Category Biology/Biotechnology

The system uses a commercial smartphone to acquire and interpret real-time images of an enzymatic amplification reaction that takes place in a silicon microfluidic chip that generates green fluorescence and displays a visual read-out of the test. The system is composed of an unmodified smartphone and a portable 3-D-printed cradle that supports the optical and electrical components, and interfaces with the rear-facing camera of the smartphone. Credit: Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A multidisciplinary group that includes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Washington at Tacoma has developed a novel platform to diagnose infectious disease at the point-of-care, using a smartphone as the detection instrument in con...

Approximate number of driver mutations needed to cause cancer by area of the body

The results show the number of mutations driving cancer varies considerably across different cancer types. For the first time, scientists have provided unbiased estimates of the number of mutations needed for cancers to develop, in a study of more than 7,500 tumours across 29 cancer types. Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their collaborators adapted a technique from the field of evolution to confirm that, on average, one to ten driver mutations are needed for cancer to emerge.

In the future, such approaches could be used in the clinic to identify which few mutations in an individual patient are driving his or her cancer, from amongst the thousands of mutations present...

This is a miniaturized biological solar cell assembled micro-BSC device. Credit: Seokheun Choi

New solar cell could power point-of-care medical devices in limited-resource regions. Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York have created a micro-scale biological solar cell that generates a higher power density for longer than any existing cell of its kind. A microfluidic lab-on-a-chip system that generates its own power is essential for stand-alone, independent, self-sustainable point-of-care diagnostic devices to work in limited-resource and remote regions. Miniaturized biological solar cells (or micro-BSCs) can be the most suitable power source for those applications because the technique resembles Earth’s natural ecosystem.

“Micro-BSCs can continuously generate el...

25-Year Physical Activity Trajectories and Development of Subclinical Coronary Artery Disease as Measured by Coronary Artery Calcium. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.mayocp.2017.07.016

White men who exercise at high levels are 86% more likely than people who exercise at low levels to experience a buildup of plaque in the heart arteries by middle age, a new study suggests. Led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Kaiser Permanente, the study looked at the physical activity trajectories of 3,175 black and white participants in the multicenter, community-based, longitudinal cohort CARDIA study, and assessed the presence of coronary artery calcification, or CAC, among participants.

CAC is a clinical measure of the accumulation of calcium and plaque in the a...