Feature Channels: Biotech

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There is broad scientific interest in understanding the origin of the catalytic power of enzymes on a molecular level. While hypotheses have been put forward using experimental and computational approaches, they must be examined critically. In the Journal of Chemical Physics, researchers present a critical review of the dynamical concept—time-dependent coupling between protein conformational motions and chemical reactions—that explores all reasonable definitions of what does and does not qualify as a dynamical effect.

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Berkeley Lab scientists have engineered a strain of bacteria that enables a “one-pot” method for producing advanced biofuels from a slurry of pre-treated plant material. The achievement, described in a study to be published May 10 in Green Chemistry, is a critical step in making biofuels a viable competitor to fossil fuels.

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This week Argonne National Laboratory is releasing an updated version of its alternative fuels and advanced vehicles analysis tool to reflect the latest advances in alternative fuels and vehicle technologies and updated emissions data. The free, publicly-available tool provides users with a roadmap for assessing which types of vehicles and fuels are right for them.

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Erkki Ruoslahti and colleagues provide proof of principle for safe, targeted delivery of drugs to the placenta during pregnancy.

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Discovery provides proof of principle for safe, targeted delivery of drugs to the placenta to improve pregnancy outcomes

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A scientific team led by UWM physicists image a never-before-seen molecular reaction as a light-sensitive protein responds to light. The work, using an X-ray laser, is unmasking how proteins carry out the chemistry necessary for life.

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Missouri University of Science and Technology researchers are working to solve the problem of short-life of lithium-ion batteries like those used in laptops and cellphones, making them reliable and longer-lasting using a thin-film coating technique called atomic layer deposition (ALD).

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The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is pleased to announce that Scientific Director and Investigator Robert Krumlauf, Ph.D., has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original scientific research.

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Cell membranes stand up to significant amounts of stretching and bending, but only recently have scientists started to fully appreciate the useful organization and functions that result from all that stress. A multidisciplinary group working within the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is trying to recreate aspects of those broad design principles in synthetic systems comprised of simple membranes and complex fluids.

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 A team of chemical engineers at Penn State has developed a beneficial biofilm with the ability to prevent the biofouling of reverse osmosis (RO) membranes. The development may lead to more efficient membrane water filtration and purification processes around the globe.May 03, 2016UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A team of chemical engineers at Penn State has developed a beneficial biofilm with the ability to prevent the biofouling of reverse osmosis (RO) membranes.

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Scientists have successfully implanted a prosthesis that restores some central vision in patients with only limited peripheral vision remaining to them – the first time artificial and natural vision has ever been integrated in humans. The research is being presented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) this week in Seattle, Wash.

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Pinellas County a Model for Mosquito-Borne Disease Surveillance, Scientists Unravel the Genetic Evolution of Zika Virus, Worm Infection Counters Inflammatory Bowel Disease and more in the Infectious Diseases News Source

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How easily did life arise on Earth, how likely is it on other planets? A new experiment strongly supports the idea that very early life coding molecules, ancestors of RNA and DNA, arose in primordial puddles with relative ease and speed, and not necessarily just in rarer fiery cataclysms.

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A team at Kennesaw State University have developed a novel cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) technology capable of carrying other molecular “cargos” directly into living cells, coupling with them and then successfully uncoupling after delivering its payload. Cargos can be therapeutic molecules like antibodies that fight against parasites and diseases, or anti-cancer proteins.

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Thanks to combination antiretroviral therapies, many people with HIV can expect to live decades after being infected. Yet doctors have observed these patients often show signs of premature aging. Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center have applied a highly accurate biomarker to measure just how much HIV infection ages people at the cellular level — an average of almost five years.

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UMMS scientists develop multicolored labeling system to track genomic locations in live cells.

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Cancer is rarely the result of a single mutation in a single gene. Rather, tumors arise from the complex interplay between any number of mutually exclusive abnormal changes in the genome, the combinations of which can be unique to each individual patient. To better characterize the functional context of genomic variations in cancer, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the Broad Institute developed a new computer algorithm they call REVEALER.

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Dr. Sunil Hingorani, a member of the Clinical Research and Public Health Sciences divisions at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, will present recent groundbreaking developments in treating pancreas cancer with engineered T-cells at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2016 in New Orleans on April 16.

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A pair of papers from a UW-Madison geoscience lab shed light on a curious group of bacteria that use iron in much the same way that animals use oxygen: to soak up electrons during biochemical reactions. When organisms — whether bacteria or animal — oxidize carbohydrates, electrons must go somewhere.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have integrated biomedical data into Wikidata, a public, editable database where researchers can easily link genes, proteins and more.

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Mapping a city to detect Zika mosquito hotspots. Fashion accessories infused with a long-acting mosquito repellant. A special soap that keeps mosquitos away. Those are among the winning ideas from a Johns Hopkins University hackathon that drew participants from Baltimore to Brazil looking for ways to help prevent the spread of the Zika virus.

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Researchers and others interested in establishing a sustainable bioeconomy in the U.S. are taking part in a five-day study tour led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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Elizabeth Loboa, dean of the MU College of Engineering, and her team recently tested new methods to make the process of tissue engineering more cost effective and producible in larger quantities. Tissues could help patients suffering from wounds caused by diabetes and circulation disorders, patients in need of cartilage or bone repair and to women who have had mastectomies by replacing their breast tissue.

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Bioengineers determine textile manufacturing processes ideal for engineering tissues needed for organ and tissue repair.

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An Indiana University biologist is part of the world’s largest coordinated project on the study of evolutionary biology as the recipient of  $1.25 million from a foundation promoting the advancement of science and philosophy.

