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Tag Archives: synthetic biology
Synthetic biology: Pituitary glands from stem cells
Research into the uses stem cells is at that stage where almost every month a new application is announced, typically in the replacement of damaged cells or tissues. The most recent application is the creation of pituitary gland tissue from the embryonic stem cells of mice. Researchers at the Japanese RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged embryonic stem cells, pituitary gland, RIKEN, Sasai, stem cells, synthetic organs 2 Comments
Synthetic biology: Making new proteins with E. coli by adding DNA
Sometimes big advances in science happen without much public notice. That’s often because at the time they didn’t look like big advances in science, or just as likely, they were considered marginally workable, so nobody wanted to highlight them. Here’s one such case to consider: Researchers at Yale University (Connecticut, USA) and publishing in the [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged biochemistry, DNA, E. coli, epigenetics, phosphorylation, phosphoserine, protein, Söll 1 Comment
Micromold technology: New technique for fabricating cells and tissues
As they say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Perhaps they should also say, there’s more than one way to make a cat skin. One of the key objectives of synthetic biology is to create materials that can imitate the functions of cells and tissues, like creating the building blocks of biological [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged drug-delivery, hydrogel, Khademhosseini, micromolds, microparticles, MIT, nanotechnology, Tekin Leave a comment
Toward a new DNA: thymine out, chlorouracil in
Scientists have been twiddling with DNA for some time. While DNA may be the blueprint of life, it is not immutable (of course) and that means the hand of man likes to poke around in the mix. One kind of poking has been to see if one of the bases – adenine (A), thymine (T), [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged chemical evolution, chlorouracil, DNA, nucleic acids, RNA, thymine, uracil, xenobiology 1 Comment
DNA Computing: Advances in organic circuits
DNA logic gate components……Credit: Royal Publishing Society Let’s come at computers from a different angle for a moment. An alien species lands on earth. Their spaceship doesn’t look like a spaceship. It looks like a very large blob, of sorts. It’s a blob because the whole thing is organic, not a scrap of metal on [...]
Posted in Impact: Computer Power Also tagged biochemistry, DNA computing, logic gates, nanotechnology, organic, Qian, Winfree Leave a comment
Synthetic biology: Improve photosynthesis
Eighteen blue-ribbon scientists from all over the world agree: We need to improve on Mother Nature. Oh? Well, yes. Nature only extracts energy from the Sun in a couple of band gaps (otherwise known as colors), mostly green, some blue. We can do better than that. We can engineer plants to absorb photons from the [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged algae, alternative energy, band gap, biomass, color, photosynthesis, photovoltaic, solar energy Leave a comment
Stem cell research: Synthetic retina tissue
This is a ‘Don’t jump to conclusions story.’ Scientists working with the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (Kobe, Japan) and published in the journal Nature, 6 April 2011, Paywall [Self-organizing optic-cup morphogenesis in three-dimensional culture], an article complete with photobook of 3D imaging at a glance, have announced that mouse embryonic stem cells have been [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged embryonic stem cells, eye, morphogenesis, optic cup, retina, RIKEN Leave a comment
NEWS: Short List
Targeting cancer with magnetic microcarrier – Nanomedicine | As a rule chemotherapy is like using a blunderbuss against cancer. ‘Chemo’ is administered through the bloodstream, which of course goes everywhere in the body. While the anti-cancer chemistry can be targeted to a certain extent, it almost always has toxic side effects with other organs and [...]
Posted in News: Also tagged computer power, H1N1, microcarrier, nanomedicine, Nanotiles, pandemics, photonics, processor, quantum switch, swine flu, synthetic urethra, W.H.O. Leave a comment
NEWS: Short List
3-D Printing of living tissues – Synthetic Biology | Perhaps you’ve heard of three-dimensional (3-D) printing. The printing devices lay down one thin layer of a material (usually a plastic) at a time, and guided by computer they can build-up a fully three-dimensional object. This technology is already used commercially. It’s not a stretch of [...]
Posted in News: Also tagged degrading oceans, major disease cures, photonics, scientific instruments Leave a comment
NEWS: Short List
Transcranial direct current stimulation: Stoking the brain with electricity – Brain Enhancement | While most likely the majority of neuroscientists conduct experiments to read the electrical activity in the brain, there are some interested in stimulating the brain with electricity. With modern techniques this stimulation has become more precise, and the monitoring of reactions (that’s [...]
