.

The Impact of Biotechnology on Mango Enhancement: Exploring Genetic Engineering and Molecular Markers

The impact of biotechnology on mango enhancement, particularly through genetic engineering and molecular markers, has been significant. Biotechnology has revolutionized the field of agriculture, offering innovative tools and techniques for improving crop traits. In the case of mangoes, genetic engineering involves the manipulation of the organism's DNA to introduce or modify specific genes, targeting traits such as disease resistance, fruit quality, and yield. This approach has led to the development of mango varieties with enhanced resistance to pests and diseases, improved flavour and aroma, and increased productivity. Similarly, marker-assisted selection (MAS) utilizes molecular markers to identify and select plants with desired traits, bypassing the need for time-consuming and costly phenotypic evaluations. MAS has accelerated breeding programs, enabling the development of superior mango cultivars with desired traits. By exploring the impact of genetic engineering and molecular markers in mango improvement, we gain insights into their potential to address key challenges in mango cultivation and meet consumer demands.

Marine Invertebrates: A Promissory Still Unexplored Source of Inhibitors of Biomedically Relevant Metallo Aminopeptidases Belonging to the M1 and M17 Families

Proteolytic enzymes, also known as peptidases, are critical in all living organisms. Peptidases control the cleavage, activation, turnover, and synthesis of proteins and regulate many biochemical and physiological processes. They are also involved in several pathophysiological processes. Among peptidases, aminopeptidases catalyze the cleavage of the N-terminal amino acids of proteins or peptide substrates. They are distributed in many phyla and play critical roles in physiology and pathophysiology. Many of them are metallopeptidases belonging to the M1 and M17 families, among others. Some, such as M1 aminopeptidases N and A, thyrotropin-releasing hormone-degrading ectoenzyme, and M17 leucyl aminopeptidase, are targets for the development of therapeutic agents for human diseases, including cancer, hypertension, central nervous system disorders, inflammation, immune system disorders, skin pathologies, and infectious diseases, such as malaria. The relevance of aminopeptidases has driven the search and identification of potent and selective inhibitors as major tools to control proteolysis with an impact in biochemistry, biotechnology, and biomedicine. The present contribution focuses on marine invertebrate biodiversity as an important and promising source of inhibitors of metalloaminopeptidases from M1 and M17 families, with foreseen biomedical applications in human diseases. The results reviewed in the present contribution support and encourage further studies with inhibitors isolated from marine invertebrates in different biomedical models associated with the activity of these families of exopeptidases.

Unlocking the magic in mycelium: Using synthetic biology to optimize filamentous fungi for biomanufacturing and sustainability.

Filamentous fungi drive carbon and nutrient cycling across our global ecosystems, through its interactions with growing and decaying flora and their constituent microbiomes. The remarkable metabolic diversity, secretion ability, and fiber-like mycelial structure that have evolved in filamentous fungi have been increasingly exploited in commercial operations. The industrial potential of mycelial fermentation ranges from the discovery and bioproduction of enzymes and bioactive compounds, the decarbonization of food and material production, to environmental remediation and enhanced agricultural production. Despite its fundamental impact in ecology and biotechnology, molds and mushrooms have not, to-date, significantly intersected with synthetic biology in ways comparable to other industrial cell factories (e.g. Escherichia coli,Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and Komagataella phaffii). In this review, we summarize a suite of synthetic biology and computational tools for the mining, engineering and optimization of filamentous fungi as a bioproduction chassis. A combination of methods across genetic engineering, mutagenesis, experimental evolution, and computational modeling can be used to address strain development bottlenecks in established and emerging industries. These include slow mycelium growth rate, low production yields, non-optimal growth in alternative feedstocks, and difficulties in downstream purification. In the scope of biomanufacturing, we then detail previous efforts in improving key bottlenecks by targeting protein processing and secretion pathways, hyphae morphogenesis, and transcriptional control. Bringing synthetic biology practices into the hidden world of molds and mushrooms will serve to expand the limited panel of host organisms that allow for commercially-feasible and environmentally-sustainable bioproduction of enzymes, chemicals, therapeutics, foods, and materials of the future.

