Quick Answer: Is Kanban Pull Or Push?

Is Kanban a pull system?

Kanban, based on manufacturing processes adopted in Japan after World War II, employs a pull system using Kanban Cards placed on a Kanban Board to track work through the system.

Pull scheduling is monitored using maximum Work in Progress within any category of work..

What are two types of kanban cards?

Kanban Cards and Kanban SystemsProduction Kanban. This type of Kanban is probably the most basic one. … Withdrawal Kanban. The withdrawal or conveyance Kanban system is concerned with the movement of items and components. … Supplier Kanban. … Emergency Kanban. … Express Kanban. … Through Kanban.

What is Kanban with example?

Work-in-process, or WIP, limits are another key Kanban concept that can help all teams, including development teams, actively manage the flow of work through their system. In this Kanban board example, the team is using WIP limits to limit the number of work items that can exist in any given step at any given time.

When should Kanban be used?

Kanban is great for teams that have lots of incoming requests that vary in priority and size. Whereas scrum processes require high control over what is in scope, kanban let’s you go with the flow. Let’s take a look at the same five considerations to help you decide.

What is a kanban card?

A Kanban card is a visual representation of a work item on a Kanban board. Think of a Kanban board as a whiteboard, with vertical lanes representing the steps in a process.

Which represent pull in kanban?

A Pull System is a lean technique that is used to control the flow of work by only replacing what has been consumed. This means that the trigger for work to be done is when a customer demands for it. To better visualize a Pull System, take for example a vending machine.

What is the difference between a push and a pull system?

» Push System: is a system in which we produce goods based on our best projections of what the market wants. Essentially the production of goods is scheduled and based on a plan with deadlines. … » Pull System: is a system in which the production of goods is initiated by the person or organization who consumes that good.

What is an example of a push strategy?

A push strategy tries to sell directly to the consumer, bypassing other distribution channels. … For example, offering subsidies on the handsets to encourage retailers to sell higher volumes. Direct selling and trade promotions are often the most effective promotional tools for companies such as Nokia.

What is a push and a pull?

A pull is when you use force to move a thing (object) closer to you. Push. A push is when you use force to move a thing (object) away from you. Motion. Motion is when something (an object) is moving.

What is kanban process?

Kanban is a method for managing the creation of products with an emphasis on continual delivery while not overburdening the development team. Like scrum, kanban is a process designed to help teams work together more effectively.

What is the purpose of kanban?

Kanban is one of the Lean tools designed to reduce the idle time in a production process. The main idea behind the Kanban system is to deliver what the process needs exactly when it needs it. In Japanese, the word “Kan” means “visual” and “ban” means “card,” so Kanban refers to visual cards.

Does Walmart use a push or pull strategy?

The business terms push and pull originated in logistics and supply chain management, but are also widely used in marketing, and is also a term widely used in the hotel distribution business. Walmart is an example of a company that uses the push vs. pull strategy.

What should be on a kanban card?

At its core, the kanban card encourages teamwork by helping team members communicate and share information visually. Kanban cards allow teams to: View important details about work items at a glance. Each kanban card typically features a brief description of a work item, along with its owner, due date, and status.

What are the 6 rules of kanban?

The Six Rules of KanbanNever Pass Defective Products. … Take Only What’s Needed. … Produce the Exact Quantity Required. … Level the Production. … Fine-tune the Production or Process Optimization. … Stabilize and Rationalize the Process.

What is Kanban in Six Sigma?

KANBAN is a LEAN and JIT tool to control the flow of raw materials and Work In Progress into and out of the production system. It was developed by Taichi Ohno in Toyota to streamline the operations. It is one of the ways and means to achieve Just in Time Manufacturing.


Ooof, lots going on in the Fediverse lately.

Lots of hugs, everyone. I hope you're able to find some time for yourself; do something nice for yourself, and interact with a loved one. Take care. :heart_hands:

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Quick Answer: Why Did David Write Psalm 37?

How old was David when he wrote Psalm 37?

Written around 1000 B.C., Psalm 37 is part of the first collection of Psalms and authorship is normally attributed to none other than King David (Bible Basics).

According to the text, Psalm 37 was written when David was an old man (see verse 25)..

What does Psalm 27 say?

Does God laugh with joy?

Three times in the Book of Psalms (Psalm 2:4; 37:13; 59:8) we read that God shall laugh. The word “laugh” does not mean what we usually think of today as laughing with “joy” or “making a joke of.” It always means, “to hold in derision — to mock or to scorn.” … Then he places his confidence in His God.

What does noisome pestilence mean in the Bible?

1 : noxious, harmful a noisome pestilence. 2a : offensive to the senses and especially to the sense of smell noisome garbage. b : highly obnoxious or objectionable noisome habits.

Who wrote Psalm 91 and why?

Though no author is mentioned in the Hebrew text of this psalm, Jewish tradition ascribes it to Moses, with David compiling it in his Book of Psalms. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament attributes it to David.

What does a contrite heart mean?

What does God say about laughter?

Whenever “Laugher Sunday” is celebrated, and by whatever name, it is characterized by joking around, singing, dancing, and merry-making. And it reminds participants that God is a God of laughter as well as of sorrow – much as God is Lord of the valleys as well as the mountain tops (Genesis 21:1-6). Read more.

Who is Abimelech in Bible?

Abimelech (/əˈbɪməˌlɛk/; אֲבִימֶלֶךְ ‘Ǎḇîmeleḵ) was the king of Shechem and a son of biblical judge Gideon. His name can best be interpreted as “my father is king”, claiming the inherited right to rule.

What is the meaning of Psalm 33?

33 is a song of praise. (1) A call to worship in the temple with song, music, and shouting (v.1-3), because of the righteousness and kindness of Yahweh (v.4-5). … A gloss praises the plans of Yahweh as everlastingly secure, and also the happiness of His people (v.11-12).”

Is Psalm 91 a prayer?

What does Psalm 37 say?

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.

Why did King David write Psalm 34?

Psalm 34 attributes its own authorship to David. The Psalm’s sub-title, A Psalm of David when he pretended madness before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed, derives from when David was living with the Philistines, but the account of this event in 1 Samuel 21 refers to the king as Achish, not Abimelech.

What does the Bible say about joy?

#5 – Nehemiah 8:10 – The Joy Of The Lord Is My Strength. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

What Bible says about fear and anxiety?

“An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up” (Proverbs 12:25, NIV). “I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4). “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

What does delight mean in Psalm 37?

Taking delight in the Lord means that our hearts truly find peace and fulfillment in Him. This world can never satisfy our deepest longings, but if we choose to delight in God’s way, He will always provide above and beyond our expectations.

What is Holy Ghost laughter?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Holy laughter is a term used within charismatic Christianity that describes a religious behaviour in which individuals spontaneously laugh during church meetings.

What does the Bible say about brokenhearted?

God was near us brokenhearted ones. … Psalm 147:3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted, and bind up their wounds.” Psalm 51, the most honest confession of personal sin in the Bible, ends with these words to God: “You will not despise this broken and crushed heart.”

What is the meaning behind Psalms 38?

The Psalm’s topic is God’s displeasure at sin. ( 1–11) and the psalmist’s sufferings and prayers. ( 12–22). The Psalm opens with a prayer, David felt as if he had been forgotten of his God. It then passes intermittently between complaint and hope.

What is the context of Psalm 37?

Psalm 37 is a response to the problem of evil, which the Old Testament often expresses as a question: why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer? The Psalm answers that the situation is only temporary. Catholicism sees, God will reverse things, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked here on earth.

What does the word delight mean in the Bible?

(Entry 1 of 2) 1 : a high degree of gratification or pleasure : joy children squealing in delight also : extreme satisfaction seems to take delight in the misfortunes of others. 2 : something that gives great pleasure her performance was a delight.

What does Psalm 13 say?


Additional language skills: italian (3 ECTS)

A.A. 2020/2021
Crediti massimi
Obiettivi formativi
Attaining the A2 level according to the he Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).
Risultati apprendimento attesi
Reading comprehension: reading very short and simple texts and find specific, predictable information in simple everyday material such as advertisements, menus and timetables; understanding short and simple personal letters.

Listening comprehension: understanding phrases and the most common words related to family, shopping, local geography; understanding the main elements in short, clear, simple messages and announcements.
Programma e organizzazione didattica

Edizione unica

- CFU: 3
Valutazione della lingua: 0 ore


Quick Answer: How Do I Know I’M Hungry?

What organ makes you feel hungry?

The body’s system for regulating food intake is coordinated by the hypothalamus, which is located under the midline of the brain, behind the eyes: Within the hypothalamus are nerve cells that, when activated, produce the sensation of hunger..

What causes excessive hunger?

How can I drop 20 pounds in a week?

Will I lose weight if I eat once a day?

Bottom line. Eating one meal a day may be a popular way to lose weight, but it’s likely not a good idea for overall health. Although fasting in general — including prolonged fasting — may benefit health in a number of ways, people can reach the same health benefits using much more sustainable methods.

Is it healthy to feel hungry?

Being hungry is good for the gut It varies between people, but between 24 and 48 hours is perfectly normal. If you eat therefore every couple of hours all day long, with the only break being for a few hours overnight, you gut is in a constant state of digestion.

Where do you feel hunger?

Hunger can be felt physically in our stomachs or we may notice other sensations. A good way to start tuning in to your hunger is by using a hunger scale and take notice of where you typically notice hunger and when you actually eat. You may experience light-headed/dizziness/faintness at a hunger level of 1-2.

What is your body telling you when you feel hungry?

How can I kill my appetite?

