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Transhumanism in Politics
Transhumanism is a broad socio-political movement that promotes the integration of technology and genetic engineering into the human body in an effort to "enhance" the human condition to overcome human limitations. Transhumanism is both a idealogical view as well as a political movement associated with libertarian or leftist factions. The intent of these parties or movements is to promote biotransformative technology as a solution to enduring problems of humanity such as health and longevity, human conflict, enviromental degeneration, economic issues, and human integration. Transhumanists believe technologies such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), neural engineering, and cyborgization will allow humans to reconcile these deep-seeded problems. A broad spectrum of transhumanist ideals are gaining support as a general intellectual or political movement. Zoltan Istvan establised both the Transhumanist Party of the United States and the Transhumanist Party Global in 2014. The UK Transhumanist Party is the most established party and have been authoring a manifesto since 2015. Also, there a various other transhumanist parties across Europe as well as an European umbrella party EU-TP. Note: Expand on political and social aspects of transhumanism.

Directed Evolution
Directed evolution is the use of a more controlled setting than natural evolution can provide to select for phenotypes or traits that have medical or other uses. Microbes are commonly used in directed evolution techniques and can now be engineered at the systems level through various new technological developments. An example of directed evolution could be adaptive laboratory evolution experiments (ALE). In ALE, microbes are cultured and produce many generations under specific conditions to create an organism with desirable traits. Several studies have used ALE in combination with E. coli or yeast to improve biofuels and chemical yields. Directed evolution is also used on a smaller scale in terms of synthetic biology. In this sense, an experimenter is directly manipulating an organism on a molecular level usually dealing with protein function, enzymes, and even amino acids. Note: Find more material and studies on directed evolution at systems level and molecular level. Expand on techniques and technology used for these studies.

Directed Evolution Applications
Directed evolution of enzymes has been frequently used in recent years for medical and pharmaceutical use. A directed evolution bottleneck has become the most well suited process for genetically optimizing stereo- and/or regioselectivity starting from a wild-type enzyme. The most difficult part of this process is screening for enzyme variants with desired properties, but with new tools like SelFi (Selection Finder) new selection pathways can be constructed from a desired enzymatic product to a cellular host. Another recent advance in the field is computer-aided directed evolution of enzymes or CADEE. This program substantially reduces the process of preparing and analyzing in-silico computer-aided directed evolution of enzymes. In 2017, a study used directed evolution methods to increase the efficiency of the production of biodiesel from waste grease. The goal was to use directed evolution to select for an enzyme with a greater methanol tolerance. The study produced a mutant that has a 30% greater methanol tolerance than the original. Directed evolution can be used to select for desirable properties in molecular structures other than enzymes as well. In 2017, a study used directed evolution to select for virus capsids that displayed increased tropism toward an HIV-1 producer T-cell line. The goal of the study was to improve gene transfer vectors. Two mutants were produced that showed an increase in tropism toward the HIV-1 producer T-cell line.

Peer Articles Reviewed: Nancy A. Moran and Philopatry