How biotechnology could revolutionize the construction industry and green building project

The construction industry has been a vital contributor to the economy for many years. However, it is also known for being one of the biggest polluters, emitting a significant amount of carbon dioxide and consuming a vast amount of resources. Biotechnology is emerging as a promising solution to address the environmental impact of the construction industry. This abstract explores how biotechnology could revolutionize the construction industry and green building projects. It highlights the potential of biotechnology to reduce the environmental impact of construction through the use of sustainable materials and techniques. The study reviews the various biotechnology-based approaches that could improve the construction process, such as the use of genetically modified bacteria to produce bio-based materials and the use of biocatalysts to enhance the durability and strength of building materials. The study also examines the potential impact of biotechnology on the green building industry, with a focus on the development of energy-efficient and sustainable buildings. The study concludes that biotechnology has the potential to transform the construction industry by enabling the production of sustainable materials, enhancing the durability and strength of building materials, and improving the energy efficiency of buildings, ultimately contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly built environment.

Complex Coacervate Materials as Artificial Cells.

Cells have evolved to be self-sustaining compartmentalized systems that consist of many thousands of biomolecules and metabolites interacting in complex cycles and reaction networks. Numerous subtle intricacies of these self-assembled structures are still largely unknown. The importance of liquid-liquid phase separation (both membraneless and membrane bound) is, however, recognized as playing an important role in achieving biological function that is controlled in time and space. Reconstituting biochemical reactions in vitro has been a success of the last decades, for example, establishment of the minimal set of enzymes and nutrients able to replicate cellular activities like the in vitro transcription translation of genes to proteins. Further than this though, artificial cell research has the aim of combining synthetic materials and nonliving macromolecules into ordered assemblies with the ability to carry out more complex and ambitious cell-like functions. These activities can provide insights into fundamental cell processes in simplified and idealized systems but could also have an applied impact in synthetic biology and biotechnology in the future. To date, strategies for the bottom-up fabrication of micrometer scale life-like artificial cells have included stabilized water-in-oil droplets, giant unilamellar vesicles (GUV's), hydrogels, and complex coacervates. Water-in-oil droplets are a valuable and easy to produce model system for studying cell-like processes; however, the lack of a crowded interior can limit these artificial cells in mimicking life more closely. Similarly membrane stabilized vesicles, such as GUV's, have the additional membrane feature of cells but still lack a macromolecularly crowded cytoplasm. Hydrogel-based artificial cells have a macromolecularly dense interior (although cross-linked) that better mimics cells, in addition to mechanical properties more similar to the viscoelasticity seen in cells but could be seen as being not dynamic in nature and limiting to the diffusion of biomolecules. On the other hand, liquid-liquid phase separated complex coacervates are an ideal platform for artificial cells as they can most accurately mimic the crowded, viscous, highly charged nature of the eukaryotic cytoplasm. Other important key features that researchers in the field target include stabilizing semipermeable membranes, compartmentalization, information transfer/communication, motility, and metabolism/growth. In this Account, we will briefly cover aspects of coacervation theory and then outline key cases of synthetic coacervate materials used as artificial cells (ranging from polypeptides, modified polysaccharides, polyacrylates, and polymethacrylates, and allyl polymers), finishing with envisioned opportunities and potential applications for coacervate artificial cells moving forward.

Influence of Cell Wall on Biomolecules Biosynthesis in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Strains Exposed to Magnetic Fields

The application of magnetic fields (MF) has attracted the attention of researchers due to their efficiency to change cell metabolism. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a biotechnologically useful microalga with versatile metabolism that may be a valuable organism to study the effects of the MF in biology. Therefore, two C. reinhardtii strains, one with cell wall (2137) and other which lacks the cell wall (Wt-S1-cc4694), were evaluated that a new sensitivity factor in the analysis could be included. Comparative studies were undertaken with the two C. reinhardtii strains under the MF intensities of 0.005 mT (terrestrial MF - control), 11 and 20mT. Results indicated that the physical cell wall barrier protected cells against the MF applied during the assays. Only with the highest MF applied (20mT) a slight increase in lipid concentration in the cell wall strain was detected. The lowest growth of the strain that lacks cell wall (Wt-S1) indicated that these cells are under a negative effect. To cope with the two MF stresses conditions, Wt-S1 cells produced more pigments (chlorophylls and carotenoids) and lipids and enhanced the antioxidant defense system. The raise of these compounds under MF could potentially have a positive biotechnological impact on algal biomass.

