Press monitoring
Synthetic virus developed to deliver a new generation of medicines
2.9.2014 | Press monitoring
Researchers at the universities of Wageningen, Eindhoven, Leiden and Nijmegen have developed a synthetic virus. This can be used in the future to 'package' new generations of medicines consisting of large biomolecules and to deliver them into diseased cells, by a natural process. New types of medicines consist of large biomolecules such as DNA...
Synthesis produces new fungus-derived antibiotic
1.9.2014 | Press monitoring
A fortuitous collaboration at Rice University has led to the total synthesis of a recently discovered natural antibiotic. The laboratory recreation of a fungus-derived antibiotic, viridicatumtoxin B, may someday help bolster the fight against bacteria that evolve resistance to treatments in hospitals and clinics around the world. As part of the...
Taming of the bunny rewrote rabbit genome
29.8.2014 | Press monitoring
Pet rabbits will happily sit in their owner's lap, but wild rabbits are famously timid, fleeing at the slightest hint of a human, let alone a fox or hawk. This tolerance for human company was only bred into bunnies recently: about 1400 years ago in southern France. But it was not clear how this worked at the genetic level. Did domestication make...
New cancer-hunting nano-robots to seek and destroy tumours
28.8.2014 | Press monitoring
It sounds like a scene from a science fiction novel – an army of tiny weaponised robots travelling around a human body, hunting down malignant tumours and destroying them from within. But research in Nature Communications today from the University of California Davis Cancer Centre shows the prospect of that being a realistic scenario may not be...
Modified yeast makes opiates for the first time
27.8.2014 | Press monitoring
Severe pain? Reach for the yeast. Genetically engineered yeasts can now efficiently produce a range of opiates, including morphine and oxycodone. With growing anxieties about supplies of opium poppies, it could be just what the doctor ordered. Opiates are primarily used as painkillers and cough suppressants, and many of the most widely used...
New material could enhance fast, accurate DNA sequencing
26.8.2014 | Press monitoring
Gene-based personalized medicine has many possibilities for diagnosis and targeted therapy, but one big bottleneck: the expensive and time-consuming DNA-sequencing process. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found that nanopores in the material molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) could sequence DNA more accurately,...
Attack Ebola on a nanoscale
25.8.2014 | Press monitoring
The Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has claimed more than 900 lives since February and has infected thousands more. Countries such as Nigeria and Liberia have declared health emergencies. There is no known vaccine, treatment, or cure for Ebola, which is contracted through the bodily fluids of an infected person or animal. But that doesn't...
Single gene controls jet lag
22.8.2014 | Press monitoring
Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a gene that regulates sleep and wake rhythms. The discovery of the role of this gene, called Lhx1, provides scientists with a potential therapeutic target to help night-shift workers or jet lagged travelers adjust to time differences more quickly. The results, published in...
Do gut bacteria rule our minds?
21.8.2014 | Press monitoring
It sounds like science fiction, but it seems that bacteria within us—which outnumber our own cells about 100-fold—may very well be affecting both our cravings and moods to get us to eat what they want, and often are driving us toward obesity. In an article published this week in the journal BioEssays, researchers from UC San Francisco, Arizona...
Genetically engineered fruit flies could save crops
20.8.2014 | Press monitoring
Releasing genetically engineered fruit flies into the wild could prove to be a cheap, effective and environmentally friendly way of pest control according to scientists at the University of East Anglia and Oxitec Ltd. The Mediterranean fruit fly is a serious agricultural pest which causes extensive damage to crops. It is currently controlled by a...
