Feature Channels: Biotech

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Switchgrass cultivated during a year of severe drought inhibited microbial fermentation and resulting biofuel production.

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Cms1 CRISPR Nuclease Available to Partners to Drive Crop Improvement

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Montmorillonite clays prevent uranium from precipitating from liquids, letting it travel with groundwater.

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LumaCyte, a Charlottesville, VA based biotechnology company, has joined NIIMBL, a Manufacturing USA institute sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

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Dale Eric Wurster, Ph.D., FAAPS, has been elected to serve as president-elect of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), a professional member-based organization of approximately 9,000 located in Arlington, VA. He will begin a three-year term on the AAPS Board of Directors (as president-elect, president, and immediate past president) in November of this year at the 2017 AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition in San Diego. The meeting anticipates an attendance of over 6,500 pharmaceutical scientists from around the world.

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Scientists at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus have developed a new method for fine-tuning the structure of rhodamine dyes, and can now create a colorful palette of fluorescent molecules.

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Leaders of the Center for Biorenewable Chemicals are proposing a new model for creating, applying and commercializing chemicals made from biomass. The model calls for identifying “bioprivileged molecules” that offer unique properties.

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Researchers have developed a photoacoustic imaging technique that uses lasers to create detailed ultrasound images in live animals. The method allows for complete internal body scans with enough resolution to see active organs, circulating cancer cells, and firing neural networks.

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A new “anatomic atlas” of how B cells – the immune system’s producer of antibodies – link up to form networks has been charted by researchers. This map will be an important resource for researchers and clinicians studying infectious diseases, the microbiome, vaccine responses, and tissue-specific immunity.

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Leica Microsystems is the first company in the US receiving FDA 510(k) clearance for the visualization of cerebrovascular blood flow in conjunction with fluorescein

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In humans, going just minutes without oxygen—such as during a heart attack or stroke—can cause devastating damage to the heart. Researchers looking to freshwater turtles to understand the mechanisms that protect them from heart damage after long hibernation periods will present their findings at the Physiological Bioenergetics: Mitochondria from Bench to Bedside conference in San Diego.

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How a protein BAF crosslinks the DNA to allow proper nuclear envelope reformation

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A new imaging technique helps UNC researchers study tiny, time-sensitive biological processes – the crucial underpinnings of human health and disease.

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A research team from Stony Brook University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a computational model explaining how certain molecules fold and bind together to grow and evolve from chemistry to biology.

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Researchers at IMBA - Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences - unveil novel mechanism for gene expression.

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A team of chemists has created a series of three-dimensional structures that take a step closer to resembling those found in nature. The work offers insights into how enzymes are properly assembled, or folded, which could enhance our understanding of a range of diseases that result from these misfolded proteins.

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Evolution has weeded out genetic variants associated with diseases for millennia and propagated genetic variants that protect against ailments, a comparative genetics study shows. But that good trend may have recently gone in reverse.

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Researchers at ETH Zurich, Empa and the Norwegian research institute SINTEF are pursuing a new approach to treating arthritis. This is based on a polysaccharide, a long-chain sugar molecule, originating from brown algae. When chemically modified, this "alginate" reduces oxidative stress, has an anti-inflammatory effect in cell culture tests and suppresses the immune reaction against cartilage cells, thereby combating the causes of arthritis. The research is, however, still in its infancy.

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A team of engineers has developed stretchable fuel cells that extract energy from sweat and are capable of powering electronics, such as LEDs and Bluetooth radios. The biofuel cells generate 10 times more power per surface area than any existing wearable biofuel cells. The devices could be used to power a range of wearable devices.

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Can a group of three single-celled, algae-like organisms produce high quantities of sugar just right for making biofuels? Laboratory results indicate that they can. Sandia National Laboratories is helping Bay Area-based HelioBioSys understand whether these cyanobacteria can be grown large scale.

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Portland, ME—Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) has confirmed today that the translocation of loon chicks from Maine to Massachusetts has resulted in at least one loon returning to its release lake. In its fifth year of a five-year initiative funded by the Ricketts Conservation Foundation, Restore the Call is the largest Common Loon conservation study ever conducted. Research efforts have focused in three key U.S. breeding population areas from the western mountains to the Atlantic seaboard.

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A new approach to optical imaging makes it possible to quickly and economically monitor multiple molecular interactions in a large area of living tissue – such as an organ or a small animal; technology that could have applications in medical diagnosis, guided surgery, or pre-clinical drug testing.

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Kathryn Hastie, staff scientist at The Scripps Research Institute, has spent the last decade studying how the deadly Lassa virus – which causes up to half a million cases of Lassa fever each year in West Africa – enters human cells via a cell surface receptor.

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UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute scholar Stefanie Brizuela has been selected by the Scientific Review Committee of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Undergraduate Scholarship Program (UGSP) as a UGSP Scholar. As a UGSP Scholar, Brizuela will receive a scholarship for qualified educational and living expenses up to $20,000 for the 2017-2018 academic year.

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New findings challenge existing dogma that neurons release fixed amounts of chemical signal at any one time and could have implications for brain disorders including Parkinson's and schizhophrenia.

