Biotechnology News – Latest Headlines

Bioinspired coating for medical devices repels blood and bacteria

Developed using FDA-approved materials, the coating prevented flowing blood from clotting in a large animal efficacy study.

October 12, 2014 Read more

An effective method making vaccines without the use of inactivated virus (w/video)

The results obtained in this joint research have demonstrated the effectiveness of a low toxicity based subunit vaccine on the use of particulate biomaterial, whose production is cheap and safe. As a result, a particulate vaccine against bluetongue virus, which causes considerable losses in sheep, was obtained.

October 10, 2014 Read more

Easy recipe to make bone and cartilage

The repair of large bone defects and damaged cartilage remains a significant clinical challenge, with current strategies unable to reliably generate the cells that make bone and cartilage. Now, researchers are able to produce such cells by exposing embryonic stem cells to a combination of small molecules, mimicking normal development. This strategy is easily scalable, offering great potential in bone and cartilage regenerative medicine.

October 7, 2014 Read more

Sorting stem cells

New technique allows scientists to identify populations of rare stem cells in bone marrow.

October 6, 2014 Read more

No need for water, enzymes are doing it for themselves

New research has challenged one of the key axioms in biology - that enzymes need water to function. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the development of new industrial catalysts for processing biodiesel.

October 6, 2014 Read more

A new way to extract bone-making cells from fat tissue

By sorting human fat tissue cells by their expression of a certain gene, scientists were able to retrieve a high yield of cells that showed an especially strong propensity to make bone tissue. With more refinement, the method could improve the ability of surgeons to speed bone healing.

October 6, 2014 Read more

Scientists develop barcoding tool for stem cells

A seven-year-project to develop a barcoding and tracking system for tissue stem cells has revealed previously unrecognized features of normal blood production: new data suggests, surprisingly, that the billions of blood cells that we produce each day are made not by blood stem cells, but rather their less pluripotent descendants, called progenitor cells.

October 5, 2014 Read more

'Programmable' antibiotic harnesses an enzyme to attack drug-resistant microbes

Conventional antibiotics are indiscriminate about what they kill, a trait that can lead to complications for patients and can contribute to the growing problems of antibiotic resistance. But a a 'programmable' antibiotic being developed at Rockefeller would selectively target only the bad bugs, particularly those harboring antibiotic resistance genes, and leave beneficial microbes alone.

October 5, 2014 Read more

Engineers use 3-D gaming gear to give eye-opening look at cells in action (w/video)

For hundreds of years biologists have studied cells through the lens of a microscope. With a little help from a team of engineers, these scientists could soon be donning 3-D glasses in a home-theater-like lab to take their own fantastic voyage into the petri dish.

October 3, 2014 Read more

RCas9: A programmable RNA editing tool

A powerful scientific tool for editing the DNA instructions in a genome can now also be applied to RNA as researchers have demonstrated a means by which the CRISPR/Cas9 protein complex can be programmed to recognize and cleave RNA at sequence-specific target sites.

October 3, 2014 Read more

New technology isolates tumor cells from blood to optimize cancer therapy

A team of bioengineers, molecular biologists, and clinicians used a novel rare cell-sorter to isolate breast cancer cells from the blood of patients, with the aim of identifying the most effective drugs to treat each individual tumor.

October 3, 2014 Read more

Safer than silver: antibacterial material made with algae

Consumers concerned about safety of silver ions in antibacterial and odor-free clothing will soon have a proven safe alternative thanks to ultra-thin thread and a substance found naturally in red algae.

September 30, 2014 Read more

Next-generation sequencer applications: Innovation to turn 'junk DNAs' into genetic markers

A series of the Next-Generation Sequencer (NGS) applications are being developed to utilize 'junk DNAs' as distinctive genetic analysis systems for crop species.

September 30, 2014 Read more

High-throughput cell-sorting method can separate 10 billion bacterial cells in 30 minutes

A mechanical engineer has developed a new, high-throughput method for sorting cells capable of separating 10 billion bacterial cells in 30 minutes. The finding has already proven useful for studying bacterial cells and microalgae, and could one day have direct applications for biomedical research and environmental science - basically any field in which a large quantity of microbial samples need to be processed.

September 26, 2014 Read more

Unlocking long-hidden mechanisms of plant cell division

Scientists present a detailed new model that for the first time proposes how plant cells precisely position a 'dynamic and complex' structure called a phragmoplast at the cell center during every division and how it directs cytokinesis.

September 25, 2014 Read more

DARPA awards $7.9M to build an artificial immune system

Scientists from both campuses of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been awarded a total of $7.9 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The two teams will build what is, in essence, an artificial immune system, comprising vast 'libraries' of different types of molecules from which will emerge individual compounds to detect or neutralize an array of biological and chemical threats.

September 24, 2014 Read more

Researchers combine mechanics with biology to make key discovery about communication between cells

When the body forms new tissues during the healing process, cells must be able to communicate with each other. For years, scientists believed this communication happened primarily through chemical signaling. Now researchers have found that another dimension - mechanical communication - is equally if not more crucial.

September 23, 2014 Read more

Recreating the stripe patterns found in animals by engineering synthetic gene networks

Scientists try to understand how networks of genes work together to create specific patterns like stripes. They have gone beyond studying individual networks and have created computational and synthetic mechanisms for a whole 'design space' of networks in the bacteria Escherichia coli.

September 23, 2014 Read more