Phys.org March 28, 2023 Sustainable energy conversion modules are the main challenges for building complex reaction cascades in artificial cells. Recent advances in biotechnology have enabled this sustainable energy supply, especially the adenosine triphosphate (ATP), by mimicking the organelles, which are the core structures for energy conversion in living cells. Three components are mainly shared by the artificial organelles: the membrane compartment separating the inner and outer parts, membrane proteins for proton translocation, and the molecular rotary machine for ATP synthesis. Depending on the initiation factors, they are further categorized into artificial mitochondrion and artificial chloroplasts, which use chemical nutrients […]
Category Archives: Biotechnology
Physicists model cell migration to learn how cancer cells navigate tissue
Phys.org January 5, 2023 To learn more about how cancer cells size up surrounding tissue for stiffness and adapt their gecko-like movements in response a team of researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute developed a multiscale chemo mechanical whole-cell theory for mesenchymal migration. They developed a framework that coupled the subcellular focal adhesion dynamics at the cell-substrate interface with the cellular cytoskeletal mechanics and the chemical signaling pathways involving Rho GTPase proteins. In the presence of stiffness gradients and absence of chemical polarization, the cell moved toward an optimally stiff region from softer regions during durotaxis and from stiffer regions during […]
Producing ‘green’ energy — literally — from living plant ‘bio-solar cells’
Science Daily December 13, 2022 Harvesting an electrical current from biological photosynthetic systems is typically achieved by immersion of the system into an electrolyte solution. Researchers in Israel used the thick water-preserving outer cuticle of the succulent Corpuscularia lehmannii serves as the electrochemical container, the inner water content as the electrolyte into which an iron anode and platinum cathode were introduced. They produced up to 20 μA/cm2 bias-free photocurrent. When 0.5 V bias was added to the iron anode, the current density increased ∼10-fold, and evolved hydrogen gas could be collected with a Faradaic efficiency of 2.1 and 3.5% in […]
Transforming bacterial cells into living artificial neural circuits
Phys.org November 14, 2022 Neuro-inspired models can transform synthetic gene circuit design in a manner that is reliable, efficient in resource utilization, and readily reconfigurable for different tasks. To this end, an international team of researchers (Israel, USA – MIT) has introduced the perceptgene, a perceptron that computes in the logarithmic domain, which enables efficient implementation of artificial neural networks in Escherichia coli cells. They successfully modified perceptgene parameters to create devices that encode a minimum, maximum, and average of analog inputs. With these devices, they created multi-layer perceptgene circuits that compute a soft majority function, perform an analog-to-digital conversion, […]
Research team follows nearly 8,000 paths towards better cell factories
Phys.org April 26, 2022 The inhibitory compounds found in hydrolysates in biomass substantially influence the performance of a cell factory and the economic feasibility of lignocellulosic biofuels and chemicals. Researchers in Sweden analyzed data on Saccharomyces cerevisiae mutants engineered for altered tolerance towards the most common inhibitors found in lignocellulosic hydrolysates: acetic acid, formic acid, furans, and phenolic compounds. The mutants included in the analysis had been shown to display increased or decreased tolerance to individual inhibitors or combinations of inhibitors found in lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Genetic engineering aimed at improving inhibitor or hydrolysate tolerance altered the specific growth rate or […]
Revolutionary tool could meet future pandemics with accelerated response
Nanowerk April 4, 2022 Researchers in Denmark have developed a technique to identify pharmaceutical agents at nano scale. The process involves using soap-like bubbles as nano-containers to integrate elements from diverse disciplines such as synthetic biochemistry, nanotechnology, DNA synthesis, combinational chemistry, and AI. According to the researchers more than 40,000 different molecules can be synthesized and analyzed within seven minutes in an area smaller than a pinhead, drastically reducing the number of materials, energy, and economic cost for pharmaceutical companies…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Engineering an ‘invisible cloak’ for bacteria to deliver drugs to tumors
Science Daily March 17, 2022 Researchers at Columbia University developed a genetically encoded microbial encapsulation system with tunable and dynamic expression of surface capsular polysaccharides that enhances systemic delivery. Based on a small RNA screen of capsular biosynthesis pathways, they constructed inducible synthetic gene circuits that regulate bacterial encapsulation in Escherichia coli Nissle 1917. These bacteria are capable of temporarily evading immune attack, whereas subsequent loss of encapsulation results in effective clearance in vivo. This dynamic delivery strategy enabled a ten-fold increase in maximum tolerated dose of bacteria and improved anti-tumor efficacy in murine models of cancer. In situ encapsulation […]
‘Fingerprint’ machine learning technique identifies different bacteria in seconds
Phys.org March 4, 2022 Researchers in South Korea have demonstrated a markedly simpler, faster, and effective route to classify signals of two common bacteria E. coli and S. epidermidis and their resident media without any separation procedures by using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) analysis boosted with a newly proposed deep learning model named dual-branch wide-kernel network (DualWKNet). With outstanding classification accuracies up to 98%, the synergistic combination of SERS and deep learning serves as an effective platform for “separation-free“ detection of bacteria in arbitrary media with short data acquisition times and small amounts of training data. Universal and fast bacterial […]
Bacteria Communicate Using Chemical Signals Comparable to Radio Waves
SciTech Daily January 31, 2022 Researchers at UCLA elucidated how bacteria communicate about the existence of a surface using a messenger molecule called cyclic diguanylate (c-di-GMP) signals which are analogous to, AM radio and FM radio which encodes signals by the number of oscillations in the wave over a given period. The signal acts like a knob. They identified three important factors that control the formation of biofilm: average levels of c-di-GMP, the frequency of oscillations in c-di-GMP levels, and the degree of cell movement on the surface where the biofilm is forming. According to the existing paradigm one input […]
Bone growth inspired ‘microrobots’ that can create their own bone
Science Daily January 17, 2022 Combining materials which together resemble the natural process of bone development an international team of researchers (Sweden, Japan) constructed a microrobot which can assume different shapes and change stiffness. They started with a gel material called alginate. On one side of the gel, they grew an electroactive polymer which changes its volume when a low voltage is applied, causing the microrobot to bend in a specified direction. On the other side of the gel, they attached biomolecules, that are important for bone development which allowed the soft gel material to harden. They demonstrated that the […]