The influence of biotechnologies, information and communication technologies on the formation of a healthy lifestyle among studentsу

This paper reflects the results of determining the impact of biotechnologies, information and communication technologies on the results in amateur and professional sports. The paper discusses the main issues of the impact of the achievements of biotechnology and information technology on the practice of sports, as well as their prevalence. Students involved both in groups of general physical training and in sports sections participated in the experiment. Among the participants of the study were both amateur athletes and athletes with sports categories and titles. The study was divided into areas: the prevalence and impact of sports trackers among athletes; biotechnological approach to monitoring and tracking the biological indicators of an athlete; systems for the formation of training programs based on the processing of biological indicators by neural networks. The main ways of using information and communication technologies and biotechnologies in sports were identified by studying current trends in amateur and professional approaches to playing sports: digital systems for fixing sports results, a biotechnological approach to monitoring and tracking an athlete’s biological indicators, systems for creating training programs based on processing biological indicators by neural networks. The influence of the combination of the above directions and factors on amateur and professional approaches to physical culture and sports is considered.

Microbial Biotechnology and Bioremediation

Microbial biotechnology is a rapidly growing field that leverages the abilities of microorganisms for practical applications. From producing biofuels to removing pollutants, microorganisms play a crucial role in shaping our world. Bioremediation is one of the most promising applications of microbial biotechnology, using microorganisms to clean up contaminated sites and restore ecosystems. The impact of human activities has led to widespread pollution, and traditional methods of remediation are often expensive, time-consuming, and not environmentally friendly. Microbial biotechnology offers a sustainable and cost-effective alternative.
 
 Bioremediation can be performed using indigenous microorganisms or by introducing specific strains of microorganisms that are capable of breaking down contaminants. These microorganisms use the pollutants as a source of energy and nutrients, transforming them into harmless substances. This process not only cleans up the site, but it also helps to restore the natural ecosystem and biodiversity. The field of microbial biotechnology has made significant progress in recent years, with advancements in molecular biology and genomics enabling a deeper understanding of microorganisms and their capabilities. The development of new bioremediation techniques has allowed for the efficient removal of a wide range of contaminants, including heavy metals, oil and other petroleum products, and toxic organic compounds. These techniques have proven to be effective in treating contaminated soil, groundwater, and surface water [1].
 
 However, the implementation of bioremediation techniques is not without its challenges. One of the biggest challenges is identifying the most effective strains of microorganisms for a specific contamination site. The environmental conditions, such as pH, temperature, and nutrient levels, can have a significant impact on the efficacy of bioremediation. Furthermore, the presence of multiple contaminants can complicate the process, requiring the use of multiple strains of microorganisms. Despite these challenges, the benefits of bioremediation, including sustainability and cost-effectiveness, make it a promising solution for cleaning up contaminated sites.
 
 The impact of microbial biotechnology and bioremediation goes beyond just environmental remediation. By leveraging the abilities of microorganisms, we can also contribute to the development of new and innovative technologies. For example, biorefineries are being developed to produce biofuels, bioplastics, and other bioproducts using sustainable processes. This not only helps to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels, but it also helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote sustainable development.
 
 Microbial biotechnology and bioremediation are critical fields that offer solutions to some of the biggest environmental challenges facing our world. With continued investment and research, we can develop and implement more effective and sustainable bioremediation techniques. These techniques will play a key role in cleaning up contaminated sites, restoring ecosystems, and promoting sustainable development. It is our hope that the benefits of microbial biotechnology and bioremediation will be recognized and supported by governments, organizations, and the public, allowing us to make a positive impact on our world.

Next-Generation Sequencing Applications for the Study of Fungal Pathogens.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has become a widely used technology in biological research. NGS applications for clinical pathogen detection have become vital technologies. It is increasingly common to perform fast, accurate, and specific detection of clinical specimens using NGS. Pathogenic fungi with high virulence and drug resistance cause life-threatening clinical infections. NGS has had a significant biotechnological impact on detecting bacteria and viruses but is not equally applicable to fungi. There is a particularly urgent clinical need to use NGS to help identify fungi causing infections and prevent negative impacts. This review summarizes current research on NGS applications for fungi and offers a visual method of fungal detection. With the development of NGS and solutions for overcoming sequencing limitations, we suggest clinicians test specimens as soon as possible when encountering infections of unknown cause, suspected infections in vital organs, or rapidly progressive disease.

