Illuminating the genome

RNA-guided endonuclease - in situ labelling, a new CRISPR/Cas9 based molecular visualisation method

12-Mar-2019 - The CRISPR/Cas9 system has been making ripples in the scientific community ever since its mechanisms were proposed in 2012. Commonly referred to as a genome editing tool, many scientists have found different applications for the scissor-like properties of the Cas9-protein. Researchers from the ...

Stone age hepatitis B virus decoded

Viral DNA shows the hepatitis B virus has been circulating in Europe for at least 7.000 years

14-May-2018 - An international team of scientists led by researchers at Kiel University in the scope the CRC 1266 “Scales of Transformation” and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has successfully reconstructed genomes from Stone Age and Medieval European strains of the hepatitis B ...

Food safety at analytica 2014: Trace analysis for our health

04-Mar-2014 - How safe is our food? This is a volatile issue for many consumers and a major challenge for the food-analysis sector. The only way to perform quality and origin analyses is with state-of-the-art equipment and techniques. That is why the topic of food analysis is an interdisciplinary focal point ...

analytica presents biotechnology highlights

26-Mar-2012 - From molecular-biology techniques to forensic DNA analysis: from April 17 – 20 analytica features in-depth information about the latest methods and techniques in laboratory technology, analysis and biotechnology. One of the five halls, hall A3, is devoted entirely to the biotech industry. The ...

Novel process for DNA labeling

06-Oct-2010 - For the first time, baseclick GmbH, a start-up company spun off from BASF SE and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, is making its newly developed process for labeling nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) available to customers. The company recently signed licensing agreements for this technology with ...

First-ever blueprint of a minimal cell is more complex than expected

EMBL and CRG scientists reveal what a self-sufficient cell can't do without

01-Dec-2009 - What are the bare essentials of life, the indispensable ingredients required to produce a cell that can survive on its own? Can we describe the molecular anatomy of a cell, and understand how an entire organism functions as a system? These are just some of the questions that scientists in a ...

“Two in One” enzyme: unusually flexible Scientists from the RUB have solved the structure of a viral protein

The Journal of Biological Chemistry has ranked this documentation as “Paper of the Week.”

09-Oct-2008 - A virus that infects the marine cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus can produce specific pigments more effectively than its host can. It requires only one enzyme, in contrast to the host Prochlorococcus, which needs two enzymes. The virus makes use of phycoerythrobilin synthase, a “two in one” enzyme. ...