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An international team of researchers led by computer scientist Pavel Pevzner, from the University of California, San Diego, have developed a new algorithm to sequence organisms' genomes from a single cell faster and more accurately.
Aug 10th, 2012
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Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a method of modeling, simultaneously, an organism's metabolism and its underlying gene expression. In the emerging field of systems biology, scientists model cellular behavior in order to understand how processes such as metabolism and gene expression relate to one another and bring about certain characteristics in the larger organism.
Aug 8th, 2012
Read moreGeorgia Tech researchers are focusing on ways to fight cancer by attacking defective genes before they are able to make proteins. John McDonald is studying micro RNAs (miRNAs), a class of small RNAs that interact with messenger RNAs (mRNAs) that have been linked to a number of diseases, including cancer. McDonald's lab placed two different miRNAs (MiR-7 and MiR-128) into ovarian cancer cells and watched how they affected the gene system.
Aug 7th, 2012
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Manuals for designing a synthetic promoter using the DNA CAD environment for Challenge A, as well as pointers for designing DNA sequences to introduce plant functions for Challenge B are now available from the GenoCon website.
Aug 7th, 2012
Read moreA team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen have developed a method to hinder unwanted toxins from entering the edible parts of plants such as the oilseed rape, which will make it suitable for animal feed.
Aug 5th, 2012
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Engineers design new proteins that can help control novel genetic circuits in cells.
Aug 3rd, 2012
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Researchers' findings address a scientific debate that had lasted for 16 years over the existence of a double-stranded DNA structure.
Aug 3rd, 2012
Read moreThe microbial community or microbiome that inhabits the rhizosphere and endosphere - the niches immediately surrounding and inside a plant's root?facilitates the shuttling of nutrients and information into and out of the roots within the soil matrix. These underground microbial activities have not received as much attention as the effort to characterize the role of the microbial populations inside and on the surfaces of humans, but this is now changing owing to a recent publication.
Aug 1st, 2012
Read moreIt's relatively easy to collect massive amounts of data on microbes. But the files are so large that it takes days to simply transmit them to other researchers and months to analyze once they are received. Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a new computational technique that relieves the logjam that these 'big data' issues create.
Aug 1st, 2012
Read moreThree related studies help uncover the rules governing gene transcription.
Aug 1st, 2012
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Beneath the surface of the earth, an influential community of microbes mingles with plant roots. In the first large-scale analysis of those communities, scientists have now catalogued and compared the hundreds of types of bacteria that associate with the roots of the model plant Arabidopsis under various conditions.
Aug 1st, 2012
Read moreThe National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a three-year $999,531 grant to Virginia Tech to optimize the laboratory processes used to make custom DNA molecules with the tools and methods of industrial engineering.
Jul 26th, 2012
Read moreDodder vines are parasitic plants that suck water, nutrients and information from other plants as they spread over them. Plant biologists at the University of California, Davis, have now shown that they can make plants resistant to dodder by attacking the junctions where the parasite taps into the host.
Jul 24th, 2012
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Researchers create moving model, using silicone polymer and heart muscle cells.
Jul 23rd, 2012
Read moreA mammoth effort has produced a complete computational model of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, opening the door for biological computer-aided design.
Jul 21st, 2012
Read moreFederal agencies have started taking steps to address the recommendations in a 2010 report from the presidential bioethics commission to improve the governance of synthetic biology research and development, though the government has not fully addressed any of the report recommendations, according to a scorecard tracking the efforts.
Jul 18th, 2012
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It's a project 500 million years in the making. Only this time, instead of playing on a movie screen in Jurassic Park, it?s happening in a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Jul 11th, 2012
Read moreA study led by Associate Prof. Kenji Nakahara at Hokkaido University in Japan has found a component in tobacco that makes crop immune systems more resistant to viral attacks.
Jul 11th, 2012
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