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François Jacob died
Biologist François Jacob, who won the 1965 Nobel prize for medicine, died at the age of 92.
AND logical gates built in E. coli
Christopher Voigt and his students at MIT have developed in E. coli the most complex synthetic cellular circuit ever built.
Does Homeostatic Pressure Explain Tumor Growth?
Physicists from the Curie Institute, France, explored the relative impact of the mechanical pressure induced by dividing cells in biological tissues.
A private initiative to help the search for How Life Began
Figuring out how life first started may seem like it should be simple—after all, life is everywhere on Earth. But the search is really far more complicated.
What is OpenMod?
OpenMod will bring essential software building blocks to develop multiscale models for the Virtual Physiological Human.
Publicly Funded GMO Research Facing Destruction In Italy
Another publicly funded experiment involving genetically engineered crops faces possible destruction
Don't destroy research
An appeal from scientists at the publicly funded Rothamsted Research.
New Layer of Genetic Information Discovered
By measuring the rate of protein production in bacteria, a team at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) discovered that slight genetic alterations could have a dramatic effect. This was true even for seemingly insignificant genetic changes known as “silent mutations,” which swap out a single DNA letter without changing the ultimate gene product. To their surprise, the scientists found these changes can slow the protein production process to one-tenth of its normal speed or less.
The spike of the virus
Wherever there are bacteria (digestive tracts, contaminated water,...) you will find a group of virus called bacteriophages.
DNA Sequencing is Now Improving Faster Than Moore's Law!
Two leading manufacturers of DNA sequencing instruments announce that they would introduce new machines this year capable of sequencing an entire human genome in a single day for a cost of $1,000 per genome.
Gut Bacteria can control Diabetes
Insulin resistance is the harbinger of metabolic syndrome.
Orange sweet potato a hit in Mozambique
Mozambique, like many poor countries, has a high prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, which can erode the immune system and cause blindness. Pregnant woman and young children in low-income countries are often hit the hardest, according to the WHO, and 600,000 children are estimated to die from a lack of vitamin A each year.
Quasi-science prevents an environmentally friendly agriculture and forestry
At the end of this month, the world’s population will reach 7 billions; 1 billion are hungry, and 1 billion more are malnourished. In the next decades, there will be more humans. Limited land and water, costly energy for fertilizer, and climate change will ensure that more of them are hungry. Science and technology can contribute greatly to the solution. Why then is Europe regulating one part of the solution- GM (genetically modified) crops- as if they are a hazard?
Gamers help protein 3D structure modeling
One of the goals of computational biology is to predict the complete high-order structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence. Often reasonably good structures can be produced by modeling a new protein according to an already-known structure of a homologous protein, one with a similar sequence and presumably a similar structure. However, these structures can be inaccurate, and obviously this method will not work if no homologous structure is known.
RNA as an assembly line
Delebecque and coworkers describe in Science the design and construction of self-assembling RNA scaffolds that spatially organize enzymes in bacterial cells.
Farewell Symposium for Andreas Engel
Andreas Engel, Professor for Structural Biology and former Chairman of the Biozentrum, retired from service to the Biozentrum and became Professor emeritus in October 2010. On February 11th, 2011, the Biozentrum bade farewell to its long standing member and remarkable researcher with a scientific symposium in his honor.
The 3D architecture of the bacterial chromosome
A bacterial chromosome is so long that it must be highly compacted and folded to stand within the cellular space. Genetic studies coupled with fluorescence microscopy showed that it is well organized into isolated domains. These domains also move with order when the chromosome is duplicated and the two new chromosomes are separated each in one half the dividing cell.
LifeExplorer illustrates the front page of Molecular Microbiology
The December 2010 issue contains several papers dedicated to bacterial cell division. The journal cover highlights a 3D model of the bacterial division machinery (the divisome) created with the LifeExplorer tool in collaboration with F.-X. Barre and N. Dubarry.
The eukaryotic ribosome has revealed its structure
Researchers at the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cell Biology (CNRS / University of Strasbourg / Inserm) have determined the first atomic structure of an eukaryotic ribosome (yeast ribosome).