Here is a list of 18 science-based ways to reduce excessive hunger and appetite:Eat Enough Protein. … Opt for Fiber-Rich Foods. … Pick Solids Over Liquids. … Drink Coffee. … Fill Up on Water. … Eat Mindfully. … Indulge in Dark Chocolate. … Eat Some Ginger.More items…•

Can you ignore hunger?

So yes, it’s OK to ignore beginning signals of hunger such as low energy or a gurgling belly, but you definitely don’t want to get to the point where you’re so starved you’re lightheaded or nauseous, can’t concentrate, have a headache, or get hangry.

What is toxic hunger?

Our contention is that during the catabolic phase of the digestion and refeeding cycle, when digestive activities cease, these withdrawal symptoms, misperceived as “hunger”, develop from a diet that is inadequate or poor in micronutrients. We call these symptoms “toxic hunger”.

What does it feel like to be really hungry?

Physical hunger can be felt as “hunger” pangs in the stomach, but can also be felt as a headache, stomach pain, growling or gurgling, feeling “empty,” feeling dizzy, having trouble concentrating, feeling tired, weak, shaky or nauseous, feeling “hangry;” irritable, angry, cranky, or even thinking about food!

Will I lose weight if I stop eating for 3 days?

Which meal is best to skip?

Scientists have proven once-and-for-all it’s easier to lose weight if you eat breakfast and avoid late-night snacks. Subjects in the US study had lunch and dinner at the same times every day – 12:30pm and 5:45pm – but half had their third meal at 10pm, and the others at a more traditional breakfast time – 8am.

Can your stomach shrink from not eating?

Can I go 7 days without food?

How many days can you go without food?

What happens when you ignore hunger?

Ignoring your hunger sets your body up to physically rebel by making you focus only on eating and food. Your attempts to push down your hunger cause your brain to focus more and more on eating and food. Your body has one driving goal – survival. To survive your body must sleep, eat and drink water.

What happens when you’re hungry and don’t eat?

Your body will use stored glucose as energy and continue to function as though you’ll be eating again soon. After eight hours without eating, your body will begin to use stored fats for energy. Your body will continue to use stored fat to create energy throughout the remainder of your 24-hour fast.

Is it OK to go to bed hungry?

What does a 72 hour fast do to your body?

Clearly not eating for this long means your body will be dipping into its fat reserves, resulting in weight loss. But people claim a range of other benefits, including improvements to your immune system, giving your digestive tract a break, better blood-sugar regulation and reduction in inflammation.

How do I know if I’m hungry or bored?

How to tell whether you’re truly hungryHunger and thirst cues. The early signs of true hunger may include mild hunger pangs, a feeling of emptiness in your stomach, and stomach rumbling. … Do a mental check-in. Trust yourself to know how your body feels when you’re truly hungry. … Drink a glass of water.


Spread across STFC's Daresbury and Rutherford Laboratory sites, the CSED has a long pedigree of working in high-performance computing (HPC). The heart of our work is the development and application of powerful simulation codes, usually in collaboration with university research groups. Through our involvement in the Collaborative Computational Projects, we bring together leading UK expertise in key fields of computational research to tackle large-scale scientific software development. Our work spans a range of disciplines from quantum chemistry through to biology and engineering, allowing the latest techniques in HPC to be brought to bear in many different areas.

As well as developing our own codes, we also help others redesign their codes to run on the latest machines or take advantage of newly emerging technology such as FPGAs and co-processors. As supercomputing moves into the era of the petascale (systems running at around 1015 operations per second) we are actively engaged in research to understand the challenges that programming such massive machines will bring.

We are currently involved in both of the UK's major academic supercomputers, HPCx and HECToR. The 55 teraflop/s (one teraflop/s equals 1012 floating point operations per second) HECTOR machine provides the power to run the largest calculations, and we are looking at innovative ways to use the 12.9 teraflop/s HPCx as a complementary resource to Hector, taking advantage of emerging technology such as Grid computing or using it to drive large-scale visualizations.

To give a flavour of the kind of research that supercomputers enable, we here highlight two projects in which we are involved: one in climate modelling and the other in the development of quantum computing.

Modelling the Oceans
The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory Coastal Ocean Modelling System (POLCOMS) is a simulation code that has been designed to model the global marine environment. At its core, POLCOMS consists of a 3D hydrodynamic model that simulates the effects of pressure, density etc to provide the forces that drive the flow of water. POLCOMS is an interdisciplinary code, so the core can be integrated with other models such as ecosystem (phytoplankton, zooplankton etc) or wave models. Integrating the models or increasing the resolution of any of the components can increase the computational demands by factors of ten to forty, so extensive work has been carried out on the optimization and parallelization of POLCOMS.

Figure 1: Summer mean horizontal circulation around the UK averaged at mid-depth (20-40m) as calculated with POLCOMS.

Today POLCOMS can be run on thousands of processors on machines such as HECToR. Work is currently underway to enable POLCOMS to be run concurrently on multiple supercomputers, fully utilizing the total computing power available across the machines.

Recent studies carried out with POLCOMS have investigated the northwest European shelf seas. The study has been able to separate the model currents into those driven by winds, by changes in density and by the North Atlantic. The study has demonstrated that, contrary to previous thinking, the long-term circulation is actually driven by the smaller but directional density currents and not the stronger, variable winds.

Designing the Next Generation of Supercomputers
Quantum computing promises a revolution in the capabilities of computers, harnessing the bizarre properties of matter on a quantum scale to enable calculation rates that are inconceivable with the current computer designs.

The materials group within CSED has been investigating the spin interactions in carbon peapods, a novel material that holds promise as a component of a quantum computer.

Carbon peapods are carbon nanotubes containing tiny spherical balls of carbon known as fullerenes. Inserting a metal atom such as scandium into each fullerene introduces an unpaired electron that turns each fullerene into a tiny magnet capable of interacting with its neighbour. Each magnet can hold a qubit (the fundamental unit of quantum computing), so a chain of these magnets interacting together is a potential candidate for the core of a quantum computer.

Figure 2: Charge transfer in a Sc@C82@(14,7) peapod as calculated by DFT with CRYSTAL.

The calculations to model the spin interactions require the use of the computationally demanding density functional theory (DFT). As the carbon peapod system contains more than 600 atoms, this sort of calculation is intractable with standard codes on a conventional system.

The group has therefore been using the CRYSTAL code developed jointly by CSED and the University of Turin to run the calculations on 512 processors on HPCx. It is only by using the power of such large machines with codes like Crystal that these sorts of calculations become possible.

CSED: http://www.cse.scitech.ac.uk
HECTOR: http://www.hector.ac.uk
HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk
CRYSTAL: http://www.cse.scitech.ac.uk/cmg/
CRYSTAL POLCOMS: http://www.pol.ac.uk/home/research/polcoms

Please contact:
Richard Blake (Acting Director)
Computational Science and Engineering Department
Daresbury Laboratory, UK
E-mail: r.j.blake@dl.ac.uk

Next issue: April 2021
Special theme:
"Brain-Inspired Computing"
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How Can Anything Be Half-Alive?

By Doug Marman and Alan Rayner

(This article has also been published on

A new understanding of biology shows that life originates in a community and that individuality evolves when beings work together.

Cells that spawned all of life on our planet appear to have lived in hydrothermal vents. Image courtesy of NOAA.

Recently, we published a paper showing a new way of looking at the foundation of life: as a relationship between a lifeform and its habitat. If we use this lens, the origin of life suddenly makes a lot more sense.

Now here comes a new study that’s been reported in The NY Times,, The Christian Science Monitor, Independent and others, that identifies the genetic makeup of the cells from which all life on this planet descended. These mother cells are called the “Last Universal Common Ancestor” (LUCA). But the microbiologists who reported this news went on to say that it appears as if LUCA was only “half-alive.” How can anything be half-alive?

The scientists made this claim for a reason, because they see DNA as a building block of life. You see, a cell’s structure and function is dependent on proteins, and the genes in DNA guide the manufacturing of proteins. This allows a cell to build its own body. But LUCA was missing the genes needed to create crucial proteins. In other words, its genome was incomplete. So it appears that LUCA was dependent on its surroundings to supply the necessary materials.

Does this mean it was half-alive? No. All living things depend on their neighborhood, as we showed in our previous article. No lifeform is an island because life doesn’t belong to it alone. Living is a relationship—a continual give-and-take—between organisms and other living creatures in the world around them. This is why their bodies are porous and fluid. The expressions of other life forms nourish us, and the wastes and breaths we expel are food for others. Being alive is a shared experience.

The problem is that we don’t have a scientific explanation for what living is. And since we don’t understand how it works, we revert to old lenses. This is why many who study the origin of life look for cause-and-effect reactions learned from physics and chemistry, even though it’s clear that this approach falls short. Using the wrong lens, unfortunately, can also distort the picture.

Saying that LUCA was half-alive makes no sense. It’s like saying a woman with an unfertilized egg cell is half-pregnant and she becomes fully pregnant only when she gets the necessary ingredients from a sperm cell. That’s ridiculous. There is no such thing as being half-pregnant. There is no such thing as being half-alive. And there is no such thing as independent living because all creatures depend on others to thrive.

Complete independence would only be possible if a creature, by itself, created everything it needed to be alive. That’s impossible. Why? Because living means gathering and using energy, and nothing can create all of the energy it needs, by itself.

Where does energy come from? For life on Earth, our sun is the main source, but long ago the heat within our planet was also an important element. The molten core created deep sea ‘hydrothermal vents,’ and this is where LUCA appears to have survived.

However, this doesn’t tell us fundamentally where energy originates. To understand this, we can’t use the traditional physics that we learned from Isaac Newton, where external forces move lifeless matter. Instead, we must turn to quantum mechanics, which shows us that what physicists call ‘forces’ emerge from invisible, shared exchanges between ‘particles’.