Posted in News: Also tagged alternative energy, brain enhancement, nanotechnology, origin of life, photonics Leave a comment
Genetically modified yeast cells as electronic circuits
Circuit breakers, oscillators and sensors – familiar components for electronic circuits; made of yeast cells – not so familiar. That’s where the synthetic biology research at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) is heading. As described in a paper published in Nature [Distributed biological computation with multicellular engineered networks] an international team led Stefan Hohmann created [...]
Posted in News: Computer Power Also tagged biological computer, circuit, CPU, genetic modification, logic, molecular biology, yeast Leave a comment
“Gentlemen, engineer your astronauts.”
“I say let’s build better astronauts.” Craggy Windman was serious. He was standing on the dais in a slept-in Armani suit, tie undone, disheveled salt-and-pepper beard and talking to an assembly of rocket scientists. (Yes, you had to be a rocket scientist with a NASA badge to get into the room.) He stabbed his pointer [...]
Posted in Spun Also tagged gene modification, genome, human engineering, microbiome, NASA, satire, tissue engineering Leave a comment
Important new tool for research: An artificial ovary
Here’s the title most commonly seen for this story: Scientists invent first artificial ovary. It’s actually true. Researchers at Brown University (Rhode Island, USA) and Woman’s and Infants Hospital (Providence, Rhode Island, USA) have made something rather startling. They have created a three-dimensional tissue structure composed of the three main types of cells found in [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged 3-D Petri dish, agarose gel, artificial ovary, egg, oocyte, ovarian follicle, reproductive Leave a comment
Synthetic life, as developed by Craig Venter et al
May 21, 2010: This is one of those days when one story is likely to dominate the science news. It will also be writ large in the world’s news. Craig Venter, the name has to come first, and his research team has claimed creation of the first synthetic life. It should also be a good [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged artificial life, DNA, DNA transplant, genetics, genome, microbiology, Splice, synthetic life, Venter Leave a comment
Micromasonry: Building artificial tissues with tiny ‘bricks’
Short of building completely synthetic organs, one of the areas of synthetic biology with the greatest promise is the development of artificial tissues – replacement material for damaged hearts, livers, and other parts of the body. However, one of the major difficulties has been to create tissue that takes on appropriate shapes. Most of the [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged artificial tissues, body tissues, cell tissue, enzymes, microarchitecture, micromasonry, PEG, synthetic organs Leave a comment
Using artificial photosynthesis (in a virus) to split water
In general, SciTechStory doesn’t start tracking a technology that’s (a) incomplete in implementation and (b) many years from application (if ever). Maybe this one is an exception: Using a virus to support artificial photosynthesis that splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. It sounds pretty strange (not that this is a qualification for coverage herein), but [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged artificial photosynthesis, hydrogen, iridium oxide, photon, photosynthesis, virus, zinc porfyrins 2 Comments
New medical paradigm: Growing human organs in animals
The ability to manipulate genetics cuts in a number of ways. This way may sound a little strange: Take a mouse; implant human liver cells in it; watch them grow into a mouse-sized but human liver. It’s more complicated than that, but it works. There are reasons to do this. A lot of tests for [...]
Posted in News: Synthetic Biology Also tagged DNA, genetics, Hepatitis-C, liver cells, microbiology, NBTC Leave a comment
Follow-up: iGEM and BioBricks
Chet at his Science Musings blog has a good piece of satire on the story of iGEM 2010 (SciTechStory: iGEM: Proselytizing for synthetic biology). Here’s a sample: June 11, 2012. Hasbro-Mattel, the toy division of Monsanto Universal, today announced a product that will likely be found under many a Christmas tree later this year: The [...]
iGEM: Proselytizing for synthetic biology
What happens when genetic engineering goes viral? I’m using the word viral in its Internet sense. The New York Times has a fascinating article on the rise of synthetic biology and genetic engineering in the ranks of amateurs, mostly students, and under the guidance of an organization called iGEM. Here’s where “viral starts”… …synthetic biologists [...]
Posted in Impact: Synthetic Biology Also tagged BioBrick, DNA, genes, genetic engineering, GM, splicing Leave a comment
Starting an open-source BIOFAB
Saying “We now need to move beyond Lego™ metaphors and genetic toys to professional technologies,” the realization of a common repository for biogenetic components – the stuff of which genetic modifications and synthetic biology are made – is launched. The name given to the International Open Facility Advancing Biotechnology is BIOFAB, the combination of biology [...]
Posted in News: Genetic Modification Also tagged bioengineering, BIOFAB, biotechnology, genes, genetic modification Leave a comment
Brillouin Spectroscopy: Using an old technique to get a new picture of spider webs