Synthetic biology reveals the secrets of life without oxygen

ERC Advanced Grant for natural product researcher Christian Hertweck

15-Jul-2024 - The “AnoxyGen” project will decode novel active substances of anaerobes and elucidate their role in nature. Some of these could be useful for humans, animals and the environment. Christian Hertweck has been awarded one of the ERC Advanced Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). In the ...

Cell-free quest for new antibiotics

A new method combines synthetic biology with artificial intelligence

20-Nov-2023 - The rising resistance of bacteria to antibiotics presents an escalating global health risk. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology have combined synthetic biology and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a more efficient approach to finding and creating new ...

Let’s build a cell

Researchers engineer a minimal synthetic cellular system to study basic cell function

24-Jan-2020 - Cells are the basic unit of life. They provide an environment for the fundamental molecules of life to interact, for reactions to take place and sustain life. However, the biological cell is very complicated, making it difficult to understand what takes place inside it. One way to tackle this ...

Fast and cheap low-tech method to test for the presence of any DNA sequence

10-Dec-2019 - The student project DipGene developed a new methodology that makes genetic testing as easy as a pH-test. With their simple, cheap and low-tech method to test for the presence of any DNA sequence, they won a prestigious Gold Medal. A student team of the TU Dresden successfully showcased their ...

Using quantum dots and a smartphone to find killer bacteria

Scientists develop cheap and rapid way to identify antibiotic-resistant golden staph (MRSA)

19-Aug-2019 - A combination of off-the-shelf quantum dot nanotechnology and a smartphone camera soon could allow doctors to identify antibiotic-resistant bacteria in just 40 minutes, potentially saving patient lives. Staphylococcus aureus (golden staph), is a common form of bacterium that causes serious and ...

Structure and function of photosynthesis protein explained in detail

02-Jan-2019 - Photosynthetic complex I is a key element in photosynthetic electron transport, but little has been known about it so far. An international team of researchers has solved the structure and elucidated the function of photosynthetic complex I. This membrane protein complex plays a major role in ...

Biological signalling processes in intelligent materials

Innovative biohybrid systems with information processing functionality

20-Jul-2018 - Scientists from the University of Freiburg have developed materials systems that are composed of biological components and polymer materials and are capable of perceiving and processing information. These biohybrid systems were engineered to perform certain functions, such as the counting signal ...

In-cell molecular sieve from protein crystal

10-Feb-2017 - In nature, proteins are assembled into sophisticated and highly ordered structures, which enable them to execute numerous functions supporting different forms of life. The exquisite design of natural proteins prompted scientists to exploit it in synthetic biology to engineer molecules that can ...

Agilent and Transcriptic Collaborate to Automate Discovery Biology

13-Dec-2016 - Agilent Technologies Inc. and Transcriptic Inc. have agreed to partner their technologies to provide a solution for convenient, broad scale synthetic and discovery biology research. Agilent continues its strong program of fostering innovation using the Agilent portfolio by collaborating with ...

New tool could help reshape the limits of synthetic biology

The 'telomerator' reshapes synthetic yeast chromosome into more flexible, realistic form, redefining what geneticists can build

05-Nov-2014 - NYU Langone yeast geneticists report they have developed a novel tool — dubbed "the telomerator" — that could redefine the limits of synthetic biology and advance how successfully living things can be engineered or constructed in the laboratory based on an organism's genetic, chemical base-pair ...