Different types of relationships between particles lead to different types of energy.[1] For example, electricity and magnetism are the result of particles forming mutual one-on-one relationships with each other. Organisms display the same trait. Even we, as human beings, feel the power of attraction and repulsion when meeting people. We call it ‘chemistry’.

A second type of relationship leads to an attraction that pulls groups of particles to work together. The bodies of protons and neutrons are formed this way, when three quarks begin spinning as a unified group. And the bodies of atoms are held together by the attraction that emerges from the protons and neutrons that form the nucleus. Physicists call this the strong force. The same unification occurs with living things. We experience the added energy when people work together as a community. And the camaraderie we feel with co-workers is the same feeling of inclusiveness that pulls cells together to work as a body. This is why we see a relationship between living things and their habitats at the heart of every ecosystem.

Therefore, life is expressed through relationships.

All lifeforms live as members of a community. Painting by Alan Rayner.

This insight paints an inspiring new picture of how the first cells came into existence. There was never a time when ‘lone wolf’ bacteria lived in an empty, inert world because the world we live in is just as much alive with energy as we are. Our desire to live emerges from our relationships with a living environment. This means that the process of evolution is not something that happens to individuals—it is the community and their relationships that evolve.

Imagine being the only person in the world. You have no friends, family, or anyone to talk to. Would you ever want to develop a new business? Would you feel the need to learn how to read or write? Does it matter how much money you have?

Now think about what you look forward to when waking up in the morning. Isn’t your involvement with other living beings most important? Relationships are the medium of life.

Once we see that this is the essence of living, we have a new lens that reveals deeper truths behind the story of life.

For example, it helps us understand how life developed before genes existed. As we showed in our previous article, if you remove DNA from a cell, the cell will continue living for a while. It can’t reproduce, and it can’t replace or repair proteins, but it’s still alive. This proves that genes aren’t necessary for life to exist.

On the other hand, if you take DNA out of a cell—its habitat and home—it becomes a mere chemical compound. It doesn’t do anything special. In other words, DNA comes into life when it’s in the right ecosystem. If this is true, then this applies to all of the enzymes and proteins in a cell. That is why they respond to each other and the cell itself. They’re dynamic inhabitants of each other’s neighborhood and the shared space of the cell.

Where does the magic come from that pulls these molecules and atoms together to form a living organism? More than chemical actions and reactions are needed. A mutually inclusive relationship is required. This ‘quantum state’ is why cells work so closely together that they form our human bodies. It’s a natural phenomenon that emerges from group relationships when beings work for a common good.

According to quantum theory, these relationships can’t be explained by their individual components because they’re shared. When quantum particles become ‘entangled,’ an added dynamic exists between them that keeps them allied. This is why dissecting organisms will never show us how life works, because the shared exchanges in relationships are hidden from outsider eyes. Only those involved can feel the fluid cohesion aligning them.

We aren’t the source of our own life. We need oxygen, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, all supplied primarily by photosynthetic bacteria and plants, in meat, fruit, and vegetables. Other life forms die for us to live, just as the death of our bodies is food for other organisms. How could human beings ever evolve if these other life forms didn’t evolve first?

Even today, life thrives near hydrothermal vents. Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.

Biologists are right to say that the first proto-cells—the cells that were not yet able to fashion all the proteins they needed to make their bodies—were dependent on the world around them. If a hydrothermal vent was the source, they were tethered to that vent. They weren’t free to roam elsewhere. Therefore, life was restricted before the necessary genes developed. But this doesn’t mean these proto-cells were half-alive. We have more mobility as human beings today, but we’re just as reliant on our ecosystem. We’ve simply replaced our dependence on a static source of power and materials for dependence on a dynamic neighborhood of cellular life.

This leads us to a question that has stumped biologists: What gave rise to life before cells began to reproduce? In other words, why did living things start creating progeny in the first place? If being alive is the only objective, then why would proto-cells give birth to children? It didn’t help them persist as individuals. In fact, reproduction is an energy-demanding process that requires life forms to expose themselves to risk rather than seal themselves off from the outside world.

Biologists often turn to Darwinism to explain the mysteries of biological life, but this can’t explain what happened before reproduction began and genes existed. Darwin’s theories offer no help in understanding the meaning of life.

But if we accept that life is a relationship between living things and their habitat, then we can see what’s missing from the puzzle: Reproduction develops stronger communities. Remember, proto-cells couldn’t survive on their own. They weren’t foolish enough to believe that they lived independently. They belonged within their neighborhood, like a tree is rooted within the earth.

In other words, they didn’t struggle to preserve their individual lives. They were participating in a shared adventure with others. That is the story of the origin of biological life on Earth.

No wonder they risked their lives and spent their hard-won energy and resources to produce offspring, because this was the only way they could sustain and build the community they were living in. Helping their community helped them blossom as well, strengthening the mutual relationship

Think of human experiences. Do you feel better when you lie, steal, and think only of your own desires? Or do you feel more empowered and healthier when contributing to a purpose larger than yourself? Psychologists have shown that working for families, friends, communities, and companies leads to psychological growth and maturity. Selfish individuals actually de-evolve. They regress psychologically.[2]

Biologists see the same thing. Parasites devolve. They lose genes over time, making them more and more dependent on their hosts.[3] Their lives get smaller. That’s the outcome of selfish living.

This all makes sense if living is a relationship between an organism and its habitat. The source of a creature’s life is the community it lives in, even for humans that are free to move around the planet. The more we work to make a healthier ecosystem—to enrich the world—the more we feel life-energy flowing through us. The reason is because energy flows through mutually inclusive relationships.

Therefore, the origin of cellular life needed more than a source of energy. It also required a place where communities of mutually dependent proto-cells could survive for long periods of time. Yes, they needed the right chemical elements, but they also needed other partial life forms, and they needed millions of years. Only then, as they co-evolved their community, could they start making the genes that would one day allow them to roam freely and spread across the globe. Stronger communities, working together, produced genes that would eventually give cells the freedom and ability to roam.

This reveals a fascinating insight: Individuality evolves when beings work together.

Hydrothermal vents create millions of tiny spaces just right for proto-cells. Reproduced with permission from Deborah S. Kelley and the Oceanography Society (Oceanography, Dec. 2007).

It turns out that deep sea hydrothermal vents were perfect environments for the origin of biological life, because they create millions of small cavities, just right for proto-cells to inhabit. Each cavity was a room with a built-in energy supply, as the warm chemistry flowed through it from the molten core. More importantly, the environment could protect a growing community of genetically incomplete cells. And these vents existed for millions of years.

So the process of life began long before LUCA. Communities grew and evolved gradually over millions of years before giving birth to organisms with mobility. Cellular life then eventually found a way of making their homes in virtually every nook and cranny, from the driest to wettest and coldest to hottest places on the planet.

The simplest expressions of living are in communities. This is and always has been the heart of life. This is why we grow as individuals when we work for the world we live in. We need our habitat and our habitat needs us. It’s a shared relationship—a quantum condition that is invisible to outside observers. We must be involved in this mutual exchange of life or we can’t live in this world. That’s why there is no such thing as being half-alive.

[3] Marman, Lenses of Perception, p. 376-378.

From Yahoo Finance News

The Fundamental Building Block of Life Is Not DNA, It’s a Relationship, According to a New Scientific Study

RIDGEFIELD, Wash., July 26, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — All origin-of-life theories have a problem: explaining the gap between chemistry and living cells. A new paper by Doug Marman and Alan Rayner offers a solution by posing that the source of life isn’t DNA, proteins, or any other kind of substance, but the relationship between a life form and its environment. This is consistent with quantum physics, where entangled relationships between particles produce states that can’t be reduced. This creates a bridge between particles and organisms.

“It sounds strange that a relationship would be fundamental,” said Marman. “But quantum theory shows that fundamental particles need relationships to exist in this world. No particle is an island; they are also wave-like. Every biologist knows that the same thing is true for living things: they need their habitat to survive. If we accept this relationship as fundamental, it changes the story of the origin of life and what it means to be alive.”

For example, a cell can survive for a while if its DNA is removed. But DNA is inert, a mere chemical compound, on its own. Therefore, DNA is involved in the process of life only when it’s in the right environment, a living cell. The same thing is true for the proteins and enzymes in a cell.

“It’s a theory that challenges some fundamental assumptions most scientists have been holding,” says Jonathan Reams, associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who has been following the discussion between Marman and Rayner that led to their study. “They are at the early stages of exploring the implications of the theory, but what I think many will find interesting is that their insights offer new possibilities for how to address many challenges in society today. I would encourage readers to imagine how they could use this theory in their own work and life.”

About the Authors:

Doug Marman is author of the recently published book: Lenses of Perception: A Surprising New Look at the Origin of Life, the Laws of Nature, and Our Universe. He was Chief Technology Officer of a $1.7B division of General Electric, co-founder of an artificial intelligence business, and inventor with over 30 patents.

Alan Rayner is a biological scientist, a former Reader in Biology at the University of Bath, and the author of seven academic books. Since spring 2000, he has been pioneering ‘natural inclusionality,’ a new philosophy of ecological and evolutionary diversity and sustainability, based on how we naturally live in the world.

The Littlest Genome and the Question of Life

By Doug Marman and Alan Rayner

(This article has also been published on

In March 2016, a group of biologists led by Craig Venter announced the creation of ‘independently’ living cells with the smallest genome. Their announcement was hailed as a milestone. The big lesson learned by the biologists is that no one can explain why almost one-third of the genes are needed for survival. However, hidden in the subtext of this study, we believe, is an even more important lesson: The most essential ingredient of life may not actually be genes or a substance of any kind, but rather a relationship.

