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Bacteria self-assemble in a composite material for civil engineering
Researchers have designed bacteria that can produce a special glue to knit together cracks in concrete structures.
DNA as an assembly line
The Slovenia team won the IGEM 2010 competition.
Science brought to life with virtual reality
River Valley High School is a leading public school which attracts the top ten per cent of students in Singapore. The school is the first campus in Singapore to have a Virtual Reality Laboratory and has reported significant success in helping students understand concepts better.
Lost letters from DNA pioneers reveal conflicts and tensions
Almost 50 years after they won the Nobel Prize for defining the structure of DNA, Maurice Wilkins, James Watson, and Francis Crick are in the news again.
Disparition de Georges CHARPAK
C'est avec tristesse que nous avons appris le décès du physicien Georges Charpak survenu le 29 septembre 2010.
GM mosquitoes could help control malaria
About 3.3 billion people in 109 countries are under threat of malaria infection. The disease kills one million people each year, most of them children in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it can cut a country's financial growth by a significant amount. In the face of increasing insecticide and drug resistance and the lack of an effective vaccine, we need to explore new ways of tackling this devastating disease. Mosquitoes that are genetically engineered to be resistant to malaria and deployed in high-risk areas would provide a valuable tool for controlling the disease in Africa.
Do-it-yourself biology
There was a time when only scientists used computers. Now systems that are thousands of times more powerful are available to nearly everyone. Bio-technology could follow the same course.
Letter to UC Faculty on Nature Publishing Group Subscription Increases
A letter dated June 4, 2010 describing exorbitant subscription increases on the part of the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) for the 67 journals UC licenses (including Nature) was distributed to UC faculty by campus librarians.
Birth of the first synthetic cell
Craig Venter's team at the J. Craig Venter Institute reports they have synthetized a bacterial chromosome and transferred it into a bacterium, where it replaced the native DNA. Powered by the synthetic genome, the microbial cell began replicating and making a new set of proteins.
Naissance de la première cellule synthétique
Craig Venter et son équipe du J. Craig Venter Institute, sont parvenus à synthétiser un chromosome bactérien et à le transférer dans une bactérie, en remplacement de l'ADN natif. Contrôlé par le génome sunthétique, la cellule bactérienne a commencé à se répliquer et à fabriquer de nouvelles protéines.
Birth of the first synthetic cell
Craig Venter's team at the J. Craig Venter Institute reports they have synthetized a bacterial chromosome and transferred it into a bacterium, where it replaced the native DNA. Powered by the synthetic genome, the microbial cell began replicating and making a new set of proteins.
EMBO Gold Medal 2010 recognizes Jason W. Chin - Synthetic biologist
The European Molecular Biology Organization announced the award of the EMBO Gold Medal 2010 to Jason W. Chin from the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB) for his pioneering work on reprogramming the genetic code. Chin’s work allows designer amino acids to be encoded at specific, predetermined positions in proteins in vivo, enabling molecular biologists to control and elucidate the functions of proteins in cells with unprecedented precision.
La Machinerie de la Vie vient de paraître
Qu'est-ce qui rend le sida si dangereux ? En quoi sa structure fait de la grippe un virus inventif ? A quelle partie d'une bactérie une molécule antibiotique s'attaque-t-elle ? Quels sont les mécanismes moléculaires à l'œuvre dans la mort programmée des cellules humaines ? Pourquoi le renouvellement des cellules peut-il amener au cancer ? Le livre "La Machinerie de La Vie" par David Goodsell répond à ces questions et émerveillera toute personne qui souhaite voir et ainsi comprendre comment les molécules de la vie s'organisent pour faire fonctionner les cellules. Le texte est très concis et l'auteur est un pionnier dans l'illustration scientifique réaliste. La grande originalité du livre sont les 70 représentations artistiques qui replacent les très nombreuses molécules nécessaires à la vie dans l'espace intérieur si réduit des cellules et des virus.
The Pink Army : It is time for a revolution
The challenge of the Pink Army cooperative : Creating faster and cheaper individualized therapies for breast cancer based on synthetic biology through open-source development.
'Simple' bacterium shows surprising complexity
A study published in Science shows that the inner workings of a supposedly simple bacterial cell have turned out to be much more sophisticated than expected. To obtain a detailed view of the functional and spatial organisation of the proteome, the study uses a large panel of experimental technics: genomic analysis, affinity chromatography and mass spectrometry, single-particle electron microscopy and electron tomography.
Mapping the human microbiome
A study reported November 5 in Science provides one of the most thorough whole-body maps to date of the estimated 100 trillion individual microbes the body harbors inside and out. It offers a basis for understanding what roles microbes have in both maintaining good health and causing diseases. Among other conclusions, the researchers found that the microbiome is highly personalized and seems to remain fairly constant over time.
SSB, a dynamic protector of single-stranded DNA
Researchers report that a single-stranded DNA-binding protein (SSB) in the bacterium E. coli, once thought to be a static player among the many molecules that interact with DNA, actually moves back and forth along single-stranded DNA, gradually allowing other proteins to repair, recombine or replicate the strands.
How bacteria can sense temperature
Temperature is one of the most crucial environmental signals sensed by pathogens to adjust expression of their virulence factors and host survival programs after entry from a cold external environment into a warm-blooded host. Thermo-induced structural changes in bent or supercoiled DNA or mRNA secondary structures are frequently used to modulate virulence gene transcription or translation.
