EurekAlert January 6, 2020 Plants and microorganisms naturally biosynthesize chemicals that often are converted into derivatives with reduced toxicity or enhanced solubility. As a proof of principle, researchers in the UK used genetic engineering to program E. coli and cyanobacteria to make 1-octanol, a chemical currently used in perfumes, which is toxic to the bacteria. They then added an extra set of instructions to E. coli so it would produce two different derivatives of 1-octanol that are both less harmful. The researchers say if this were to be scaled up for industrial systems the engineered bacteria would produce the non-toxic […]
Category Archives: Biotechnology
Scientists make fundamental discovery to creating better crops
Phys.org July 22, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Wisconsin, DOE Joint Genome Institute, industry, France) has discovered the complex relationship plants have with mycorrhizal fungi. When they are united, the fungi form a sheath around plant roots with remarkable benefits. The fungal structure extends far from the plant host, increasing nutrient uptake and even communicating with other plants to “warn” of spreading pathogens and pests. In return, plants feed carbon to the fungus, which encourages its growth. The discovery could lead to the development of bioenergy and food crops that can […]
New gene editor harnesses jumping genes for precise DNA integration
Phys.org June 12, 2019 Researchers at Columbia University have developed a technology called INTEGRATE, which harnesses bacterial jumping genes to reliably insert any DNA sequence into the genome without cutting DNA. Rather than introduce DNA breaks and rely on the cell to repair the break, as done in CRISPR, INTEGRATE directly inserts a user-defined DNA sequence at a precise location in the genome. The technique should enable a vast range of new gene editing opportunities in biotechnology, gene and cell therapies, engineered crops, and biologics. The INTEGRATE technology offers a fresh new approach with the same programmability and ease of use […]
We Finally Have Found a Way to Convert Donor Blood Into a Universal Type
Science Alert June 12, 2019 Researchers have known that certain enzymes could remove the sugars from A, B, and AB blood cells, converting them into the more useful Type O. Among the genes encoded in their library of 19,500 expressed fosmids bearing gut bacterial DNA, researchers in Canada identified an enzyme pair that work in concert to efficiently convert the A antigen to the H antigen of O type blood 30 times more efficiently than any previously discovered enzyme. The next step would then be to test the enzyme in a clinical setting, which will help determine if the conversion […]
The extraordinary powers of bacteria visualized in real time
Science Daily May 23, 2019 The global spread of antibiotic resistance is a major public health issue. The spread of antibiotic resistance is for the most part due to the capacity of bacteria to exchange genetic material through a process known as bacterial conjugation. The ability of the bacterium to expel the antibiotic before it can exert its destructive effect using “efflux pumps” found on its membrane. Experimenting with E. Coli researchers in France have revealed that in just 1 to 2 hours, the single-stranded DNA fragment of the efflux pump was transformed into double-stranded DNA and then translated into […]
Scientists Have Found a Way to Preserve Vaccines Without Refrigeration For Months
Science Alert May 26, 2019 While other tactics have focused on reengineering the vaccines or modifying their vectors, new method invented by researchers in Canada is based on the simple addition of sugar. The viruses are mixed and then dried into a sugary film, created from a combination of two FDA-approved food preservatives, called pullulan and trehalose. Suspended in this solution, the vaccines can be transported without the need for constant cooling. To reactive them, local clinicians need only add water before administering them to patients, as fresh as if they came from a fridge. So far, the effectiveness has […]
Biosensor ‘bandage’ collects and analyzes sweat
Science Daily April 17, 2019 An international team of researchers (China, USA – Caltech, UC Davis) demonstrates a flexible and skin-mounted band that combines superhydrophobic-superhydrophilic microarrays with nanodendritic colorimetric biosensors toward in situ sweat sampling and analysis. On the superwettable bands, the superhydrophobic background could confine microdroplets into superhydrophilic microwells. The secreted sweat is repelled by the superhydrophobic silica coating and precisely collected and sampled onto the superhydrophilic micropatterns which provides an independent “vessel” toward cellphone-based sweat biodetection. Such wearable, superwettable band-based biosensors could significantly enhance epidemical sweat sampling in well-defined sites, holding promise for facile and noninvasive biofluids analysis…read […]
Bioengineers program cells as digital signal processors
Science Daily April 18, 2019 Through cooperative self-assembly, multivalent transcription factor complexes perform non-linear regulatory operations involved in cellular decision-making and signal processing. Using this principle, a team of researchers in the US (Rice University, BU, Brandeis University, MIT, Harvard University) shows that specifying strength and number of assembly subunits enables predictive tuning between linear and non-linear regulatory response for single- and multi-input circuits. They harnessed this capability to engineer circuits that perform dynamic filtering, enabling frequency-dependent decoding in cell populations. Programmable cooperative assembly provides a versatile way to tune nonlinearity of network connections, dramatically expanding the engineerable behaviors available […]
‘Biological bandage’ could help heal wounds
Nanowerk March 28, 2019 Fibrinogen is a blood protein which through self-organization process turns dissolved proteins into ultrafine fibers that then combine to form tissue. Researchers in Germany introduced a novel biofabrication technique to prepare three-dimensional, nanofibrous fibrinogen scaffolds by salt-induced self-assembly. They were able to fabricate either free-standing or immobilized fibrinogen scaffolds on demand by tailoring the underlying substrate material and adding a fixation and washing procedure after the fiber assembly. Thickness can be adjusted by altering the salt concentration. The possibility to choose between free-standing and immobilized scaffolds makes the process attractive for the preparation of versatile tissue […]
Capturing bacteria that eat and breathe electricity
Science Daily March 5, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (Washington State University, Montana State University) developed a battery-operated potentiostat that is capable of controlling the potential of a working electrode and can be deployed and operated remotely, allowing the enrichment of electrochemically active microorganisms on electrodes in their native environment. The device was tested in four alkaline hot springs with a temperature ranging from 45 οC to 91 οC and a relatively constant pH of 8.5–8.7. Analysis showed a change in microbial community structure after 32 days of polarization. The impact of polarization was most substantial on […]