Genetics & Molecular Biology
Synthetic biology uses genes as interchangeable parts to design cellular circuits that can perform new functions, such as sensing environmental conditions. But their complexity is limited by a critical bottleneck: the difficulty in assembling genetic components that don't interfere with each other.
Unlike electronic circuits on a silicon chip, biological circuits inside a cell cannot be physically isolated from one another. Because all the cellular machinery for reading genes and synthesizing proteins is jumbled together, researchers have to be careful that proteins that control one part of…
Biotechnology is not all about foods only. There is much more in store for future of mankind.
Even if we may or may not like Agricultural Biotechnology which is estimated to be $6 billion market (2005), including applications such as: Pest-resistant plants, Higher protein&vitamin content in foods,drugs developed and grown as plant products, drought-resistant, cold-tolerant, and higher-yielding crops biotechnology is going to stay and grow.
Medical Applications
Medical applications of biotech include preventative, diagnostic,…
Five percent of men are affected by infertility and some new insights into sperms' swimming skills could shed light on why.
In a new study, researchers have shown how a protein called RABL2 affects the length of sperm tails, crippling their motility (or swimming ability), and decreases sperm production. In laboratory tests, the team found that a mutation in RABL2 resulted in sperm tails that were 17 per cent shorter than normal. Dysfunctioning RABL2 also negatively affected sperm production, resulting in a 50 per cent decrease.
"The mutations in the RABL2 gene are very likely to cause…
The European Food Safety Authority has weighed in with its assessment of the maize study by Gilles-Eric Séralini and his research team at France’s University of the Caen, which purportedly showed that rodents fed a strain of genetically modified corn with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready developed tumors and died.
Scientists have been almost uniformly critical of the design of the study and the framing of its results, and except for a few activist journalists-apologists, the science press has been in an uproar at the clear attempt by the Seralini research team to manipulate the media coverage when…
Researchers have found a way to 'toggle' the intestinal enzymes responsible for processing starchy foods on and off, which could lead to better control of those processes in people with Type 2 diabetes.
This "toggling" was discovered in the lab of Simon Fraser University chemist Mario Pinto, who has designed inhibitors capable of regulating each of the four starch-digesting enzymes known as alpha-glucosidases. Three of those enzymes are responsible for generating glucose from starch, each in different ways. A fourth enzyme breaks down sucrose, also giving glucose. Occasionally one or…
Here is a missing link story that won't make evolutionary biologists crazy. Epigenetics is the most recent craze in science media discussions of biology, it analyzes specific patterns of chemical tags that overlay the DNA structure, determining how tightly the DNA is packaged and how accessible certain genes are to be switched on or off. Epigenetics shows us that the genetic code held within DNA represents only part of the blueprint of life. Because it is not understood, we even get speculation that voting preferences can be framed in termed of epigenetics, like in the brain. Yes, some argue…
If you watched "Wall-E" you likely laughed at the depiction of hugely obese people riding around in hover cars drinking Big Gulps - surely a science that could create the technology to generate an entire artificial world could solve how to drink Big Gulps without turning ban happy like California or New York.
If the solution to unlimited fast food without health implications is in the works, it may start with invariant natural killer T-cells (iNKT). These anti-tumor immune cell protect against obesity and the metabolic syndrome that leads to diabetes but are lost when humans…
Hank |
Advocacy groups like Greenpeace and the Union of Concerned Scientists have already declared war on poor people and kids with their militant, anti-science hysteria against Golden Rice but actual scientists continue to work toward the common good.
There is more good news for kids on another front. A cow has been cloned and genetically engineered with a modification of its gene for producing beta-lactoglobulin, a protein which isn't in human milk and causes allergies in 2-3% of children. Potential benefit: a "hypoallergenic" milk that doesn't taste terrible, thanks to biology and scary 21st…
Researchers have found a new genetic mutation responsible for deafness and hearing loss associated with Usher syndrome type 1. Usher syndrome is a genetic defect that causes deafness, night-blindness and a loss of peripheral vision through the progressive degeneration of the retina.
"In this study, researchers were able to pinpoint the gene which caused deafness in Usher syndrome type 1 as well as deafness that is not associated with the syndrome through the genetic analysis of 57 humans from Pakistan and Turkey," says Zubair Ahmed, PhD, assistant professor of ophthalmology at…
Laboratory modified corn has shown some progress in treating a rare, life-threatening childhood genetic disease. Researchers have been developing enzyme therapeutics for lysosomal storage diseases - rare but devastating childhood genetic diseases – for more than a decade.
In the most severe forms of these inherited diseases, untreated patients die in early childhood because of progressive damage to all organs of the body and currently, enzyme treatments are available for only six of the more than 70 diverse types of lysosomal storage diseases.
Scientifically-engineered maize may…