Zebrafish are becoming more and more popular as a research model for human disease. Along with mice and humans, they are one of the most commonly studied animals in biomedical research.
To help stakeholders in government and business make smart decisions about the best types of land and local climates for planting bioenergy crops, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Argonne National Laboratory are using computational modeling to predict which counties could see increases in soil organic carbon from cultivation of crops for biofuels. The results are contributing to DOE’s third Billion-Ton report expected later this year.
The 2016 Billion-Ton Report, jointly released by the U.S. Department of Energy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, concludes that the United States has the potential to sustainably produce at least 1 billion dry tons of nonfood biomass resources annually by 2040.
Researchers funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have created a new type of tissue chip that can be more widely used for drug testing. Engineering the chips as a silk gel circumvents many of the problems with existing devices and could potentially be an implantable treatment itself.
A new study shows that the unique properties of graphene and graphene foam could one day be used to regenerate 3-dimensional tissues and organs for implantation into the human body.
Removing oxygen atoms is vital to turning biomass into biofuels. Scientists discovered how water interferes with two oxygen-removal paths by creating a highly stable intermediate that costs energy to move along the reaction path
Researchers developed an alternative fatty acid synthase (FAS) system in which enzymes from other organisms work with the native FAS in E. coli to improve the microbe’s capacity for chemical production.
Ionic liquids (ILs) prepare plant matter to be broken into its component sugars, which can be used in creating biofuels. However, the availability and high cost of petroleum-derived ILs pose challenges. Synthesizing new ILs directly from biomass “wastes” could help.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison's Chris Todd Hittinger and colleagues conclude in the July 6, 2016 edition of the journal Public Library of Science Genetics that the story of hybridization that produced the lager yeast is far more complex and potentially richer than first imagined.
Researchers look into the practice of alley cropping, planting long-term tree crops alongside short-term cash crops, for sustainability.
Researchers have developed an E. coli-based transport capsule designed to help next-generation vaccines do a more efficient and effective job than today’s immunizations. The research, described in a study published July 1 in the journal Science Advances, highlights the capsule’s success fighting pneumococcal disease, an infection that can result in pneumonia, sepsis, ear infections and meningitis.
Ideally, injectable or implantable medical devices should not only be small and electrically functional, they should be soft, like the body tissues with which they interact. Scientists from two UChicago labs set out to see if they could design a material with all three of those properties.
Scientists at Miami University and DOE’s Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory found that adding a specific nutrient stimulates the bacteria to transform nearby iron that, in turn, reduces the chromium to a much less mobile material.
The U.S. bioethanol industry depends largely on turning a certain sugar into the simple two-carbon alcohol, the biofuel ethanol. Researchers engineered a heat-loving microbe to produce not only ethanol, but also a range of other alcohols.
Researchers at IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have identified a protein that disperses chromosomes during cell division, as Nature reports.
Engineering graduate students, one of whom lost his hands to meningitis, design and build a foot-activated video game controller.
Johns Hopkins University engineering students working to develop a better suit to protect health care workers in Ebola outbreaks have developed prototypes for a more comfortable hood and face mask that make breathing easier, and for a battery-powered system that curbs humidity in the suit.
The mitochondria within a cell are small structures that play an outsized role. They convert oxygen and simple sugars into ATP, the cell’s source of energy, actions essential to metabolic pathways and a cell’s very survival. “Given the importance of mitochondria in human health, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying their ability to cope with protein-folding stress.
By studying the fruit fly, Kansas State University researchers have found a connection between a gene called clueless and genes that cause Parkinson's disease.
Scientists are getting closer to directly observing how and why water is essential to life as we know it.
Artist’s representation of how the silver nanoparticles are made. Animation: Rick Groleau Synthetic biologists at Harvard Medical School and Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have devised a new, more environmentally sustainable way to produce antimicrobial silver nanoparticles at the mesoscale using biological rather than inorganic chemical methods.
Scientists found that the electronic arrangement and the small molecular separation distances give bacterial pili an electrical conductivity comparable to that of copper, valuable insights for those interested in eventually constructing non-toxic, nanoscale sources of electricity.
A University of Arkansas chemistry professor has received a $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation to investigate a roadblock in the harvesting of biomass from perennial plants for the purpose of creating a source of renewable energy.
A model that predicts outbreaks of zoonotic diseases -- those originating in livestock or wildlife such as Ebola and Zika -- based on changes in climate, population growth and land use has been developed by a UCL-led team of researchers.
Tufts University microbiologist Cecilia A. Silva-Valenzuela, Ph.D., has been named one of ten Latin American Fellows in the Biomedical Sciences by The Pew Charitable Trusts. Working in Andy Camilli’s lab, she is studying the use of phages to help stop the spread of cholera.
A new study shows that increased demand for biomass for energy in Europe, through intensified use of existing forests, could lead to loss of biodiversity and high competition for wood between sectors, and proposes policies to help preserve biodiversity while also limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Once inside the human body, infectious microbes like Salmonella face a fluid situation. They live in a watery world, surrounded by liquid continually flowing over and abrading their cell surfaces--a property known as fluid shear.
