Science and Systems conference in Berkeley Calif. Biomechanical synergythe robot which the researchers have dubbed supernumerary robotic fingers consists of actuators linked together to exert forces as strong as those of human fingers during a grasping motion.
The researchers hypothesized that a similar biomechanical synergy may exist not only among the five human fingers but also among seven.
Pandora for example comes down to this thing that they call the music genome which contains a summary of your musical tastes.
To recommend a song all you need is the last 10 songs you listened to just to make sure you don t keep recommending the same one again and this music genome.
what songs they ll like than anything captured by Pandora s music genome. Openpds preserves all that potentially useful data but in a repository controlled by the end user not the application developer or service provider.
#Noninvasive brain control Optogenetics, a technology that allows scientists to control brain activity by shining light on neurons,
This noninvasive approach could pave the way to using optogenetics in human patients to treat epilepsy and other neurological disorders,
Led by Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, the researchers described the protein in the June 29 issue of Nature Neuroscience.
Optogenetics, a technique developed over the past 15 years, has become a common laboratory tool for shutting off or stimulating specific types of neurons in the brain,
Most of the natural opsins now used for optogenetics respond best to blue or green light.
but had a much stronger photocurrent enough to shut down neural activity. his exemplifies how the genomic diversity of the natural world can yield powerful reagents that can be of use in biology and neuroscience,
A key advantage to this opsin is that it could enable optogenetic studies of animals with larger brains,
says Garret Stuber, an assistant professor of psychiatry and cell biology and physiology at the University of North carolina at Chapel hill. n animals with larger brains,
people have had difficulty getting behavior effects with optogenetics, and one possible reason is that not enough of the tissue is being inhibited,
This type of noninvasive approach to optogenetics could also represent a step toward developing optogenetic treatments for diseases such as epilepsy,
says Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and one of the leaders of the research team. n short,
The new approach, described May 18 in Nature Methods, could also help neuroscientists learn more about the biological basis of brain disorders. e don really know
The researchers also plan to combine this technique with optogenetics, which enables neuronal firing to be controlled by shining light on cells engineered to express light-sensitive proteins.
Genetic information is carried normally from DNA in the nucleus to ribosomes, cellular structures where proteins are made.
Short strands of RNA called sirna bind to the MESSENGER RNA that carries this genetic information preventing it from reaching the ribosome.
With the best-performing particles, the researchers reduced gene expression by more than 50 percent, for a dose of only 0. 20 milligrams per kilogram of solution about one-hundredth of the amount required with existing endothelial
and the Center for RNA Therapeutics and Biology e
#Chemotherapy timing is key to success MIT researchers have devised a novel cancer treatment that destroys tumor cells by first disarming their defenses,
a professor of systems biology at the Technical University of Denmark who was not part of the research team. he latter is vital,
an MIT associate professor of biological engineering. here a general recognition that in order to understand the brain processes in comprehensive detail,
The company which aims to leverage biotechnology as a way to solve environmental issues is also modifying their system to generate value from wastewater in agricultural and military fields,
We are leveraging biotechnology to provide the highest return on investment for managing water. To that end, Cambrian is working on other projects that leverage exoelectrogenic microbes to treat wastewater.
Meeting at MIT in 2006 over a shared fondness for biotech, Silver, then a research scientist in MIT Space Systems Lab,
and Buck, a biological engineering graduate student, won a grant from the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts program to create a life-support system that could treat waste
is to leverage biotechnology to advance a sustainable ndustrial ecology, where the waste of industry is recycled to create energy
and a member of MIT departments of biological engineering and of biology, Center for Environmental Health Sciences,
here an opportunity to use these multiplexed plasmids in biological assays where several repair pathways can be probed at the same time,
The researchers also anticipate that it could help scientists learn more about tumor biology. As opposed to just studying the genetic profile of tumor cells this could also reveal how they re interacting with the stroma that surrounds the tumor.
The researchers are now working on sensors that could be used to monitor other biological properties such as ph. We hope this is the first of many types of solid-state contrast agents where the material responds to its chemical environment in such a way that we can detect it by MRI Cima says.
(and wearing) bionic leg prostheses that he says emulate nature mimicking the functions and power of biological knees ankles and calves.
Initially developed by Herr s research group Biom s prosthesis dubbed the Biom T2 System simulates a biological ankle
At least among amputees Herr says Biom could help by fitting elderly populations with leg prostheses equal in biomechanical agility and control to a young adult s legs:
#Erasing a genetic mutation Using a new gene-editing system based on bacterial proteins MIT researchers have cured mice of a rare liver disorder caused by a single genetic mutation.
The findings described in the March 30 issue of Nature Biotechnology offer the first evidence that this gene-editing technique known as CRISPR can reverse disease symptoms in living animals.
Researchers have copied this cellular system to create gene-editing complexes that include a DNA-cutting enzyme called Cas9 bound to a short RNA guide strand that is programmed to bind to a specific genome sequence telling Cas9 where to make its cut.
When the cell repairs the damage produced by Cas9 it copies from the template introducing new genetic material into the genome.