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For the first time, scientists have shown that a female fruit fly’s pheromone signals can actually tell males how much energy her body has invested in egg production versus in storing away energy for her own survival. And it’s a signal that she can’t change in order to make herself more attractive.

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ECS OpenCon will be the Society’s first, large community event to discuss the future of how research is designed, shared, vetted, and disseminated, with the ultimate goal of making scientific progress faster. Featuring vocal advocates in the open movement, ECS OpenCon will examine the intersection of advances in research infrastructure, the researcher experience, funder mandates and policies, as well as the global shift that is happening in traditional scholarly communications.

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Southern Research’s Energy & Environment division (E&E) will participate as a subcontractor to WRI to provide renewable acrylonitrile -- the key raw material needed to produce the highest quality carbon fibers -- produced from biomass-derived second generation sugars.

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In June, TSA began conducting a series of proof-of-concept tests for new biometric fingerprint technology with assistance from S&T’s Biometrics Technology Engine and Apex Screening at Speed program.

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Researchers from the University of Delaware have joined a team from Western Sydney University in Australia to examine the addition of silicon to the soil in which plants are grown to help strengthen plants against potential predators.

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To determine why more aerobically fit individuals have better memories, scientists used magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), which measures the elasticity of organs, and found that fit individuals had a firmer, more elastic hippocampus—a region of the brain associated with memory.

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The University System of Maryland (USM) has named business innovator David W. Wise, MALD, as director of the Maryland Momentum Fund (MMF), a $25 million fund to support startups formed within the system’s 12 institutions and its incubators. He joined USM on July 24.

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After creating mutant Indian jumping ants with no sense of smell, HHMI Investigator Danny Reinberg and colleagues saw profound abnormalities in the ants’ behavior and brains. The results show that the sense of smell is fundamental to maintaining colony harmony.

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Iowa State's Anupam Sharma is running computer simulations to learn how owl wings manipulate air flow, pressure and turbulence to create silent flight. He and his partners hope their studies will produce practical ideas for making quiet aircraft and wind turbines.

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Now that science can determine a person’s racial and ethnic origins from a cheek swab, those devoted to ideas of racial “purity,” are employing methods of mind games and logic twists to support their beliefs despite facing evidence of their own multiracial heritage.

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When our cells’ acid-alkaline balance goes wrong, it can go wrong in a big way—think cancer and cystic fibrosis. New fluorescent probes make it easier to detect pH and sweetened the deal by adding sugar to his acid-sensitive probes, making them much friendlier to living tissue.

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A little-studied gene may explain how some liver cancer cells obtain the nutrition they need to proliferate, according to new research from the University of Maryland.

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Until recently, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing could only be used to manipulate DNA. In 2016, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers repurposed the technique to track RNA in live cells in a method called RNA-targeting Cas9. In a study published August 10 in Cell, the team took RCas9 a step further: they corrected molecular mistakes that lead to microsatellite repeat expansion diseases, which include a type of ALS and Huntington's disease.

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In Nature Biotechnology, an international team led by DOE Joint Genome Institute researchers has developed standards for the minimum metadata to be supplied with single amplified genomes (SAGs) and metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) submitted to public databases.

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Microbiome researchers Rob Knight, PhD, University of California San Diego, Jeffrey Gordon, MD, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Norman Pace, PhD, University of Colorado Boulder, will share this year’s Massry Prize, splitting the $200,000 honorarium. These researchers lead a field that works to produce a detailed understanding of microbiomes andand methods for manipulating them for the benefit of human and environmental health.

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Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York have developed the next step in microbial fuel cells (MFCs): a battery activated by spit that can be used in extreme conditions where normal batteries don’t function.

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A significant technological advance from the Monell Center now allows scientists to identify the complete set of genes in any type of taste receptor cell. The technology will help identify precisely how each cell carries out its specific function.

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Southern Research has been awarded two contracts from BARDA for nonclinical research services advancing the agency’s work to protect the U.S. against infectious disease and bio-terror threats.

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Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a set of tools to observe, monitor and quantify how misfolded proteins associated with Parkinson’s disease enter neurons in laboratory cultures and what happens to them once they’re inside.

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A new advance, published this week in the journal Biomicrofluidics, now offers the ability to construct vascularized tissue and mimic in vivo drug administration in 3-D bioprinted liver tissue. A truly international collaboration, with researchers affiliated with Chile, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Korea and the U.S., developed this relatively simple liver model to offer a more accurate system for drug toxicity testing.

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Georgia State University received $147 million in research funding in fiscal year 2017, setting a record for the sixth consecutive year.

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Genomic Observatories Metadatabase Will Assist Scientists Aiming to Study the Impact of Global Challenges Across Life on Earth

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The University of Delaware will lead an interdisciplinary team that has received a $6 million grant to probe how viruses impact microbes critical to our lives, from producing oxygen to growing food.

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One of the most potent toxins known acts by welding the two strands of the famous double helix together in a unique fashion which foils the standard repair mechanisms cells use to protect their DNA. A team of Vanderbilt University researchers have worked out the molecular details that explain how this bacterial toxin—yatakemycin (YTM)—kills cells by preventing DNA replication.