A new UW-Madison analysis of a group of bacteria called Streptomyces reveals the way some strains of the microbe developed advanced abilities to tear up cellulose, and points out more efficient ways we might mimic those abilities to make fuel from otherwise unusable plant material.
Cheap cameras on drones can be used to measure environmental change which affects billions of people around the world, new research from the University of Exeter shows.
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute’s Swiss Light Source in Villigen, Switzerland, have developed a new design for X-ray spectrometers that eschews a commonly utilized component to lowers overall production costs and increase the efficiency of x-ray flux, which may lead to faster acquisition times for sample imaging and increased efficiency for the system. This is essential for biological samples which may be damaged by continued x-ray exposure.
Dr. Tim Anderson at Texas Biomedical Research Institute and Dr. Phil LoVerde at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio have been awarded a $3.5 million grant over the next five years by the National Institutes of Health to understand the genetic changes in the schistosome parasite that lead to drug resistance.
A new disposable battery that folds like an origami ninja star could power biosensors and other small devices for use in challenging field conditions, says an engineer at Binghamton University, State University of New York. Seokheun “Sean” Choi, assistant professor of computer and electrical engineering at Binghamton University, along with two of his students, developed the device, a microbial fuel cell that runs on the bacteria available in a few drops of dirty water. They report on their invention in a new paper published online in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.
To better understand the pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and develop more effective treatments, University of California San Diego researchers examined the Staph “pan-genome” — the genomes of 64 different strains that differ in where they live, the types of hosts they infect and their antibiotic resistance profiles. This effort, published June 6 by PNAS, places all Staph genes into one of two categories: the core genome or the dispensable genome.
Finding water in the desert is a relatively easy task for a species of moss that seems to flourish in even the most arid regions. That's according to a new study by a team of scientists and engineers who wanted to understand how Syntrichia caninervis succeeds despite its limited and inconsistent water supplies.
Cancer and Alzheimer's disease drugs target specific proteins, blocking or inhibiting their natural interactions, which may be in overdrive. The traditional drug design process typically assumes the protein shapes are static. But tradition turns out to be too limiting, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.
University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers are expanding the American Gut Project into Asia. The goal of American Gut, the world’s largest crowdfunded citizen science project, is to sequence as many human microbiomes — the unique collection of bacteria and other microbes that live in and on us — as possible.
A weedy plant found on the roadside in northern Australia has stems ripe for biofuel production. Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls at the University of Adelaide have discovered that a variety of sorghum growing wild in Australia, Arun, has the potential to yield over 10,000 litres of bioethanol per hectare per year.
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Jiri Hulcr, an assistant professor of forest resources and conservation at UF/IFAS, sees this conference as an opportunity for the UF/IFAS forest entomology team to disseminate innovative solutions to maintain tree health. “Exploring the use of biotechnology in tree health protection is important to us, because we are increasingly running out of other options,” he said.
The Danisco Foundation (Daniscos Fond) has selected the University of Chicago’s Juan de Pablo as the recipient of the DuPont Nutrition and Health Science and Excellence Medal 2016.
Chemical and biological engineers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have uncovered new insight into how the compound hydrogen peroxide decomposes. This advance, published this spring in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could inform efficient and cost-effective single-step strategies for producing hydrogen peroxide.
English ivy’s natural glue might hold the key to new approaches to wound healing, stronger armor for the military and maybe even cosmetics with better staying power.
Case Western Reserve University will open a new center designed to develop evaluation technology and set standards for testing and improving engineered cartilage that could one day replace a variety of prosthetic devices. Biology Professor Arnold Caplan and colleagues have received a 5-year, $6.7 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering to open and direct the Center for Multimodal Evaluation of Engineered Cartilage.
Jan-Michael Peters and Tim Clausen of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and Jürgen Knoblich of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) each receive an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council ERC. That means a success rate of 100 percent for the two institutes. Researchers at the Vienna Biocenter have received a total of 36 ERC-Grants so far.
Two years ago, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) researchers developed OpenMSI—the most advanced computational tool for analyzing and visualizing mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) data. Now, OpenMSI has been licensed to support ImaBiotech’s Multimaging™ technology in the field of pharmaceutical and cosmetic research and development.
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute have discovered that high levels of the protein p62 in human liver samples are strongly associated with cancer recurrence and reduced patient survival. In mice, they also found that p62 is required for liver cancer to form.
Currently, production of vaccines and diagnostic systems for infectious diseases have failed to provide a systematic vision that merges state-of-the-art technologies with industry to provide an effective commercial solution. Infectious and rapidly transmitted diseases, such as Ebola and influenza, should be a focus of interest for these prospects.
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of mortality among American men with the highest incidence rate of all cancers reported in the U.S. Research on this topic was presented at the AAPS National Biotechnology Conference.
A New Amp for 5G Cell Phones, New Ultrasound Method to Analyze Cancer Cells, Synthetic Heart Valves, Discovery of Rules for CRISPR Advance Metabolic Engineering and more in the Engineering News Source
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