Image of the new freely-living cells with the smallest genome. Image by: Tom Deerinck and Mark Ellisman of the National Center for Imaging and Microscopy Research at the University of California at San Diego.

Let’s take a look at the experiment. The first thing you should know is that the new cells created by these biologists were NOT made from scratch. No one knows how to do that. Here’s what happened:

They started with bacteria that had the smallest genomes they could find. They began deactivating genes, one at a time, to see which ones were needed for survival. If the bacteria lived and kept reproducing, those genes weren’t necessary and were removed.

Progress was slow, but after many years the genome was reduced to half its original size. Every remaining gene has been tested. None can be eliminated. The biologists can explain what two-thirds of these genes do, but the other third remains a mystery. Their goal is now to identify the role of these mystery genes. They hope this will give them a blueprint of what is needed for living cells to survive as independent entities.

31% of the genes have an unknown function. Illustration by Thomas Shafee via Wikipedia.

But there’s more to the story. It turns out that many of the ‘unnecessary’ genes could only be deleted after supplying the petri dish with key nutrients and eliminating potential dangers. As a result, the new cells can no longer survive in the wild because they’ve lost the ability to hunt for food and avoid threats.

Is it fair to say that these are independently living cells? Don’t they need the biologists to feed them and remove their wastes? This is where the story gets interesting.

You see, the genomes of these cells may be tiny compared to other single-celled organisms, but they are still 200 times larger than the genomes of simple viruses. So they aren’t even close to the littlest genomes.

Outside of a cell, a virus shows no signs of life. Photo by Andrzej Pobiedzinski.

Viruses, however, are not considered independent life forms because they can’t survive outside a host cell. They need a host in which to live, and they need the genome of the host to reproduce. Viruses are nothing like the life forms that live outside of host organisms. That’s why the biologists wanted to study creatures that live on their own. But do they? Is true independent living even possible?

All organisms depend on their environment for energy, carbon, and mineral nutrients to grow and reproduce. No plant, animal, or microbe can survive without this supply. Cutting them off leaves them as inactive as a car without fuel. All biologists know this. But if we consider the implications of this deeply, it frames the question of life in a new way and it opens the door to a new explanation for how biological life may have emerged.

Trees create habitats that team with life. Painting by Alan Rayner, from Mycological Research, 102, 1441-1449.

For example, it shows that treating organisms as if they are self-contained entities, isolated from their neighborhood, is a profound mistake because life doesn’t belong to individuals alone. Life is a relationship between creatures and their environment.

We can’t separate life forms from the habitat they live in any more than we can remove our hearts from our bodies and expect them to keep beating without some external source of support. Organs stop functioning when they’re removed, just as we stop breathing if we’re taken out of the atmosphere created by other living organisms.

If this is right, then finding which genes are necessary for survival will not in itself explain how life works, because genes aren’t the cause.

Look at what happens when DNA or RNA are removed from cells. The cells can live on for a while, but DNA and RNA stop participating in life. They become inactive chemical compounds.

“Removed from the context of the cell, RNA does nothing functional in a biological sense.”[1]

But inside cells, DNA and RNA spring into life. Does this mean they are alive?

This doesn’t sound right if we think of life as something that belongs to individuals. Clearly DNA and RNA don’t possess life by themselves. But if life is a relationship between a life form and the world it is nourished by, then yes, DNA and RNA are involved in life when inside a cell.

This offers a new solution to the debate over viruses: Are they living organisms or just bits of inactive genetic material that activate when they’re in the right cells? Viruses show no signs of life outside of a host cell. But they truly do spring into life-as-a-relationship inside cells.

Seeds remain dormant until they are in the right habitat. Photo by Adyna

Seeds act the same way. If they land on fallow ground with no water, they remain dormant. They need a habitat that welcomes them, to develop.

Are seeds alive before the rain comes? If life is a dynamic, shared relationship between individuals and the world they live in, then we have good reason to say that while seeds are viable, as capsules of living potential, they do not truly come into life until they germinate.

Inactive existence, biologically, is completely different from thriving. The distinction between inert material and active living is the crucial mystery of life we are trying to understand. Seeing it as a relationship completes the picture.

For example, if genes become alive when they’re involved in the life of a living cell, the same can be said for all the other constituents of cellular life, not least the proteins whose two-way relationship with DNA is so central.

This opens a new door on the origin of life. Every day, biologists see the liveliness of enzymes, as they work for the benefit of the cells they belong to. Even atoms are involved, as seen by the way hydrogen moves through ‘proton pumps,’ guided by electrical charges, in a process that is necessary for the respiration of all organic life on planet Earth. In other words, life reaches all the way down, even to molecules and atoms, as long as they are in the right environment.

This shifts the puzzle of life to a new question: How do molecules act in such a directed way, as if they are following a plan? Physics and chemistry alone can’t explain it.

Some scientists propose that self-organizing, self-catalytic chemistry may be the key to explaining the origin of life, but this doesn’t get at the real problem. It doesn’t tell us how molecular reactions alone could ever create something with the ability to preserve life, find food, and avoid threats.

“Scientists don’t have any idea how chemical chain reactions could learn to change themselves or the world around them in order to survive… Why would a mixture of chemicals suddenly produce this behavior?”[2]

But what if cells move our muscles and keep our hearts pumping because they are devoted to us? We would then be the source of the plan they are following. The reason they dedicate themselves to us is because they depend on us. If we die, they die. Our survival is needed for their survival. And we are just as much in need of our cells and neurons to live. This is the relationship we are in. Living is a shared experience.

Which comes first? Photo by Subhadip Mukherjee.

Which comes first? Photo by Subhadip Mukherjee.

Looking at life this way seems enigmatic. It brings to mind the paradox of the chicken and the egg. In this case we have to ask: Which comes first, a nourishing environment or the forms that spring into life and embody it? But this isn’t a paradox, because relationships don’t need cause-and-effect. They are mutual. They don’t belong to one person or the other, but both together. Once we see life as a relationship, the puzzle is solved. Eggs and chicken need each other. They can’t live independently.

This also resolves the mind-body question that has been hounding philosophers for centuries: How do we control our bodies? We just answered that. Our cells do all the work. No life force needed. They move our bodies toward food, away from threats, and into the adventure of life around us, because our life is their world. We depend on each other. Life is only possible when mind and body work together.

Can we explain how this works scientifically? Yes, we only need to turn to quantum mechanics. We find the same principles at work in the subatomic world. There we see that the force of attraction that holds quarks together and forms the bodies of protons emerges from relationships between quarks. Invisible exchanges between quarks create a shared attraction, a bond. The quarks then stop moving as independent particles. They start spinning as one.[3]

Cross section of a Jasmine leaf clearly shows the cells working together as one organism. Photo by Krzysztof Szkurlatowski.

Doesn’t this sound like cells acting together as one body? And doesn’t the force of attraction between quarks remind us of the attraction we feel in relationships? Something invisible passes between us and others, pulling us together. Our lives then move in synchrony with each other.

This is the nature of relationships. They’re delicate, like the meaning of a poem hidden between its lines. You can’t pull them apart to see what makes them tick. Dissecting organisms will never explain this mystery. It will never reveal the secret because the relationship is essential.

All of this leads us to a strange conclusion: The relationship of life reaches all the way down to fundamental particles, as long as they are involved in the right environment. Does this mean that quarks are also dedicated to us because their lives depend on us? That makes no sense. Quarks may form the bodies of protons, but those protons will continue to survive after we die. Is it only our cells that are bound to us in this way?

No. The key to understanding this is that we are not talking about inert existence, we are talking about participating in the experience of life. This is the only reason that cells are involved in a relationship with us. They don’t just need to exist; they need to live. This is what reaches all the way down.

Looking at life this way seems to be circular, as if it can’t be the full story, until we find the right lens to see it clearly. The authors can attest to this. Both of us took different paths to arrive at this same understanding, but now that we see that relationships are fundamental and can’t be broken down, we see the validity of it everywhere.

We need to stop treating organisms and cells as if they’re machines made up of components driven by external forces. If that is the lens we use, we will never see life as it is or experience what it means to belong to a living world. We will see only the inertness of things. Molecules then become mere objects moved around by chemistry.

Mechanisms can’t help us understand the vitality of life. Quantum mechanics has come to a similar conclusion: Cause-and-effect can’t explain the behavior of subatomic particles. We believe this is the issue that has been clouding our understanding of life.

In fact, the parallels between quantum behavior and biological life seem too strong to be coincidental.

Bee and flowers. Photo by Bruno Schievano.

Bee and flowers. Photo by Bruno Schievano.

For example, one of the most fundamental principles of quantum mechanics is that it is impossible to calculate what an individual particle will do next. We can make good statistical guesses, but there is no way to know the actual outcome because it isn’t determined by external influences alone. Mechanical reactions are not the cause.

Don’t we see this same amazing behavior with organisms? Bees and flowers may lead symbiotic lives, but which flower will the bee choose next? No equation can tell us.

The quantum world is stranger than fiction. You might think that every electron is attracted to every proton because they have opposite charges, but this isn’t true. The attraction is completely unpredictable when you look at individual particles. This proves that attraction and repulsion between charged particles are not caused by the electromagnetic force. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Relationships are the true source of all electrical and magnetic phenomena.[4]

Doesn’t this have a striking resemblance to the attraction and repulsion that creatures experience with each other when they bond? We call it ‘chemistry,’ but we aren’t drawn to others because of an external force. It isn’t a mechanical reaction. Attraction emerges. When it’s a shared experience, we accept it as real. This is the nature of relationships.

