Biotechnology

In beef cattle production, determining the ideal time to sell makes all the difference in a producer's costs. This is because, once an animal reaches its natural growth limit, it stops gaining weight significantly. From that point on, every additional day in a feedlot means spending money on feed without... Read more

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a high-speed microscopy technique that captures images so quickly they can be used to make "videos" of the dynamic processes that occur inside living cells.... Read more

Proteins perform essential functions in living organisms, from catalyzing biochemical reactions to supporting cellular energy metabolism. Their functions depend on their amino acid composition and three-dimensional structures. However, early proteins may have evolved when fewer amino acid types were available than those used by most modern proteins.... Read more

Researchers at Aarhus University have discovered that bacteria can continue producing DNA after they die. And they have found a way to control what gets produced. The discovery could eventually contribute to the development of new biological materials.... Read more

Soft, flexible hydrogels have enabled significant advancements in engineering biological tissue by mimicking the natural scaffolding that provides structure and support to cells. Existing engineered hydrogels, however, fall short in a significant way. Unlike in nature, they do not have the dynamic ability to change their structure or support depending... Read more

In a collaboration, researchers from the Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures and the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) have discovered two previously unknown natural products. Lavasamycin A and B are produced by the bacterium Streptomyces barkulensis subsp. lavasanensis, which was isolated from a soil sample... Read more

Macromolecular crowding can serve as a design tool for controlling the formation and organization of synthetic DNA droplets, a study from Science Tokyo reveals. Researchers investigated this strategy using DNA nanostars and polymeric crowding agents to mimic the crowded cellular environment. They found that crowding promoted droplet formation and enabled... Read more

On Oct. 13, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) launched the Seed Portal for Online Data (SeedPOD), a new open-access platform designed to tackle bottlenecks affecting global ecological restoration, by making native seed collections and the knowledge needed to grow them easier to discover.... Read more

A Hiroshima University researcher contends that Japan's newly enacted law regulating human genome-edited embryos and germ cells marks a significant advance in the governance of reproductive genome editing. Tsutomu Sawai, professor at Hiroshima University's Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, praises the new law for defining prohibited activities and... Read more

What has the consistency of both toothpaste and dough, can absorb twice its weight in water and still remain sticky, was used by medieval artists as a binder in paint and has been hypothesized by physicians to repel insects? It's earwax.... Read more

The CONFETI project, coordinated by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has concluded three years of research with the commissioning of a pilot system capable of producing urea, a nitrogen fertilizer widely used in agriculture, directly in the field using renewable energy. This fertilizer is produced from carbon dioxide (CO₂)... Read more

Chocolate lovers may not realize it, but the future of one of the world's most popular foods is increasingly under pressure. Diseases, shifting weather patterns and other environmental stressors are threatening cacao production globally, contributing to supply concerns and economic challenges for the millions of farmers who grow the crop... Read more

University of Missouri researchers have created rice plants that resist bacterial blight, a devastating disease that threatens one of the world's most important food crops. The advance could help farmers in parts of Asia and Africa, where the disease can destroy harvests and threaten livelihoods.... Read more

Lab-grown protein that mimics the color, taste and texture of meat. Egg white substitutes used for baked goods. Food colorants that replace beta-carotene extracted from carrots. Those are some of the products created with precision fermentation, an emerging technology that can develop tailored food ingredients in the laboratory. If adapted... Read more

Our bodies are composed of many different types of cells that work together to build and maintain normal physiological functions. In the central nervous system, for example, neurons transmit information, while glial cells such as astrocytes regulate the environment surrounding neurons and support their function. Understanding how these cell types... Read more