Category Biology/Biotechnology

NASA air purification technology, originally designed for plant-growing experiments on the space station, has been licensed and turned into a consumer device that keeps household air cleaner and healthier. Credits: Akida Holdings Inc.

The red romaine lettuce is far from the first crop grown on a space station. For decades, NASA etc have experimented with plants in space, but the results were always sent to Earth for examination, rather than eaten. A number of technologies NASA has explored have found their way onto the market.

Orbital Technologies (ORBITEC) partnered with Kennedy Space Center to develop the plant growth system: Veggie, that produced this most recent crop of lettuce, as well as its predecessor, Biomass Production System...

Two gene-regulating molecules have been found to have a protective effect in the set of neurons most affected by the disease, and when their activity wanes, disease sets in. This discovery suggests new avenues by which the disease might be prevented or treated.

METHOD: They used genetically engineering mice to capture the genetic messages being translated into proteins in a specific population of cells. They then mapped the interactions of regulator genes with their target genes in the mouse brain, and used this new tool to interpret the changes they documented between normal mice and those suffering from Parkinson’s-like degeneration.

This led them to 2 molecules: proteins SATB1 and ZDHHC2, which are more abundant in the dopaminergic neurons in the SNpc (Substantia Nigra pars compac...

Cancer cells were treated with a control (left) and the overstimulating compound MCB-613 (right). Credit: Lei Wang

The demands of rapid cell division put a strain on cancer cells, and the approach works by tipping cell stress over the edge. Researchers show that the drug candidate inhibits tumor growth in a mouse model of breast cancer and efficiently kills a broad range of human cancer cells.

Because cancer cells acquire mutations in oncogenes to support their growth and survival, a great deal of research has focused on identifying oncogenes that could be targeted by cancer drugs...

Experimental setup. The IR probe beam (CO2/FEL, red) is divided into two branches using a geometrical beam splitter (BS) (Au-evaporated Si wafer), which redirects part of the beam towards the s-SNOM Credit: http://www.nature.com/srep/2015/150728/srep12582/full/srep12582.html

Computer-assisted technology developed especially for this purpose combines the advantages of both methods and suppresses unwanted noise. This makes highly precise filming of dynamic processes at the nanometer scale possible eg photosynthesis or high-temperature superconductivity.

The new camera from Dresden enables unaltered optical measurements of extremely small, dynamic changes in biological, chemical or physical processes...