‘Entanglement’ is another mystery of the quantum world. This is the term used to describe the strange alignment that can form between particles without any physical connection. For example, two entangled electrons will spin in opposite directions, no matter how far apart they might be. How do they know which way the other is spinning? How do they stay aligned? Physicists have no answer. They only know that this is a relationship that reaches across space, as if the electrons share one combined state—a state that is more than the sum of its parts.

This also happens to be one of the most startling qualities of living things: They are more than the sum of their cells and DNA. Organs work together as a single body, as a shared state. In other words, our cells stay aligned because they’re entangled with each other and with us.

Swallowtail butterfly in its natural habitat. Photo by Dale Eurenius.

Swallowtail butterfly in its natural habitat. Photo by Dale Eurenius.

This brings us to one of the characteristic marks of life: its nested relationships. Genes inhabit cells; cells participate in the life of multicellular organisms; organisms live in communities; communities thrive in ecosystems; and ecosystems work together like organs in the biosphere. At the quantum level, we find quarks combining to form the bodies of protons and neutrons, and those protons and neutrons bond to make atoms.

In fact, one of the oddest anomalies in physics takes this to the lowest level. According to quantum theory, fundamental particles such as quarks and electrons should be dimensionless points. But every test shows that they inhabit a volume in space. The only way to get their equations to give the right answers is to treat the bodies of quarks and electrons as if they are formed by a ‘cloud’ of invisible ‘virtual’ particles.[5]

Thus, in each sphere of life we find individuals ‘entangled’ with a world larger than themselves. And each individual is composed of smaller forms that make up their bodies. This is why we see the nesting of forms all the way down to the level of particles. It comes from the relationship we’ve been talking about, between living things and their environment.

The closer you study these forms, the more permeable their boundaries look, because they’re never isolated from each other or their surroundings. They are inescapably living within the influence of each other.

This is the companionship that we see and experience when we open up to nature. Once this relationship sinks in, it transforms the way we think about the evolution of natural diversity and the place of human beings in this story. It reveals the importance of living co-creatively, sustainably, and compassionately, because we are involved in life together.

“Essentially I think this understanding becomes possible as soon as we STOP thinking of ourselves and others as autonomous, free-willed objects subjected to external administration and judgement, and START thinking of ourselves and others as dynamic inhabitants and expressions of our natural neighbourhood, living within each other’s mutual influence…

“Underlying this move is a simple but fundamental shift in the way we perceive all natural, tangible phenomena, including ourselves…”[6]

Living things all have bodies that are dynamic and permeable for a reason: They’re continually sharing and exchanging with the environment. It’s an amazing relationship, a wonderful dance of give and take that shapes organisms and the world around them. This is what makes life so remarkable.

Looking at it this way, the question—what is life—suddenly takes on a radical new meaning.

[1] Pamela Lyon, “To Be or Not To Be: Where Is Self-Preservation in Evolutionary Theory?” in The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, p. 112.

[4] Ibid, p. 239-247.

[5] Ibid, p. 462-465.


Litigation Lawyers in Morgan City

It's essential to remember what purpose civil litigation in Morgan City, Louisiana is meant to serve. The purpose of civil litigation is not to punish people who have done wrong, or provide victims with some sort of moral vindication.

Common subjects of civil litigation in Morgan City, Louisiana

Virtually anything can be the subject of civil litigation in Morgan City, Louisiana. After all, a legal wrong can be committed in just about any situation imaginable. But, relatively few areas give rise to civil litigation most often in Morgan City, Louisiana.

Employment: The relationship between employers and employees leads to civil litigation in Morgan City, Louisiana with a good deal of frequency. For example, allegations of gender discrimination, failing to pay at least the minimum wage, and injuries suffered on the job can all lead to civil litigation.

Personal Injury: When someone is hurt due to the negligence (carelessness) of another, they typically have a legal right to seek compensation for their injuries. Civil litigation in Morgan City, Louisiana is the typically how people seek compensation for physical injuries, including compensation for medical bills, lost wages, and similar losses.

Family: Most of us know that families in Morgan City, Louisiana don't always get along perfectly. This potential for discord, typically involving disputes over child custody, distribution of property after divorce, or child support, can sometimes lead to civil litigation.

How Can a Morgan City, Louisiana Lawyer Help?

Civil litigation in Morgan City, Louisiana can get very difficult, and emotions can run high throughout the process. Furthermore, individuals are often faced with civil litigation when they least expect it.

So, it's always prudent to seek the counsel of a Morgan City, Louisiana lawyer who specialized in civil litigation, if it looks like you're going to be involved in civil litigation any time soon.


Litigation Lawyers in Sturgis

In Sturgis, Michigan, you should expect any form of commercial litigation to be expensive and perplexing. While large and sophisticated companies are well-equipped to deal with civil litigation, and are usually the ones facing it, civil litigation in Sturgis, Michigan can also arise between those who are not nearly as accustomed to handling it, such as individuals and small businesses.

Common Sources of Commercial Litigation in Sturgis, Michigan

Commercial Leases: Despite the rise of the Internet, and e-commerce, most businesses in Sturgis, Michigan still need a physical location to operate. This space is usually rented from another party, under terms laid out in a commercial lease. These leases can lead to disagreements, if one party breaks them, such as by failing to pay rent on time, failure to provide access to the property under the agreed-upon terms, etc.

Business Loans: Usually, when a business gets started in Sturgis, Michigan, it has to take out a loan from a financial institution. If the business fails to make timely payments on the loan, it's possible that litigation will result.

Breach of Contract: When a business or individual in Sturgis, Michigan promises another entity to provide a product or service in exchange for something of value (almost always, but not necessarily, money), they have entered a legally-binding agreement called a "contract." Both parties are now obligated to perform their commitments, as laid out in the agreement, and if one party fails to do so, the other can use commercial litigation to seek redress for any losses suffered as a result of this breach.

How Can a Sturgis, Michigan Commercial Litigation Lawyer Help?

A Sturgis, Michigan commercial litigation attorney can help you on that front. A reputable attorney can advise you of your legal options and commitments, to avoid litigation in the first place, and can provide you with the best possible chance of prevailing if commercial litigation does arise.


For thousands of years, the people who settled these islands lived in harmony with the world around them.

They studied stars and swells to find their way across oceans. The moon told them when to plant and when to give the land a rest. They knew when and where to rā‘ui the lagoon so fish could breed.

Total dependence on the environment meant listening to what the environment communicated. It meant always thinking about the future and having enough for days to come. It meant feeling gratitude for the land and sea that give life. There are people in the Cook Islands, and especially in the outer islands, who still pay attention. Others among us have become so disconnected that we don’t understand how much our impact matters.

We know that the pace of so-called progress is destroying the planet. According to a report backed by 1360 scientists from 95 countries, humans have put too much pressure on two-thirds of the world’s resources. Ninety per cent of fish stocks have been exploited beyond sustainable limits. The seas are warming up and fuelling bigger storms. Scientists expect all corals to be dead by 2050. Modern society is not treating its resources the way the people of these islands once did.

Nature is balanced and is always trying to be balanced. In nature, systems are circular. Plant and animal waste can break down into useful nutrients for other living things. Water from the oceans becomes vapour, then clouds, then rain, and then it returns to the oceans. Chemicals essential for life such as oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are circulated through natural systems. Our modern system is not a circle but a line, and it ends when we run out of resources.

Today the scientists are telling us what the people of this place have always known: If we don’t look after our environment, it won’t look after us. In this section we’ve combined the wisdom of the past and the technologies of today to show you how you can live in harmony with the world around you.

Akama’ara ‘ia ‘āpopo.

The climate is changing and it’s humanity’s fault. Most scientists agree that the world is getting warmer (and drier, and wetter, and colder, and stormier). Most also agree that modern society created, and continues to create, the problem.

When we travel, build cities, cut down trees, and produce food, we use energy. For most of modern history the energy has come from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, gas, and diesel, a process which releases greenhouse gases into the air. They’re called greenhouse gases because they behave like a huge greenhouse, trapping heat. In the simplest terms, we now have too much trapped heat.

Last year was the hottest year on record. Ice caps are melting. Seas are getting warmer and cyclones are getting more intense. Droughts are getting longer. Global warming isn’t just about warming; it’s about the climate becoming less predictable and extreme weather events becoming more extreme.

How does climate change impact the Cook Islands?

With funding provided through Climate Change Cook Islands, Dr. Teina Rongo and Celine Dyer were able to conduct surveys in the pa enua to better understand changes in weather patterns. People they interviewed reported:

    Shorter low tides (which means less time for fishing);

    Rougher seas and stronger currents (which means less new recruits of fish, and fishing is more expensive because         you need a powered boat);

   Buildup of sediment/sand in lagoons (and shallower lagoons warm up faster);

    Death of corals (even off Manuae, where no humans live!);

   New problems with pearl oysters;

    Saltwater creeping into taro patches;

    Trees fruiting in the off-season;

   Shifts in rainfall patterns (some islands experiencing more drought, others more rain); and

   Increasingly intense cyclones.

What’s Climate Change Cook Islands doing about it?

Dr. Rongo says that in order to know how to deal with changing weather, we need to pay attention. We need to understand natural rhythms so we can adapt to them.

“Our biggest focus is to reconnect our people back to the land because we’ve lost that connection,” he says. “The new generation has lost the connection to the environment and so it’s hard for them to understand some of these issues. Our children today, they’re not as connected to agriculture. We’ve been talking about reintroducing these activities into the schools. We used to do that, we used to have our own gardens so we started to appreciate the environment. Now our kids are less connected and you can imagine what’s going to happen in the future, when they become leaders, in terms of their decisions. They won’t be environmentally friendly because they don’t have that same appreciation.”