10 Years of Toxicogenomics section in Frontiers in Genetics: Past discoveries and Future Perspectives.

The Frontiers Media family has over 200 journals, which are each headed by usually one Field Chief Editor, and several thousand specialty sections, which are each headed by one or more Specialty Chief Editors. The year 2021 was the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Frontiers in Genetics journal and the Frontiers in Toxicogenomics specialty section of this journal. In 2021, we also announce one of the newest of the Frontiers journals–Frontiers in Toxicology which is part of the Frontiers Media family of journals but independent of Frontiers in Genetics. Dr. Ruden is the founding, and currently sole, Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Toxicogenomics and one of 9 Specialty Chief Editors of Frontiers in Toxicology. As of 2021, Frontiers in Toxicogenomics has published over 138 articles and has over 370 Editors including 90 Associate Editors and 280 Review Editors. The Frontiers in Genetics impact factor was initially approximately 2.5 when it was first listed in PubMed in 2015 and has risen steadily to its current value of 4.8, which is typical for the majority of the over 200 Frontiers journals that have established impact factors. In this overview of the first decade of Frontiers in Toxicogenomics, we discuss the top 5 articles with the highest Scopus citations, which were all written in the first few years of the journal. The article with the highest number of citations, with 353 Scopus over 600 Google Scholar citations, and the highest average number of citations (67) that steadily increased from 10 citations in 2013 to 119 citations in 2021, was written in 2012 by Dr. Ruden’s laboratory and titled, “Using Drosophila melanogaster as a model for genotoxic chemical mutational studies with a new program, SnpSift.” The five most influential authors who published in the journal in the past 10 years based on Scopus citations of a particular paper are Dr. Ruden’s laboratory, with 353 Scopus citations for the SnpSift paper mentioned above; Drs. Brock Christensen and Carmen J. Marsit, with 86 Scopus citations for their review, “Epigenomics in environmental health”; Dr. Michael Aschner and colleagues, with 61 Scopus citations for their paper “Genetic factors and manganese-induced neurotoxicity”; and Dr. Sandra C. dos Santos and colleagues, with 59 Scopus citations for their paper, “Yeast toxicogenomics: genome-wide responses to chemical stresses with impact in environmental health, pharmacology, and biotechnology.” While the top 5 papers were published in the early years of the journal, we will also discuss a more recent article published in 2018 on a comparison of RNA-seq and microarray methods by Dr. Michael Liguori’s laboratory, “Comparison of RNA-Seq and Microarray Gene Expression Platforms for the Toxicogenomic Evaluation of Liver From Short-Term Rat Toxicity Studies,” that far exceeds the number of downloads and views of all the other articles published in the first 10 years of the journal and will likely be a top cited paper in the second decade highlights of this journal. Finally, we discuss where the Frontiers in Toxicogenomics specialty journal and the Frontiers in Toxicology journal will go to advance the field of toxicogenomics, and more generally, toxicology, in the future.

Crop Science: Integrating Modern Techniques for Higher Yields

The integration of modern techniques in crop science has revolutionized agricultural practices, resulting in substantial increases in crop yields. This paper explores the impact of precision agriculture, biotechnology, and advanced breeding techniques on enhancing agricultural productivity. Precision agriculture employs technologies like remote sensing, GPS, and soil sensors to optimize resource use, while biotechnology involves genetic modification, CRISPR-Cas9, and RNA interference to develop crops with improved traits. Advanced breeding techniques such as marker-assisted selection and genomic selection accelerate the development of high-yielding varieties. By analyzing recent advancements and their applications, this study provides a comprehensive overview of how modern crop science is addressing the challenges of food security and sustainable agriculture.

