Press monitoring
Lab-grown cells make doping agent EPO and cure anaemia in mice
2.10.2017 | Press monitoring
Transplants grown from stem cells in the lab can help replenish the blood and have been used to cure anaemia in mice. The discovery could lead to treatments for people with anaemia caused by kidney disease. In the US, 30 million people have chronic kidney disease. Because the kidney makes erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that triggers the...
Genetically modified wheat used to make coeliac-friendly bread
29.9.2017 | Press monitoring
People forced to avoid gluten could soon have their bread (and cake) and eat it. Now there are strains of wheat that do not produce the forms of gluten that trigger a dangerous immune reaction in as many as 1 in 100 people. Because the new strains still contain some kinds of gluten, though, the wheat can still be used to bake bread. “It’s...
Fire ant venom might contain treatment for psoriasis
27.9.2017 | Press monitoring
One of the key culprits behind the painful sting of a fire ant could prove to be a key component in new creams to treat psoriasis, an auto-immune skin disease characterized by thickened red and itchy patches for which there is currently no cure. New research has found that a key compound in the creature's toxic venom can combat some of the...
Using synthetic biology for chlamydia vaccines
25.9.2017 | Press monitoring
A multidisciplinary scientific team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has made significant advances in developing a vaccine for chlamydia using synthetic biology, sponsored by a two-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. Chlamydia is the most common infectious sexually transmitted disease, caused by the gram-negative...
Video gamers tasked with helping develop new molecule for controlling CRISPR
22.9.2017 | Press monitoring
A few years ago, a team of researchers at Stanford University launched a video game called Eterna. The game was designed to harness the brain power of thousands of gamers, challenging them to design new chemical sequences of RNA. A new follow-up game has just been launched, and this time players are challenged to create a new RNA molecule that...
Poliovirus therapy induces immune responses against cancer
20.9.2017 | Press monitoring
An investigational therapy using modified poliovirus to attack cancer tumors appears to unleash the body's own capacity to fight malignancies by activating an inflammation process that counter's the ability of cancer cells to evade the immune system. Duke Cancer Institute researchers provide the first published insight into the workings of a...
Airline industry could fly thousands of miles on biofuel from a new promising feedstock
18.9.2017 | Press monitoring
A Boeing 747 burns one gallon of jet fuel each second. A recent analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois estimate that this aircraft could fly for 10 hours on bio-jet fuel produced on 54 acres of specially engineered sugarcane. Plants Engineered to Replace Oil in Sugarcane and Sweet Sorghum (PETROSS), funded by the Advanced...
Changing a flowers color with the CRISPR gene-editing tool
15.9.2017 | Press monitoring
It often takes years of careful cross-breeding for horticulturalists to turn flowers certain colors, but scientists can dig right in and change them at a genetic level much faster. Using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool, scientists have changed the flowers of the Japanese morning glory from its usual violet color to a pure white, by disrupting a...
Nanogenerators could turn our veins into blood flow power plants
13.9.2017 | Press monitoring
Humans have been harnessing the power of flowing water for thousands of years, but scaling the concept down to a size small enough to turn our veins into tiny power plants is something else altogether. Using principles similar to those deployed in large hydroelectric power plants, a team of Chinese researchers has developed a tiny nanogenerator...
First detailed decoding of complex finger millet genome
11.9.2017 | Press monitoring
Finger millet has two important properties: The grain is rich in important minerals and resistant towards drought and heat. Thanks to a novel combination of state-of-the-art technologies, researchers at the University of Zurich were able to decode the large and extremely complex genome of finger millet in high quality for the first time. This...
