Nature Biomedical Engineering June 11, 2018 In living organisms, naturally evolved sensors that constantly monitor and process environmental cues trigger corrective actions that enable the organisms to cope with changing conditions. This has inspired the biologists to construct synthetic living sensors and signaling pathways, by repurposing naturally occurring proteins and by designing molecular building blocks de novo, for customized diagnostics and therapeutics. In this Review, an international team of researchers (Switzerland, France) describe the biomedical applications of synthetic gene circuits in major disease areas and discuss how the first genetically engineered devices developed based on synthetic-biology principles made the leap from […]
Category Archives: Biomimetics
Proof of water wires motivated by a biological water channel
Science Daily April 26, 2018 Aquaporins are proteins that serve as water channels to regulate the flow of water across biological cell membranes; they remove excess salt and impurities in the body. An international team of researchers (France, USA- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cornell University) synthesized and studied the dynamics of a ring structure of the imidazole, a nitrogen-based organic compound, embedded in a supported lipid bilayer. They have shown that water exists in the imidazole water channel and the imidazole ring construct induces the water molecules to self-assemble into a highly oriented linear chain structure — dubbed “water wires.” The […]