Biotechnology Club

This illustration shows the structure of an endoglucanase enzyme. The arrows indicate straight beta-strands. You can also see the twisted alpha-helices. Peter Reilly’s lab discovered the enzyme’s structure by producing and crystallizing the enzyme, shooting X-rays through it and analyzing the resulting diffraction pattern. This particular enzyme breaks down cellulose by attacking bonds in the [...]

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For most people, the name “E. coli” is synonymous with food poisoning and product recalls, but a professor in Texas A&M University’s chemical engineering department envisions the bacteria as a future source of energy, helping to power our cars, homes and more.

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A University of Saskatchewan team of researchers has isolated a gene that has never before been identified in helping plants to resist stress. The study-published this month in the top-ranked plant journal The Plant Cell-could pave the way for development of agricultural and forestry crops that are more tolerant to environmental stresses such as ultra-violet [...]

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Researchers at the Biodesign Institute are using the tiniest organisms on the planet — bacteria — as a viable option to make electricity. In a new study featured in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, lead author Andrew Kato Marcus and colleagues Cesar Torres and Bruce Rittmann have gained critical insights that may lead to commercialization [...]

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The biggest obstacle to development of truly innovative biofuels is likely to be the entrenched agriculture industry and the system of subsidies that have been reinforced in the new federal energy bill’s ethanol supports.
DuPont looking beyond corn in biofuels (Tech Confidential – VC Ratings)
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University of California, Irvine researchers have identified a gene that is specifically responsible for generating the cerebral cortex, a finding that could lead to stem cell therapies to treat brain injuries and diseases such as stroke and Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Edwin Monuki, doctoral student Karla Hirokawa and their colleagues in the departments of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine [...]

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A preliminary assembly and annotation of the soybean genome, Glycine max, has been made available by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), to the greater scientific community to enable bioenergy research.
The announcement was made by Eddy Rubin, DOE JGI Director, during his keynote remarks Jan. 15 at the Plant and Animal [...]

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Using embryonic stem cells from mice, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have prompted the growth of healthy – and more importantly, functioning – muscle cells in mice afflicted with a human model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
The study represents the first time transplanted embryonic stem cells have been shown to restore function to defective muscles in [...]

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The use of a drug to activate stem cells that differentiate into bone appears to cause regeneration of bone tissue and be may be a potential treatment strategy for osteoporosis, according to a report in the February 2008 Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The study – led by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the [...]

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A few weeks ago, Jason Kelly explained in his post how Itaya and colleagues (2007) assembled the complete 135 kb rice chloroplast circular genome starting from a collection of 5-6 kb fragments and using sequential in vivo homologous recombination in Bacillus subtilis. Now, Hamilton Smith, Craig Venter and colleagues have achieved the assembly of a [...]

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