With the goal of reconnecting younger generations to the land, the team at Climate Change Cook Islands has, among other initiatives:

   Reintroduced traditional fishing practices in the pa enua;

    Encouraged fish feeding (using coconut to feed koperu and ature) on Mangaia;

   Provided fencing for vegetable gardens and training on Nassau;

    Encouraged piere production on Mitiaro (the dried banana lasts up to 30 years!);

   Encouraged planting and worm farming on Palmerston;

    Provided Manihiki and Pukapuka with hydroponics equipment to grow tomatoes and lettuce;

   Built a nursery on Tongareva;

    Taught pa enua communities how to bottle fish;

    Supported Rangi Mitaera-Johnson in her effort to teach every island community in the Cooks about eating local. (For more, see page 25).

What can you do?

    If you’re disconnected from the land, reconnect.

   Pay attention to cyclone warnings. Make sure you’re prepared.

    Tap into sources of energy you don’t have to burn, like energy created by the sun, wind, or waves.

   Eat less meat and dairy. The cattle industry produces enormous amounts of greenhouse gases and uses more water than any other industry. (For more about the connection between consuming factory-farmed animal products and climate change, see page 17).

   Buy local. Most industrial farms burn fossil fuels to produce chemical fertilisers; to pump, treat, and move huge amounts of water for animals and irrigating crops; and to process and package their foods. By supporting local food production, you are contributing to the solution.

Waste is something that is left over, no longer used or wanted, that must be disposed of in some way. Waste can be anything — food, garden rubbish, packaging and containers, clothing, furniture and appliances, anything. Waste also comes from our toilets, washing machines, showers, and sinks.

We have become a “throwaway” society and people do not necessarily realise where “away” is. “Away” might be the landfill, where rubbish is piled up and mixed; eventually it leaks toxic gases and liquids, polluting the waterways and the air. Landfills also become full and overflow and then new land is sought in order to dump more rubbish. Rarotonga’s current landfill was designed to be a solution until 2020. The outer islands have no landfills.

“Away” might also be waste that is not disposed of properly — left at the beach after a Sunday picnic, thrown out of the car after a ‘feed’, or driven up a valley and dumped illegally. This can end up polluting land, waterways, and the sea, directly affecting the health of animals, the environment, and us.

People also get rid of unwanted waste by burning it, a common practice here in the Cook Islands. Burning waste, especially plastic but even leaves and hedge clippings, releases harmful chemicals into the air, and adds to the greenhouse gas emissions affecting our climate. Burning plastics is also prohibited under Section 38 of the Public Health Act.

Waste from leaking septic tanks ends up in waterways, groundwater, and eventually the sea, carrying disease-causing bacteria which make animals and humans sick. Chemicals from household cleaning products or products used for personal hygiene end up in wastewater, which eventually upsets the natural chemical balance of ecosystems — interacting systems of living and non-living things — ultimately leading to breakdown and sometimes irreversible damage. We need not look far for an example of this; we need only to look at Muri lagoon.

Rethinking our current methods of waste disposal is the first step we need to take. Just because the item is no longer wanted, it does not mean that it is waste, that it is no longer useful or that there is not a better way to deal with the item. This is not so much a waste management crisis, but a crisis in individual responsibility. People need to accept responsibility for their own waste.

There are three basic principles to waste management, or “The Three R’s”: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The principle underlying them is changing the way we think about waste.

 Angelie Tiare Robinson

Grow your own food.

Take your own plate to the market.

Buy in bulk to reduce the amount of wrappers you’re purchasing

Stop using plastic straws.

Make your own:

Toothpaste — Mix 5 tbsp coconut oil + 5 tbsp baking soda (use mint to flavour)

Deodorant — Mix 1/4 cup cornstarch + 1/4 cup baking soda + 2 tbsp coconut oil

Drain cleaner — Mix 1/2 cup salt + 4 litres water + heat. For a stronger solution, pour ½ cup baking soda down the drain, then 1/2 cup vinegar.

Oven cleaner — Wet surfaces, then spread paste of 3/4 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup salt, and ¼ cup water over surfaces. Let sit overnight and remove with spatula in the morning.

Rust remover — Sprinkle salt, then squeeze lime over rust. Leave mixture on for 3 hours.

Toilet cleaner — Mix 1/4 cup baking soda + 1 cup vinegar, pour into toilet and let sit. Scrub with brush and rinse.

Window cleaner — Mix 2 tsp of white vinegar + 1 litre warm water. Use cloth to clean.

Tile cleaner — Rub in baking soda with damp sponge and rinse with water. For tougher stains, wipe surfaces with a tiny bit of vinegar first.

Though our current waste issues may seem daunting, there are practices that can be carried out by everyone and anyone in order to relieve some of our islands’ stresses. A couple of solutions to help combat our waste issues have been implemented by local environmental organisation Te Ipukarea Society, based on Rarotonga.

This has been a busy year for Te Ipukarea Society (TIS) in terms of waste management as we were successful in obtaining funds through the Global Environment Facility to tackle waste in several ways.

Biodegradable container promotion

With polystyrene (styrofoam) containers being used frequently for fast food and takeaways, TIS has begun an awareness raising campaign to promote the use of biodegradable and reusable containers. The Society has been able to source these containers, and also encourage local retailers and wholesalers to make the switch.

Worm farm and compost bin trainings

In support of the Ministry of Education’s Green Schools Policy, the Society has supplied a compost bin to all primary and high schools in the Cook Islands. Worm farms are also being provided to most high schools.

The Society provides training on how to build and set up a worm farm and compost bin. They also teach the correct way to “feed” the system, including what can and cannot be placed in the worm farms and compost bins.

The goal of this project is to promote alternative solutions to dealing with organic waste rather than just burning it or throwing it straight into the bin. Composting and worm farming generate useful things which can be used to help vegetable gardens grow.

Rent a plate

Another solution to container waste was a hygienic washing centre at popular sites. Te Ipukarea Society was able to assist a local school, Te Uki Ou Primary, in establishing a washing centre at the Muri Night Markets. With donations collected for every plate hired out, the school has now created a successful fundraising initiative.

No to burning rubbish

A common practice within the Cook Islands is to burn general rubbish, which commonly includes plastics. In hopes of discouraging this practice, TIS has created short advertising clips for local TV explaining the health hazards involved with burning plastics, along with highlighting the most appropriate ways to deal with and reduce plastic waste.

Waste management practices can be implemented around the globe. Every little bit helps; we can be the change we need!

 Alanna Matamaru Smith

The history of the toilet is really a history of how humans have attempted to solve the unavoidable problem of disposing of smelly and dangerous bodily waste.

Early on, our ancestors simply walked a good distance away from where they slept and ate. In the subsequent forty thousand years, a number of solutions, both simple and innovative, were developed. Digging a deep pit and then filling it in when it is nearly full is a neat and easy way of putting the waste out of sight and mind, but bacteria and viruses in the waste seep into the ground and then potentially into rivers, seas, and drinking water. That isn’t a problem if you are the only human for miles, but in crowded cities and on tiny islands, we need to find ways of treating the waste so that the pathogens are killed or removed. The ninth President of the United States, William Henry Harrison, is believed to have died after only 30 days in office after contracting enteric fever from the White House water supply which, at the time, was downstream from a public toilet.

There are also compounds in human waste that bacteria, algae, and other organisms feed off, which can create imbalances in the environment. You don’t need to look far for an example – one contender for the cause of the recent algae bloom in Muri is seepage from waste treatment installations.

Septic tanks are the commonest solution here in the Cook Islands, but they aren’t without their problems. Older septic systems crack and leak; installing a full new system that is compliant with all the Cook Islands’ regulations on human waste disposal is expensive.

Believe it or not, human waste is actually useful stuff and it doesn’t take much to turn it from a nuisance into a resource. It is a concentrated nutrient source for plants if properly treated and managed. Urine is usually sterile and can be used immediately on plants by mixing it with plenty of water first. It is possible to buy or build toilets that divert urine to a separate mixer tank that automatically adds water before it is spread via a hose onto the garden. Or, gents, you can simply pee on your banana trees!

For obvious reasons, faeces can’t be used on the garden immediately, but if you collect them in a chamber with plenty of ventilation and mix in carbon (usually in the form of sawdust), eventually the mixture will decompose, all the pathogens will die off, and you are left with compost that is as good for the garden as anything you can buy commercially. Despite the yuck factor, human waste-based compost is safe to use on food crops. Just don’t tell auntie how you managed to make those pawpaw you gave her grow so big.

Compost toilets are more work than your average flush loo. The compost chamber needs to be managed so that it has the right amount of moisture, and it can get infested with flies or other bugs. It also needs to be changed when it’s full, and the contents should be regularly turned – but these eco-friendly toilets are a great solution for a small island with no overall sewage system.Homes can install them at relatively low cost and even small resorts can use composting toilets if the owners are willing to put in the time and effort to keep them operating well. The resort my wife and I operate, Ikurangi Eco Retreat (www.ikurangi.com), uses four compost toilets and our guests often comment that, whether or not they had reservations at first, they forget it isn’t an ordinary flush toilet within a day.

 Matt Scowcroft

With only two public toilet facilities on the island of Aitutaki, one of which is currently not operational, the members of the Aitutaki Conservation Trust (ACT) saw an opportunity to provide much needed services for locals and tourists while also making positive environmental changes. They decided to install “Enviro Loos” which reduce pollution of the land and lagoon.

