Category Biology/Biotechnology

Biochemical sensing b/n organisms could have far reaching implications in ecology, biology, and robotics. A Virginia Tech scientist used a mathematical model to demonstrate that bacteria can control the behavior of an inanimate device like a robot. “Basically we were trying to find out from the mathematical model if we could build a living microbiome on a nonliving host and control the host through the microbiome,” said Ruder, an assistant professor of biological systems engineering in both the College of Agriculture and Life sciences and the College of Engineering.

“We found that robots may indeed be able to have a working brain,” he said. For future experiments, Ruder is building real-world robots that will have the ability to read bacterial gene expression levels in E...

Salk researchers have generated disease-free stem cells from patients with mitochondrial disease that can be converted into any cell type including neuronal progenitors (left) or heart cells (right). These could potentially be used for future transplantation into patients.
Credit: Salk Institute

Healthy stem cells differentiate into any cell type for potential cures including brain, muscle, eye and heart cells which would improve the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world with debilitating mitochondrial diseases. “Right now, there are no cures for mitochondrial diseases,” says Prof Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from Salk’s Gene Expression Lab. “Very recently, we’ve developed ways to prevent these diseases, so it was natural to next ask how we could treat them.”

Mitochondria...

Scientists from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) and McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the United States have found that existing anti-malaria drugs could be a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Currently, there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, which affects 10 million people worldwide. Prof Kwang-Soo Kim from McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School and A/Prof Yoon Ho Sup from NTU’s School of Biological Sciences, showed that by activating Nurr1, a class of proteins found in the brain, it protects the brain’s ability to generate dopamine neurons, for dopamine products for motor control and movement of muscles in the body.

In lab tests, the scientists found that by activating Nurr1, the rats which had Parkinson’s disease appeared to...

Shelterin recruits accessory proteins to the telomeres that facilitate the complex process of telomere copying and maintenance associated with cell multiplication.

Telomere length related to ageing and cancer, has led to the intense study of telomere-based strategies to combat cancer and diseases associated with ageing. Blasco’s group has recently shown that it is possible to make cancer cells mortal by acting on the telomeres.

We now know that there is a protective structure enveloping telomeric DNA consisting of 6 proteins known as shelterins, which are crucial. Another more recent discovery is there are proteins that, although not in telomeres themselves, interact with them at specific times to enable them to perform their functions...