Category Biology/Biotechnology

Scientists have pinpointed a gene that helps deadly E. coli bacteria evade antibiotics, potentially leading to better treatments for millions of people worldwide.

The University of Queensland-led study found a particular form of the bacteria — E. coli ST131 — had a previously unnoticed gene that made it highly resistant to commonly prescribed antibiotics.

Professor Mark Schembri, from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, said this ‘resistance gene’ can spread incredibly quickly.

“Unlike gene transfer in humans, where sex is required to transfer genes, bacteria have genetic structures in their cells — called plasmids — that are traded quickly and easily between each other,” Profes...

Inspired by the growth of bones in the skeleton, researchers at the universities of Linköping in Sweden and Okayama in Japan have developed a combination of materials that can morph into various shapes before hardening. The material is initially soft, but later hardens through a bone development process that uses the same materials found in the skeleton.

When we are born, we have gaps in our skulls that are covered by pieces of soft connective tissue called fontanelles...

Regularly eating a small serving of dried goji berries may help prevent or delay the development of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, in healthy middle-aged people, according to a small, randomized trial conducted at the University of California, Davis.

AMD is the leading cause of vision loss in older people, and is estimated to affect more than 11 million in the United States and 170 million globally.

“AMD affects your central field of vision and can affect your ability to read or recognize faces,” said Glenn Yiu, a co-author of the study...

New platform can program the transformation of 2D stretchable surfaces into specific 3D shapes. Flat materials that can morph into three-dimensional shapes have potential applications in architecture, medicine, robotics, space travel, and much more. But programming these shape changes requires complex and time-consuming computations.

Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a platform that uses machine learning to program the transformation of 2D stretchable surfaces into specific 3D shapes.

“While machine learning methods have been classically employed for image recognition and language processing, they have also recently emerged as powerful tools to solve mechanics problems,” said Katia Bertoldi, the Wil...