An Enviro Loo is a “dry sanitation system,” meaning it uses no chemicals, valuable water resources, or power. Instead waste is treated through a natural process of dehydration and evaporation, using wind and sun rather than electrical power. These toilets require minimal maintenance and servicing.

ACT’s first portable Enviro Loo was purchased in 2013 through the Community Initiatives Scheme. Set on a trailer, it became a portable facility that has been used for school sports days and picnics, family and church gatherings, night markets and Christmas celebrations.

While the Enviro Loo fulfilled community needs, its galvanised steel meant that it rusted quickly in the island’s high salt environment. The solution was simple – ACT asked the manufacturer if they could provide the same unit constructed from a more suitable material.

Two new portable units were recently purchased thanks to funding from Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme and Cook Islands Tourism Corporation. The new loos have been placed at the popular beach areas of Ootu Beach and Base One Beach. Both attract large numbers of visitors ranging from cruise ship tourists and lagoon tour operators to the Aitutaki Sailing Club and paddling associations. They are also a popular location for local community groups to camp overnight or hold picnics and events. Prior to the Enviro Loo, Base One had no toilet facilities.

Both units are portable and can be taken to evacuation sites in the event of a cyclone.

Future stages of the project will look at installing permanent composting toilets at the site of the current Enviro Loos. ACT also intends to purchase additional toilets to install at areas such as sports fields, wharf areas and if possible on each of the most frequently visited motu.

Says ACT’s Katrina Armstrong: “Aitutaki Conservation Trust are very grateful to the GEF Small Grants Programme, Cook Islands Tourism Corporation and especially to our community for their continued support of our projects, which aim to help protect our land, lagoon and culture, and for helping to ‘Keep Aitutaki Clean’”.

 Rachel Smith

Our Rarotonga tai roto, or lagoon, is a ta’onga tapu, apinga aro’a tapu, a sacred gift given to us by our tupuna to respect and take care of, and to pass on to our tamariki and future generations. How can we honour that commitment and fix the critical problem that now threatens our lagoon?

It starts with each and every one one of us doing our part. We must tread lightly on our lagoon in order to protect all the fish, shellfish, corals, seaweed, and other resources in it. We must make sure that spillage from our septic tanks doesn’t end up in the lagoon and runoff from agriculture does not pollute our lagoon with animal faeces and pesticides. How can we responsibly manage our wastewater on Rarotonga?

The government and the business community need to step up, especially those who own tourism accommodations. If they want to continue to reap the benefits of their investments, they must also take responsibility for protecting our precious resource.

Twenty-five years ago, before the huge influx of tourists to Rarotonga, Muri and the whole Rarotonga lagoon was pristine. Local people would catch fish, collect kai and shellfish, and harvest remu, seaweed, and matu rori to feed their families. Since about 2001, eating seafood from the lagoon has become too risky for people’s health, and the seafood supply has been greatly reduced. Also, black algal (seaweed) blooms have increased significantly, causing bad odours and unpleasant swimming conditions.

What happened? Over-development, ineffective waste treatment, lack of research and environmental management, insufficient financial and scientific resources, lack of education and understanding, and ineffective communication between all those involved have all played a role in the degradation of Muri lagoon. The lagoon has been polluted due to lack of responsible and informed resource management. We are now dealing with an environmental disaster.

Some claim that the situation is improving, but according to well qualified marine biologists, this is most likely a temporary condition that will further deteriorate in the near future. Addressing the consequence doesn’t work long term, we need to address the cause of the lagoon pollution.

What do we need to do?

Both polluted groundwater and raw or untreated sewage contribute to pollution of lagoons, so we first have to fix the source of pollution in Muri, then evaluate what further action is required. This also means getting resort owners to take responsibility and invest in effective wastewater treatment for their commercial properties, and getting Cook Islands government to provide the same for local residents.

We also need to learn from other Pacific Islands who have the same issues. For instance, Maunalua Bay in Honolulu, Hawai’i, has experienced the same problem, where macro-algal blooms and deterioration of the coral reef has been caused by watershed mud and pollutants being discharged into the bay.

At Tiahura in Moorea, increased numbers of tourists put pressure on the lagoon for many years, and the luxury hotels there were discharging sewage at midnight from pipes a few metres from the beach in the lagoon, hoping the water currents would take it away. Then 20 years ago scientists noticed that the reef was smothered with macro-algal blooms, caused by wastewater discharge from hotels. Australian marine biologist Dr. Eric Wolanski discovered that the water currents at sea were bringing the sewage back over the reef and the reef was getting overloaded by the sewage. The luxury hotels took no action, until a Qantas manager was told about the issue and phoned the hotels telling them he would stop sending Qantas customers to their hotels. That motivated the hotels to take action and fix the problem by secondary treating sewage, and then selling the water for golf courses. This has contributed to improved health of the lagoon and reef at Tiahura.

In March 2017, the Cook Islands government announced it will spend $70 million over a 10 year period to manage wastewater issues in Rarotonga and Aitutaki, with particular focus on the impact on our lagoons. The Wastewater Project Management Unit in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management (MFEM) is formulating a strategy to improve monitoring and scientists’ understanding of water quality issues in Rarotonga’s lagoon. There will be opportunities for the community to engage and workshops will be held at project milestones to provide opportunities for community input.

Let’s all come together and contribute to saving our lagoon before it’s too late.

Auē , te akaroa i ta tatou tamariki!

 Dr. Takiora Ingram

At Te Ara Museum in Muri are four large aquarium tanks.

One is pristine, noticeably cleaner than the others. Museum founder Stan Wolfgramm calls this the food tank because it contains species eaten locally — kina, rori, ariri. It’s clean because everything in it works together to vacuum and filter algae. The food tank is a window into what’s happening just beyond the shore.

“It was just a matter of figuring out what belongs and what doesn’t,” Wolfgramm said of creating a self-cleaning tank. “What we learnt is that the environment, if you leave it long enough, brings itself into balance.”

This is the basis of the rā‘ui – a concept that, for centuries, governed the way people interacted with their environment. The early Polynesians understood that taking care of an area or a resource means just letting it take care of itself sometimes. They understood that they had to strike a balance between using their resources and leaving them alone.

At regular meetings – uipā’anga rā‘ui – village leaders would plan for the months ahead, taking into account the breeding seasons, during which species needed space; special occasions or visits for which extra food would be required; and the likelihood of cyclones, after which resources would be scarce. Once they reached agreement, a chief would announce either a rā‘ui mutu kore – a permanent ban – or a rā‘ui ta tuatua – a ban that could be lifted when appropriate.

People honoured the rā‘ui out of understanding, but also out of fear. Breaking the ra’ui could get you sent out to sea in a canoe, beaten, kicked out of your village, or killed, according to Papa Ron Crocombe’s research. Today these punishments seem extreme, but in days before supermarkets, survival depended on a common respect for natural resources.

Rod Dixon wrote in a book called The Rahui that the Mangaians referred to their streams as kauvai toto , or bloodstreams. They saw the waterways as veins extending from the island’s heart — productive taro swamps in its centre. People saw the island as a body, a system in which all parts are connected. They understood that pressure on one part of the environment invariably affected another. If the bloodstreams weren’t kept clean, for instance, the blood couldn’t flow to the heart.

In the modern world, we have moved away from this holistic understanding of how the world works. Many of us don’t consider the interconnections—that chemicals on our plantations cause algal blooms in our lagoons, for example, or that if we kill all the sharks we’re destroying the ecosystems they regulate.

Some pa enua communities still strictly observe the rā‘ui, but for most of us, there was a shift somewhere along the way. When the Cook Islands started exporting crops for profit, planters started timing their harvests around shipping schedules instead of natural cycles. Chiefs were pressured to push for efficiency instead of balance. Chemical fertilisers and pesticides were introduced to encourage bigger, quicker yields. Food resources became profitable first and useful second. On Rarotonga, the rā‘ui was largely forgotten.

In the 90s, tourism authorities and traditional leaders who were concerned about the health of the lagoon joined together to re-institute the rā‘ui. They sourced funding to put signs up around Rarotonga and several on outer islands. Still, enforcement is tough. Today, the consequences of overusing our resources aren’t as immediate or as severe as they once were.

Now, no matter what’s happening in the oceans, we can still buy fish in a tin. If you ask Tupe Short, a traditional leader and planter from Matavera, convenience is making the world blind.

“We are selling the rights to our fish away for money,” he says. “Money can be spent in no time, and then when it’s all gone, what about our fish? We can’t eat money.”

Our bodies send us messages, like pain, when something isn’t right. Our environment does the same. Weird weather, algal blooms, bleached corals—they are signs of a system in distress. In the modern world, most of us tend to ignore the source of a health problem; we manage the pain with medication so we don’t have to think about what’s really going on. We do the same with the world around us.

We can only interpret the signs of the earth, sea, and sky if we’re paying attention, the way the Maori always did.

Scientists and civil society organisations worldwide are concerned about the impacts of deep sea mining (DSM) on the Pacific Ocean and the livelihoods of people living on islands. The people of the Cook Islands should be, too.

According to the government, within the Cook Islands EEZ the seabed has 10 billion tonnes of manganese nodules, containing manganese, nickel, copper, cobalt, and rare earth minerals. Companies are interested. The Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Act was adopted by Parliament in November 2009, and the Seabed Minerals Authority (SMA) was established by government in June 2012 to regulate deep seabed mining activities and manage licensing processes.

For the people of the Cook Islands, there are two areas of concern:

·       First, the impact of deep sea mining on our own marine environment;

·       Second, our liability as a country for implementing deep sea mining exploration licences in international waters of the mineral-rich Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ) in the northern Pacific, a 6km-deep undersea plane covering 4.5 million sq. km about halfway between Hawai’i and Mexico. Many Cook Islanders may not be aware that our government has claimed exploration rights to part of this zone.

