bioengineering tagged posts

Advance paves the way for broad applications in medicine and biotech. Researchers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and the University of Rome Tor Vergata in Italy have developed synthetic genes that function like the genes in living cells.

The artificial genes can build intracellular structures through a cascading sequence that builds self-assembling structures piece by piece. The approach is similar to building furniture with modular units, much like those found at IKEA. Using the same parts, one can build many different things and it’s easy to take the set apart and reconstruct the parts for something else...

Proteins use biomineralization to incorporate metallic elements into tissues, using it to create diverse materials such as seashells, teeth, and bones. However, the way proteins actually do this is not well understood.

Now RIKEN CLST & Yokohama City U scientists have used an artificially designed protein to create a cadmium chloride nanocrystal – the smallest crystal reported so far, made up of just 19 atoms – sandwiched b/n 2 copies of the protein.

In 2014, the groups announced development of an artificial protein, called Pizza6, which looks a lot like a pizza cut into 6 identical slices...