(Invited) Carbon Nanotubes for Plant Genetic Engineering

Plants will benefit from genetic engineering to feed our growing global population in the midst of climate change, to provide our most clinically-relevant drugs, and for our environmental remediation efforts. New generation genome engineering technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas, hold the potential to alter plant genes in a precise and targeted manner. The first step of any plant genetic engineering application is to deliver important biomolecular cargoes into the desired subcellular locations of plant cells. However, the limitations of traditional plant gene delivery methods, i.e. Agrobacterium and gene gun, prevent plant genetic engineering from reaching its full potential.Given the lack of efficient biomolecule delivery vehicles to plants and potential impact of plant biotechnology on food security and sustainability, we developed nanoparticle-based platforms to efficiently deliver small interfering RNA1,2 and plasmid DNA3,4 cargoes into plant cells in a species-independent manner, which eliminates the use of gene gun and addresses the main delivery bottlenecks of plant genetic engineering. We show that pristine single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can adsorb small interfering RNA molecules through pi-pi stacking for plant delivery, whereas a covalently modified and positively charged SWCNT platform is more efficient for large double-stranded DNA delivery to mature plant leaf cells.This talk will first briefly summarize the development, characterization and biological verification of each nanoparticle platform for plant delivery applications. Next, I will present our recent results of CRISPR/Cas gene editing in plant leaves using the SWCNT DNA delivery platform5. The talk will be concluded by discussing the several assays performed to demonstrate the effect of nanoparticles on plant health, including an RNA-sequencing analysis of nanoparticle-treated plant leaves6. We believe the SWCNT delivery technologies that are discussed in this talk will have an immense impact on food security and sustainability by enabling the generation of improved plants that can rapidly reach the market in a cost-effective manner. Demirer G.S.*, Zhang H.* et al., DNA Nanostructures Coordinate Gene Silencing in Mature Plants. PNAS (2019). Demirer G.S. et al., Carbon Nanocarriers Deliver siRNA to Intact Plant Cells for Efficient Gene Knockdown. Science Advances (2020). Demirer G.S. et al., High Aspect Ratio Nanomaterials Enable Delivery of Functional Genetic Material Without Transgenic DNA Integration in Mature Plants. Nature Nanotechnology (2019). Demirer G.S. et al., Carbon nanotube–mediated DNA delivery without transgene integration in intact plants. Nature Protocols (2019). Demirer G.S. et al., Nanotechnology to advance CRISPR–Cas genetic engineering of plants. Nature Nanotechnology (2021).González-Grandío E., Demirer, G.S. et al. Carbon nanotube biocompatibility in plants is determined by their surface chemistry. bioRxiv (2021).

Fourier Representations for Black-Box Optimization over Categorical Variables

Optimization of real-world black-box functions defined over purely categorical variables is an active area of research. In particular, optimization and design of biological sequences with specific functional or structural properties have a profound impact in medicine, materials science, and biotechnology. Standalone search algorithms, such as simulated annealing (SA) and Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS), are typically used for such optimization problems. In order to improve the performance and sample efficiency of such algorithms, we propose to use existing methods in conjunction with a surrogate model for the black-box evaluations over purely categorical variables. To this end, we present two different representations, a group-theoretic Fourier expansion and an abridged one-hot encoded Boolean Fourier expansion. To learn such representations, we consider two different settings to update our surrogate model. First, we utilize an adversarial online regression setting where Fourier characters of each representation are considered as experts and their respective coefficients are updated via an exponential weight update rule each time the black box is evaluated. Second, we consider a Bayesian setting where queries are selected via Thompson sampling and the posterior is updated via a sparse Bayesian regression model (over our proposed representation) with a regularized horseshoe prior. Numerical experiments over synthetic benchmarks as well as real-world RNA sequence optimization and design problems demonstrate the representational power of the proposed methods, which achieve competitive or superior performance compared to state-of-the-art counterparts, while improving the computation cost and/or sample efficiency, substantially.

PRINCIPLES OF PATENT PROTECTION IN THE FIELD OF BIOTECHNOLOGY IN EASTERN EUROPE: INFLUENCE OF WESTERN AND EASTERN MODELS

The relevance of this research is explained by the necessity of a comprehensive study of the subject of patent protection in the field of biotechnology in Eastern European countries, which is conditioned upon the rapid development of technologies in the field of biology, medicine and pharmacy. The purpose of the research is to provide a legal assessment of the principles of patent protection and to develop approaches to the qualification of biotechnological achievements. While compiling the research, the author used general scientific methods: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, abstraction, specification and analogy. Among specific scientific methods, the statistical method is distinguished; notably, specific legal methods, such as comparative legal and method of interpretation of legal provisions. The results of the study highlight the main achievements in the field of biotechnology and promising ways of developing their patent protection. The research describes in detail the fundamental principles of patent protection of biotechnologies. The necessity to consider the possibility of alienation of patents in favour of the state for some inventions, if these inventions are essential at the level of the state and society, to ensure equal and free access to such technologies. It is stated that it is unacceptable to grant patent protection, especially to the results of research in the field of human cloning or the development of artificial intelligence on human cells, as it contradicts ethical and moral standards. The final part of the research is the conclusions of the study, which identify the significance and provides an assessment of the impact of biotechnology on the present and future. The results of the research may be useful for lawyers and scientists in the field of intellectual property law.