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University of Washington and Microsoft researchers have developed one of the first complete systems to store digital data in DNA -- allowing companies to store data that today would fill a Walmart supercenter in a space the size of a sugar cube.

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Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that causes seizures of many different types. Recent research from Japan has found that epileptic seizures can be more easily predicted by using an electrocardiogram to measure fluctuations in the heart rate than by measuring brain activity, because the monitoring device is easier to wear. By making more accurate predictions, it is possible to prevent injury or accident that may result from an epileptic seizure. This is a significant contribution toward the realization of a society where epileptic patients can live without worrying about sustaining injury from an unexpected seizure.

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In his new book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Clone Club,” international expert on the ethics of human cloning, Gregory Pence, explores issues raised in the sci-fi show “Orphan Black” about human cloning, its ethics and impact on personal identity, genetic enhancement, and other mysterious science. Pence takes a lighthearted look at cloning in popular culture and explains when the show gets the science right and when it doesn’t.

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The endangered southern resident killer whales of Puget Sound could soon get their own personal health records following a meeting of wildlife health experts being held March 28-29 in Seattle.

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To see JBEI biochemist Ee-Been Goh in the lab, figuring out how to rewire bacteria to produce biofuels, one would never guess she was once so uninterested in school that she barely made it through junior high. Goh has been lead author on two publications on methyl ketones, one of the most promising biofuels at JBEI.

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The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology will hold its annual meeting April 2 – 6 at the San Diego Convention Center. Below are the scientific symposia highlights.

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The American Association of Anatomists (AAA) is honored to announce its 2016 award winners. All awards will be presented during the Closing Awards Ceremony at AAA's 2016 annual meeting at Experimental Biology (EB) in San Diego, CA.

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A vital aspect of the structural characterization of biologic products is the identification of stability-indicating attributes and the development of well-characterized, robust methods for inclusion in the stability program.

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Farmers can use fewer resources to grow food.

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A method to rotate single particles, cells or organisms using acoustic waves in a microfluidic device will allow researchers to take three dimensional images with only a cell phone. Acoustic waves can move and position biological specimens along the x, y and z axes, but for the first time researchers at Penn State have used them to gently and safely rotate samples, a crucial capability in single-cell analysis, drug discovery and organism studies.

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Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have invented a “metastasis-on-a-chip” system believed to be one of the first laboratory models of cancer spreading from one 3D tissue to another. They hope the technology can one day be used to see how an individual patient’s tumor responds to potential treatments and to learn if and where the tumor is likely to spread.

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An engineering team at Washington University in St. Louis developed a cellular kill switch, a sensor that rewards hard working cells and eliminates their lazy counterparts. The high-tech engineering fix could help improve production of biofuels and pharmaceuticals.

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A team of Stanford Bio-X scientists developed the first technique for viewing cells and tissues in 3 dimensions under the skin -- the work could improve diagnosis and treatment for some forms of cancer and blindness.

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Wistar appoints new board member Cavan Redmond, accomplished biotech industry executive

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A team of investigators from Houston Methodist Research Institute may have transformed the treatment of metastatic triple negative breast cancer by creating the first drug to successfully eliminate lung metastases in mice. This landmark study appears today in Nature Biotechnology (early online edition).

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To draw lipids out of algae, scientists must starve the algae of nitrogen. Among the hundreds of proteins modulated by nitrogen starvation, the synthesis ROC40 was the most induced when the cells made the most oil. Such information is of great importance for the development of superior strains of algae for biofuel production.

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The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology announced Tuesday that Lila M. Gierasch, a distinguished faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will be the next editor in chief of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the nonprofit’s peer-reviewed journal.

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Jianlin Cheng has been in the business of protein structure prediction since before coming to the University of Missouri College of Engineering in 2007. And thanks to new funding from the National Institutes of Health, he’s looking at ways to take his research even further. Cheng, an associate professor of computer science, and his co-PI — John Tanner, professor of biochemistry at MU — recently received a four-year, $1.3 million grant from NIH (project number 2R01GM093123-05A1) to continue their research on integrated prediction and validation of protein structures.

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A University of Wisconsin-Madison spinoff is screening blood samples in an effort to develop a biologically based method to diagnose autism. The company, Stemina Biomarker Discovery, specializes in detecting the byproducts of cellular activity and then applying high-powered statistics to detect patterns among thousands of metabolites.

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Biopsies are a gold standard for definitively diagnosing diseases like cancer. Usually, doctors can only take 2-D snapshots of the tissue, and they're limited in their ability to measure the protein levels that might better explain a diagnosis. But now, researchers have developed a new method to acquire 3-D atlases of tissue that provide much more information, incorporating both data on the tissue structure and its molecular profile. They report their results in Biomicrofluidics.

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Athletes, the elderly and others who suffer from injuries and arthritis can lose cartilage and experience a lot of pain. Researchers are now reporting, however, that they have found a way to produce cartilage tissue by 3-D bioprinting an ink containing human cells, and they have successfully tested it in an in vivo mouse model. The researchers present their work at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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The ongoing debate about breast cancer diagnostics has left many women confused — particularly over what age they should get mammograms and who needs treatment. An issue with current methods is that they often identify lumps but cannot conclusively pinpoint which ones are cancerous. So, researchers have developed a pill that could improve imaging, lighting up only cancerous tumors. They report their work at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.

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Drug therapies for many conditions end up treating the whole body even when only one part needs it. But this generalized approach can hurt healthy cells, causing nasty side effects. To send drugs to specific disease locations, researchers developed cellular “backpacks” that are designed to carry a therapeutic cargo only to inflamed disease sites. The researchers present their work at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.