MIT News October 7, 2020 Most flu vaccines consist of inactivated flu viruses coated with a protein called hemagglutinin (HA), which helps them bind to host cells. After vaccination, the immune system generates squadrons of antibodies which almost always bind to the head of the HA protein which mutates rapidly. Parts of the HA stem very rarely mutate. The immune system is intrinsically not good at seeing the conserved parts of these proteins, which if effectively targeted would elicit an antibody response that would neutralize multiple influenza types. A team of researchers in the US (MIT, Harvard University, industry) describe […]
Tag Archives: Biotechnology
Color-coded biosensor illuminates in real time how viruses attack hosts
Science Daily September 25, 2020 Researchers at the Colorado State University invented a biosensor that lights up blue when viral translation is happening, and green when normal host translation is happening, in single living cells. They have shown this host-attacking process, at the single-molecule level in living cells, and they have reproduced these behaviors in computational models. The models showed that both healthy human RNA and viral RNA fluctuate between states that actively express proteins and those that are silent. The combination of their sensors and computational analyses provide powerful tools to understand, predict, and control how future drugs might […]
Scientists Have Found a Molecule That Allows Bacteria to ‘Exhale’ Electricity
Science Alert September 27, 2020 At any given time, billions of the bacteria are buzzing with electricity beneath the seafloor. Using advanced microscopy techniques a team of researchers in the US (Yale University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) found that, stimulated by the electric field, the microbes assemble into dense biofilms, interlinked piles of hundreds of individual microbes, moving electrons through a single shared network. They found the “unique fingerprint” of each amino acid in the proteins that make up Geobacter’s signature nanowires. And when stimulated by an electric field, Geobacter produce a previously unknown kind of nanowire made of a […]
Insect wings inspire new ways to fight superbugs
EurekAlert August 18, 2020 New anti-bacterial surfaces are being developed, featuring different nanopatterns that mimic the deadly action of cicadas and dragonflies’ wings. In a review article an international team of researchers (Australia, Spain, USA – Ohio State University, UK) has detailed exactly how these patterns destroy bacteria – stretching, slicing, or tearing them apart. They point out that different species have wings that are better at killing some bacteria than others, the wing surfaces have different density, height, and diameter of the nanopillars. The nanostructured surfaces could be used in medical or industrial applications…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
‘Drawn-on-skin’ electronics offer breakthrough in wearable monitors
EurekAlert July 30, 2020 The existing wearable bioelectronics are susceptible to motion artifacts as they lack proper adhesion and conformal interfacing with the skin during motion. A team of researchers in the US (University of Houston, University of Chicago) has developed ultra-conformal Drawn-on-Skin (DoS) electronics as a new bioelectronic platform for on-demand multifunctional, motion artifact-free sensing. The devices are based on the Ag flakes/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (Ag-PEDOT:PSS) composite, poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) nanofibrils (P3HT-NF), and ion gel as the conductive, semiconducting, and dielectric inks, respectively. As a versatile platform, DoS electronics devices such as thin-film transistors, strain sensors, and electrophysiological sensors have been developed. It […]
Testing Chernobyl fungi as a radiation shield for astronauts
Phys.org July 27, 2020 Certain fungi thrive in high-radiation environments on Earth, such as the area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. These organisms appear to perform radiosynthesis using pigments known as melanin to convert gamma-radiation into chemical energy. A team of researchers in the US (University of North Carolina, Stanford University) cultivated a 1.7 mm think lawn of Cladosporium sphaerospermum of the melanized radiotrophic fungus and tested its capability to attenuate ionizing radiation on the International Space Station over a time of 30 days. They found that the radiation below the lawn was 2.17±0.35% lower compared to the negative […]
Seeing the invisible: Polarizer adjustments increase visibility of transparent objects
Phys.org May 19, 2020 In biological microscopy and X-ray imaging, many transparent objects or structures are difficult to observe due to their low absorption of light. Researchers in China have demonstrated that adjusting the polarizers can optically compute the spatial differentiation of the incident light field along different directions. They improved contrast by tuning a uniform constant background as a bias, creating a virtual light source that casts a shadow on the measured images. Based on this bias approach, they can distinguish the phase increases and decreases in light field distribution and quantify the optical thickness of observed objects with […]
Seeing Through Opaque Media
Technology.org May 12, 2020 While fluorescence microscopy can provide nano- to microscale resolution, the resolution decreases rapidly along with depth into biological tissue because most biological tissue is opaque. Researchers at Caltech have developed a method that utilizes the correlation between the dynamic speckle-encoded fluorescence and ultrasound-modulated light signal that originate from the same location within a sample. They imaged fluorescent targets with an improved resolution of ≤75 µm (versus a resolution of 1.3 mm with direct optical imaging) within a scattering medium with 17 ms decorrelation time. The new imaging modality paves the way for fluorescence imaging in highly scattering tissue in […]
Graphene underpins a new platform to selectively ID deadly strains of bacteria
Technology.org March 24, 2020 Point-of-care diagnostics that can reduce and/or prevent unneeded antibiotic prescriptions require highly specific probes with sensitive and accurate transducers that can be miniaturized and multiplexed, and that are easy to operate and cheap. Researchers at Boston College present several advances in the use of graphene field effect transistors (G-FET) including the first use of peptide probes to electrically detect antibiotic resistant bacteria in a highly specific manner. They have reduced the needed concentration for detection by employing dielectrophoresis which allows monitoring changes in the Dirac point due to individual bacterial cells. Rapid binding of bacterial cells […]
Modified plants to curb climate change
Science Daily January 21, 2020 Plants are capable of taking in nearly 123 gigatonnes through photosynthesis in a year. But humans release another ten gigatonnes of carbon dioxide into this cycle, mainly by burning fossil fuels such as crude oil and natural gas per year. By performing complex calculations an international team of researchers (Abu Dhabi, Germany) found by combining two different methods to modulate the metabolism of the plant cell it can be made to absorb five times more carbon dioxide than in the normal state. They plan to experiment with tobacco plants and thale cress which are both […]