Biotechnology News – Latest Headlines

NSF awards $1 million to improve the efficiency of DNA fabrication

The 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.

July 26, 2012 Read more

Hitting back at 'wiretapping' parasite

Dodder 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.

July 24, 2012 Read more

Behold, the artificial jellyfish

Researchers create moving model, using silicone polymer and heart muscle cells.

July 23, 2012 Read more

Researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism

A mammoth effort has produced a complete computational model of the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium, opening the door for biological computer-aided design.

July 21, 2012 Read more

Synthetic Biology Scorecard finds federal agencies responding to bioethics report

Federal 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.

July 18, 2012 Read more

Scientists place 500-million-year-old gene in modern organism

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.

July 11, 2012 Read more

Researchers find tobacco protein enhances crop immune systems

A 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.

July 11, 2012 Read more

Tracked step for step: ATP splitting in membrane protein dynamically measured for the first time

How a transport protein obtains its driving force from the energy storage molecule ATP, has been tracked dynamically by RUB researchers. Using time-resolved infrared spectroscopy, they measured the structural changes in the bacterial membrane protein MsbA and its interaction partner ATP.

July 11, 2012 Read more

Searching genomic data faster

Biologists' capacity for generating genomic data is increasing more rapidly than computing power. A new algorithm will help them keep up.

July 11, 2012 Read more

Waste to watts: Improving microbial fuel cells

Certain kinds of bacteria are adept at converting waste into useful energy. These microorganisms are presently being applied to the task, through an innovative technology known as a microbial fuel cell or MFC.

July 5, 2012 Read more