Press monitoring
Plant biosensor could help African farmers fight parasitic witchweed
14.10.2015 | Press monitoring
Engineering and biology professors at the University of Toronto have developed a new strategy for helping African farmers fight a parasitic plant that devastates crops. Plants in the genus Striga, also known as witchweed, act as parasites of other plants, tapping into their root systems and hijacking them for their own purposes. Though their...
DNA vaccine sterilizes mice, could lead to one-shot birth control
12.10.2015 | Press monitoring
Animal birth control could soon be just a shot away: A new injection makes male and female mice infertile by tricking their muscles into producing hormone-blocking antibodies. If the approach works in dogs and cats, researchers say, it could be used to neuter and spay pets and to control reproduction in feral animal populations. A similar...
Gene-editing record smashed in pigs
9.10.2015 | Press monitoring
For decades, scientists and doctors have dreamed of creating a steady supply of human organs for transplantation by growing them in pigs. But concerns about rejection by the human immune system and infection by viruses embedded in the pig genome have stymied research. Now, by modifying more than 60 genes in pig embryos — ten times more than have...
Phoenix effect: Resurrected proteins double their natural activity
7.10.2015 | Press monitoring
Denatured proteins often pile up to form toxic aggregates, which is the underlying reason for many illnesses such as Alzheimer, Parkinson and Huntington. Therefore the investigation of denaturation and renaturation mechanisms cannot be overestimated. In a new study, David Avnir, professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Vladimir...
An accessible approach to making a mini-brain
5.10.2015 | Press monitoring
Brown University researchers describe a relatively accessible method for making a working – though not thinking – sphere of central nervous system tissue. The advance could provide an inexpensive and easy-to-make 3-D testbed for biomedical research. If you need a working miniature brain — say for drug testing, to test neural tissue transplants,...
Real-time analysis of metabolic products
2.10.2015 | Press monitoring
Biologists at ETH Zurich have developed a method that, for the first time, makes it possible to measure concentration changes of several hundred metabolic products simultaneously and almost in real time. The technique could inspire basic biological research and the search for new pharmaceutical agents. Genomics, proteomics, metabolomics....
Scientists discover new system for human genome editing
30.9.2015 | Press monitoring
A team including the scientist who first harnessed the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 system for mammalian genome editing has now identified a different CRISPR system with the potential for even simpler and more precise genome engineering. In a study published in Cell, Feng Zhang and his colleagues at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the...
Deep-diving whales could hold answer for synthetic blood
28.9.2015 | Press monitoring
The ultra-stable properties of the proteins that allow deep-diving whales to remain active while holding their breath for up to two hours could help Rice University biochemist John Olson and his colleagues finish a 20-year quest to create lifesaving synthetic blood for human trauma patients. In a new study featured this week in the Journal of...
Building a biofuel-boosting Swiss Army knife
25.9.2015 | Press monitoring
Researchers at Michigan State University have built a molecular Swiss Army knife that streamlines the molecular machinery of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, making biofuels and other green chemical production from these organisms more viable. The team has done in a year what has taken millions of years to evolve. In the current...
DNA sequencing improved by slowing down
23.9.2015 | Press monitoring
EPFL scientists have developed a method that improves the accuracy of DNA sequencing up to a thousand times. The method, which uses nanopores to read individual nucleotides, paves the way for better - and cheaper - DNA sequencing. A powerful DNA sequencing method uses tiny, nano-sized pores that read DNA as it passes through. However, "nanopore...
