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 […]

Chemists use DNA to build the world’s tiniest antenna

Nanowerk  January 10, 2022 Understanding the relationship between protein structural dynamics and function is crucial for both basic research and biotechnology. However, methods for studying the fast dynamics of structural changes are limited. Researchers in Canada have developed fluorescent nanoantennas as a spectroscopic technique to sense and report protein conformational changes through noncovalent dye-protein interactions. Using experiments and molecular simulations, they detected and characterized five distinct conformational states of intestinal alkaline phosphatase, including the transient enzyme–substrate complex. They explored the universality of the nanoantenna strategy with another model protein, Protein G and its interaction with antibodies, and demonstrated a rapid […]

Speeding up directed evolution of molecules in the lab

MIT News December 30, 2021 Evolution is commonly used to engineer proteins and RNA, but experimental constraints have limited the ability to reproducibly and reliably explore factors such as population diversity, the timing of environmental changes and chance on outcomes. Researchers at MIT have developed a robotic platform termed phage- and robotics-assisted near-continuous evolution (PRANCE) to comprehensively explore biomolecular evolution by performing phage-assisted continuous evolution in high-throughput. PRANCE implements an automated feedback control system that adjusts the stringency of selection in response to real-time measurements of each molecular activity. In evolving three distinct types of biomolecule, they found that evolution […]

New copper surface eliminates bacteria in just two minutes

Phys.org  December 13, 2021 The ions released from the metal’s surface are toxic to bacterial cells. But this process is slow when standard copper is used. Researchers in Australia used a special copper mold casting process to make the alloy, arranging copper and manganese atoms into specific formations. The manganese atoms were then removed from the alloy using dealloying leaving pure copper full of tiny microscale and nanoscale cavities in its surface. The resulting copper is composed of comb-like microscale cavities and within each tooth of the comb structure are much smaller nanoscale cavities; it has a massive active surface […]

The discovery of red blood cells acting as micro-electrodes opens new doors in medical research

Phys.org  October 8, 2021 Through intricate experiments with red blood cells an international team of researchers (UK, France) has shown that the voltage appears outside the cell as well. This means that cells effectively act as tiny transmitters, electrically changing the environment around them. Similar results in other types of biological cells could play a significant role in determining new types of medical treatment. They demonstrated that the electrical characteristics of red blood cells exhibit circadian rhythms with peaks coinciding with the time of day when most cardiovascular disease events occur, such as heart attacks and strokes, presenting an important […]

Scientists develop the ‘evotype’ to unlock power of evolution for better engineering biology

Phys.org  June 8, 2021 Researchers in the UK have developed the concept of the evotype to help biological engineers both harness, design, and capture the evolutionary potential of a biosystem. The evotype can be broken into three key parts: Variation, Function, and Selection, with each of these offering a tuning knob for bioengineers to control the possible paths available to evolution. Many of the tools already available to bioengineers fitted nicely into their framework when considered from an evolutionary perspective. Their concept of the evotype not only provides a means for developing biotechnologies that can harness evolution in new ways, […]