Phys.org – Biotechnology

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is one of life’s most versatile molecules, with roles going far beyond being a messenger of genetic code, as it is fundamentally involved in gene regulation, processing, and maintenance across all living […]

Plant a seed and, if the conditions are right, the seed grows. The process seems simple enough at first glance and is something many of us may feel like we learned in elementary school.This post […]

Chloroplasts—the “light power plants” of plant cells—are increasingly the focus of synthetic biology. These organelles house the photosynthetic apparatus and host several metabolic pathways that are of great interest for engineering new traits. Gene insertion […]

A team of researchers from the National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST) and Tokyo Metropolitan University has developed a biomaterial that could change how we treat muscle degeneration and metabolic disorders.This post was […]

Understanding how cells turn genes on and off is one of biology’s most enduring mysteries. Now, a new technology developed by chemist Brian Liau and his collaborators at Harvard offers an unprecedented window into this […]

Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a versatile and non-toxic technology for controlling the activity of any gene in a cell. Such “gene-switch” tools allow scientists to “turn on” or “turn off” a target […]

Microbes are masters of survival, evolving ingenious strategies to capture energy from their surroundings. For decades, scientists believed that only a handful of bacteria used specialized molecular “circuits” to shuttle electrons outside their cells—a process […]

Scientists at UC San Diego have moved one step closer to unlocking a superpower held by some of nature’s greatest “masters of disguise.” Octopuses, squids, cuttlefish and other animals in the cephalopod family are well […]

Every year, around 600 million people are struck down by foodborne illnesses. The culprits are often common yet dangerous bacteria, such as E. coli and Salmonella, that thrive in undercooked or improperly handled food. These […]

At the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)—Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), biologist Jessie Vandierendonck has been investigating new, alternative treatments to combat bacterial infections using (bacterio)phages, viruses that attack and destroy bacteria. The findings are published […]