It is important that some key issues are considered before we exploit our deep sea minerals.

What are the impacts?

There is agreement by international experts that deep seabed mining operations are likely to irreparably harm sensitive underwater ecosystems. We don’t yet understand how deep-ocean ecosystems change when impacted by human activities, and the consequences of these changes. High seas ecosystems are rich with life and diversity and deserve a high level of protection. We should not rush to exploit deep ocean habitats before they can be documented. Funding mechanisms should be established to fund research and conservation initiatives before we decide to exploit our ocean resources.

Currently, there is no regulatory oversight guiding DSM technology, which will likely raze the deep ocean floor and suck up all the minerals.

Who benefits?

Based on past experiences with land-based mining in Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and other countries, we know that very little financial benefit trickles down to the people. In addition, these mining operations have caused social unrest, violence, and environmental degradation in these island communities.

In the Cook Islands, revenue from DSM will be held in the Cook Islands Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) that government has established. As it stands now, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Management will make decisions about where the funds will be spent. What we need is an independent board made up of informed, responsible citizens and traditional leaders who can all contribute to these important decisions for management of the SWF.

The SPC’s Chief Geoscientist, Dr. Kifle Kahsai, said in 2014: “Historically, mining has negative connotations due to the risks of adverse social and environmental impacts, as well as poor mining revenue management associated with some land-based mining operations.” He also warned the Cook Islands government to make sure that revenues generated by seabed minerals improve the livelihoods of all Cook Islands people.

DSM in the High Seas

The Cook Islands government is eager to exploit habitats in the CCZ in the northern Pacific before scientists have a chance to explore and document these ecosystems. Little is known about the deep seabed, and no conclusive environmental study has yet been completed. What is known is that the life that thrives in this unusual environment is sulfur-based rather than oxygen-based, and we do not know how sulfuric discharge or slurry will impact ocean biodiversity.

In July 2014, the government-owned enterprise, Cook Islands Investment Corporation (CIIC), and GSR, a Belgian company, were granted an exploratory licence in the mineral-rich CCZ by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) to explore for polymetallic nodules in a reserved area in international waters. This exploratory licence is for an area of 75,000km², about two-thirds the size of New Zealand’s North Island. Our government claims that the Belgian company covered the application costs, and will cover all the exploration costs.

However, do we know anything about the Belgian mining company’s record with exploitation of mineral resources elsewhere in the world, and what does the company expect in return? What is the Cook Islands government giving away in exchange for this?

Our people have not been fully consulted on the risks and implications of DSM in international waters. What does this mean for local people and communities in terms of rights and responsibilities, especially if there is an environmental disaster in the CCZ, in international waters, or in the high seas? Who will be held liable? How can the Cook Islands plan for and mitigate this? What are the best strategies to communicate these complex issues to local communities?

DSM within the Cook Islands EEZ

While the Seabed Minerals Authority (SMA) has done some community consultation, it is not enough. People have been told about the likely billions of dollars of revenues, but not the possible environmental costs and liabilities. A legal expert from SPC made it clear in 2014 that in the case of any environmental disaster, the Cook Islands government, and therefore the Cook Islands people, will ultimately be responsible for any costs.

What is needed is an independent assessment of what local people and communities want, carried out by a team of both international and local experts, not conducted by the SMA.

Local people and communities need to be asked whether they want large, foreign, multinational companies exploiting these resources at the risk of our ocean environment and nation. What are the likely social and environmental impacts and challenges? Are we willing to commit our economic, environmental and social future to this risky venture, and should we be committing future generations to it also?

Our ancestors treaded softly on our environment and put our people first. Today’s decision-makers should do the same. We have traditional laws and protocols for managing the environment that must be respected by both government and foreign investors.

 Our government is promoting ocean conservation on the one hand, and on the other exploitation of ocean resources (both fisheries and DSM). It’s important that the Cook Islands people, not the government, make decisions about the management of our ocean resources. We should not allow government to sacrifice our people’s health, livelihoods, culture, and our marine environment for financial gain.

Let’s join with others around the world who are saying no to deep seabed mining before more is known about its impacts. In May 2017, many worldwide welcomed Apple’s commitment to no longer mine the deep ocean.

Let developed countries explore DSM in their waters, then watch what happens, and learn from their mistakes.

 Dr. Takiora Ingram

Reporter: Kia orana Noddy. What a great privilege to be able to meet you and get to know you better.  I realise there have been more people that have gone to space than have been to where you are from.

Noddy:  Kia orana. Yes, humans need some pretty advanced technology to reach us. We got some humans in the 70s and we’ve had sporadic visits since then. Now we hear the humans are interested again. Looks like a good number of us will be entering the oxygen atmosphere.

Reporter: Why do you think people are interested?

Noddy:  People are interested because we’re valuable. We’re nervous this time, though. The first visits were Exploratory — we and our home were being studied. Soon, the visits will be Exploitative.

Reporter: You sound concerned.

Noddy:  Well, there’s a lot going on in the ocean – it’s being affected by climate change and human-made pollution. What set of problems will be added to those when we are being moved from our environment? I mean, us nodules are a large part of our ecosystem and there are other species that we support just by existing. So when we are removed, there will be change at home. I still don’t know if that can be positive in any way. I’m told that my value has the possibility of improving many of the lives of people on land communities in my area. Of course I want to help improve the world, but am I the only beacon of help for these communities or are there other ways their lives can be improved, until the problems in the ocean are not as critical as they are now?

Reporter: So how do you think the humans should proceed?

Noddy:  Because we are such a unique environment, and one of the last frontiers explored, with new species being discovered as we speak, I would want research to continue on the deep seabed. I’d want humans to find out more about our area and how all species impact and interact with each other. I’d want them to demonstrate that they can make the changes necessary to stop polluting and contributing to the rate of climate change, so that I’d know they were serious. This shouldn’t be much to ask and expect. The benefits of deep sea nodule extraction should benefit all stakeholders, even the ones formed of minerals.  I mean, everything on this earth was put here for a reason and it should not only be looked upon for human gain only, right?

Teina Mackenzie


Mitochondrial diseases could be treated with gene therapy, study suggests

Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA. Credit: en.wikipedia.org

Researchers have developed a genome editing tool for the potential treatment of mitochondrial diseases: serious and often fatal conditions which affect 1 in 5,000 people.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, applied an experimental gene therapy treatment in mice, and were able to successfully target and eliminate the damaged DNA in mitochondria which causes the devastating conditions.

Their results, published in the journal Nature Medicine, could provide a practical route to treating patients with these diseases and may provide a future alternative to , or 'three-parent IVF'. This is the first time programmable genome engineering tools have been used inside a living animal, resulting in such significant modification of DNA.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses inside our cells, producing energy and carrying their own DNA. They are inherited from a person's mother via the egg, but if they are damaged, it can result in a serious mitochondrial . For example, MELAS Syndrome is a severe multi-system disorder causing progressive loss of mental and movement abilities, which usually becomes apparent in early childhood.

There are typically about 1000 copies of mitochondrial DNA per cell, and the percentage of these that are damaged, or mutated, will determine whether a person will suffer from mitochondrial disease or not. Usually, more than 60% of the mitochondrial DNA molecules in a cell need to be mutated for the disease to emerge, and the more mutated mitochondrial DNA a person has, the more severe their disease will be. Conversely, if the percentage of mutated DNA can be reduced, the disease could potentially be treated.

Mitochondrial diseases are currently incurable, although a new IVF technique of mitochondrial transfer gives families affected by mitochondrial disease the chance of having healthy children—removing affected mitochondria from an egg or embryo and replacing them with healthy ones from a donor.

"Mitochondrial replacement therapy is a promising approach to prevent transmission of mitochondrial diseases, however, as the vast majority of mitochondrial diseases have no family history, this approach might not actually reduce the proportion of mitochondrial disease in the population," said Dr. Payam Gammage, a postdoctoral researcher in the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, and the paper's first author.

"One idea for treating these devastating diseases is to reduce the amount of mutated mitochondrial DNA by selectively destroying the mutated DNA, and allowing healthy DNA to take its place," said Dr. Michal Minczuk, also from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mitochondrial Biology Unit, and the study's senior author.

To test an experimental gene therapy treatment, which has so far only been tested in human cells grown in petri dishes in a lab, the researchers used a mouse model of mitochondrial disease that has the same mutation as some human patients.

The gene therapy treatment, known as the mitochondrially targeted zinc finger-nuclease, or mtZFN, recognises and then eliminates the mutant mitochondrial DNA, based on the DNA sequence differences between healthy and mutant mitochondrial DNA. As cells generally maintain a stable number of mitochondrial DNA copies, the mutated copies that are eliminated are replaced with healthy copies, leading to a decrease in the mitochondrial mutation burden that results in improved mitochondrial function.

The treatment was delivered into the bloodstream of the mouse using a modified virus, which is then mostly taken up by heart cells. The researchers found that the treatment specifically eliminates the mutated mitochondrial DNA, and resulted in measures of heart metabolism improving.

Following on from these results, the researchers hope to take this gene therapy approach through clinical trials, in the hope of producing an effective for .

Explore further

How incurable mitochondrial diseases strike previously unaffected families

More information: Payam A. Gammage et al, Genome editing in mitochondria corrects a pathogenic mtDNA mutation in vivo, Nature Medicine (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41591-018-0165-9
Journal information: Nature Medicine

Citation: Mitochondrial diseases could be treated with gene therapy, study suggests (2018, September 24) retrieved 18 January 2021 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-mitochondrial-diseases-gene-therapy.html

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