IEEE Spectrum September 25, 2018 Scientists have struggled to navigate the technology gap between microelectronics and the biological world. By engineering cells with synthetic biology components, a team of researchers in the US (University of Maryland, University of Nebraska, Army Research Laboratory) has experimentally demonstrated a proof-of-concept device enabling robust and reliable information exchanges between electrical and biological (molecular) domains. They are working to develop a novel biological memory device that can be written to and read from via either biological and/or electronic means. Such a device would function like a thumb drive or SD card, using molecular signals to […]
Tag Archives: Biotechnology
Graphene forms electrically charged crinkles
Science Daily June 27, 2018 Researcher at Brown University have discovered a new, curvature-localizing, subcritical buckling mode that produces shallow-kink corrugation in multi-layer graphene. Density functional theory analysis reveals the curvature that connects two regions of uniformly but oppositely sheared stacks of flat atomic sheets. The high polarization concentration, predicted by the model, can be controlled by macroscopic deformation and is expected to be useful in studies of selective graphene-surface functionalization for various applications… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
3D-printed smart gel that walks underwater, moves objects
Science Daily May 18, 2018 During the printing a walker, an international team of researchers (USA – Rutgers University, South Korea) projected light on a light-sensitive solution that becomes a gel. The hydrogel was placed in an electrolyte. Two thin wires applied electricity to trigger motion – walking forward, reversing course and grabbing and moving objects. The speed of the smart gel’s movement is controlled by changing its dimensions (thin is faster than thick), and the gel bends or changes shape depending on the strength of the salty water solution and electric field. It has applications in biomedical engineering and […]
E. coli tailored to convert plants into renewable chemicals
Science Daily May 18, 2018 Economically and efficiently converting tough plant matter, called lignin, has long been a stumbling block for wider use of the plant energy source and making it cost competitive. Piecing together mechanisms from other known lignin degraders, a team of researchers in the US (Sandia National Laboratory, Joint BioEnergy Institute, University of Minnesota, UC Berkeley) has engineered E. coli into an efficient and productive bioconversion cell factory… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
New carbon-dioxide-adsorbing crystals could form the basis of future biomedical materials that rely on the shape-memory effect
Science Daily April 27, 2018 The shape-memory effect in crystalline porous materials is poorly understood. An international team of researchers (Ireland, Japan, University of Southern Florida) reports the porous coordination network that exhibits a sorbate-induced shape-memory effect in which multiple sorbates, N2, CO2 and CO promote the effect. It exhibits three distinct phases: the as-synthesized α phase; a denser-activated β phase; and a shape-memory γ phase. Analysis of the structural information of the three phases helped them to understand structure-function relationships and propose crystal engineering principles for the design of more examples of shape-memory porous materials… read more. Open Access […]
Engineering a plastic-eating enzyme
Phys.org April 16, 2018 An international team of researchers (UK, USA – DOE NERL, University of South Florida, Brazil) engineered an enzyme that is even better at degrading the plastic than the one that evolved in nature. The enzyme can also degrade polyethylene furandicarboxylate, or PEF, a bio-based substitute for PET plastics that is being hailed as a replacement for glass beer bottles. The researchers are now working on improving the enzyme further to allow it to be used industrially to break down plastics in a fraction of the time. The discovery could result in a recycling solution for millions […]
Scientists breed bacteria that make tiny high-energy carbon rings
Science Daily April 6, 2018 Researchers at Caltech used directed evolution to evolve a new function in Escherichia coli bacteria, to produce a high-energy carbon compound, bicyclobutanes, a group of chemicals that contain four carbon atoms arranged so they form two triangles that share a side. The carbon rings are useful starting materials for creating other chemicals and materials… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Sugar-coated nanosheets developed to selectively target pathogens
Science Daily March 29, 2018 A team of researchers in the US (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, New York University) created the synthesized nanosheets out of self-assembling, bio-inspired polymers called peptoids. The sheets were designed to present simple sugars in a patterned way along their surfaces. Picking the right sugars to bind to the peptoid nanosheets, in the right distributions, can determine which pathogens will be drawn to them. They confirmed that the bindings with the targeted proteins were successful. The peptoid platform is rugged and stable, it can be deployed into the field for tests of bioagents by military personnel […]
Modified biomaterials self-assemble on temperature cues
Phys.org March 19, 2018 Post-translational modification of proteins is a strategy widely used in biological systems which has remained largely untapped for the synthesis of biomaterials. As a proof of concept of this technique, an international team of researchers (USA – Duke University, Germany) reports the generation of a family of three stimulus-responsive hybrid materials—fatty-acid-modified elastin-like polypeptides—using a one-pot recombinant expression and post-translational lipidation methodology. The hybrid approach allows researchers to control self-assembly more precisely, which may prove useful for a variety of biomedical applications from drug delivery to wound healing… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Personalizing wearable devices
Harvard University February 28, 2018 Researchers at Harvard University used Bayesian optimization to identify the peak and offset timing of hip extension assistance that minimizes the energy expenditure of walking with a textile-based wearable device. Optimal peak and offset timing represents an improvement of more than 60% on metabolic reduction compared with state-of-the-art devices that only assist hip extension. The results provide evidence for participant-specific metabolic distributions with respect to peak and offset timing and metabolic landscapes, lending support to the hypothesis that individualized control strategies can offer substantial benefits over fixed control strategies… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE Harvard researchers […]