Scientists envision that this kind of genome editing could one day help treat diseases such as hemophilia Huntington s disease
and others that are caused by single mutations. Scientists have developed other gene-editing systems based on DNA-slicing enzymes also known as nucleases
Disease correctionfor this study the researchers designed three GUIDE RNA strands that target different DNA sequences near the mutation that causes type I tyrosinemia in a gene that codes for an enzyme called FAH.
and one of the lead authors of the Nature Biotechnology paper. This work shows that CRISPR can be used successfully in adults
and also identifies several of the challenges that will need to be addressed moving forward to the development of human therapies says Charles Gersbach an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke university who was not part of the research team.
says Constance Cepko, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical school. Previous efforts have focused on analyzing only a small number of cell types at a time,
and other substances including living cells MIT engineers have coaxed bacterial cells to produce biofilms that can incorporate nonliving materials such as gold nanoparticles and quantum dots.
which respond to their environment produce complex biological molecules and span multiple length scales with the benefits of nonliving materials
or diagnostic sensors says Timothy Lu an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering. Lu is the senior author of a paper describing the living functional materials in the March 23 issue of Nature Materials.
because it naturally produces biofilms that contain so-called curli fibers amyloid proteins that help E coli attach to surfaces.
These peptides can capture nonliving materials such as gold nanoparticles incorporating them into the biofilms. By programming cells to produce different types of curli fibers under certain conditions the researchers were able to control the biofilms properties
and create gold nanowires conducting biofilms and films studded with quantum dots or tiny crystals that exhibit quantum mechanical properties.
They also engineered the cells so they could communicate with each other and change the composition of the biofilm over time.
First the MIT team disabled the bacterial cells natural ability to produce Csga then replaced it with an engineered genetic circuit that produces Csga
which forms curli fibers that coalesce into a biofilm coating the surface where the bacteria are growing.
The two types of engineered cells can be grown together in a colony allowing researchers to control the material composition of the biofilm by varying the amounts of AHL and atc in the environment.
Cells that talk to each other The researchers also demonstrated that the cells can coordinate with each other to control the composition of the biofilm.
The researchers are interested also in coating the biofilms with enzymes that catalyze the breakdown of cellulose
I think this is really fantastic work that represents a great integration of synthetic biology and materials engineering says Lingchong You an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke university who was not part of the research team.
The research was funded by the Office of Naval Research the Army Research Office the National Science Foundation the Hertz Foundation the Department of defense the National institutes of health and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers s
According to Tim Lu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering at MIT, it boils down to the inefficient bacteria-detection assays used in the food industry.
Based on Lu graduate school research at MIT, the assay uses biological particles called bacteriophages, or phages,
or polymerase chain reactions (PCR, which copies DNA) may be efficient in one area, but lacking in the other two.
Lu engineered phages that could break apart antibiotic-resistant biofilms coatings where bacteria live and thrive by injecting bacteria with certain enzymes to make the biofilms self-destruct.
This discovery would earn Lu the $30, 000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize, in 2008, and a spot on Technology Review 2010 list of top innovators under 35.
Seeing phages as better antimicrobial treatments than antibiotics to which biofilms and bacteria can build immunity Lu, Sample6 cofounder and now vice president of operations Michael Koeris,
where biofilms build up in pipelines before seeing firsthand that the food industry as in desperate need of new detection technologies.
and for other means across other industries. hages are the most abundant biological particle On earth.
to break apart the biofilms that build up and corrode oil pipelines, or to detect the pathogenic bacteria that sometimes cause oil to sour by changing its composition.
With the assay, Lu says Sample6 hopes to bring synthetic biology, and specifically phages, to microbial detection across many fields.
We want ultimately to democratize the use of synthetic biology in the real world he says i
Theye also used as biological probes to image cancer and to study processes inside cells,
Pentelute envisions that the technology could have an impact on synthetic biology comparable to rapid synthesis of short strands of DNA and RNA.
Strano and the paper lead author, postdoc and plant biologist Juan Pablo Giraldo, envision turning plants into self-powered, photonic devices such as detectors for explosives or chemical weapons.
Giraldo says. his is a marvelous demonstration of how nanotechnology can be coupled with synthetic biology to modify
a professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University who was involved not in the research. he authors nicely show that self-assembling nanoparticles can be used to enhance the photosynthetic capacity of plants,
Giraldo says. t an opportunity for people from plant biology and the chemical engineering nanotechnology community to work together in an area that has a large potential.
That decoupling of the two parameters he says is something that biologists had observed in real fish.
That points to yet another possible application of soft robotics Rus says in biomechanics If you build an artificial creature with a particular bio-inspired behavior perhaps the solution for the engineered behavior could serve as a hypothesis for understanding
Video Melanie Gonick All of our algorithms and control theory are designed pretty much with the idea that we ve got rigid systems with defined joints says Barry Trimmer a biology professor at Tufts University who specializes in biomimetic soft robots.
MIT cancer biologists have discovered now that certain proteins in this structure, known as the extracellular matrix, help cancer cells make their escape.
Other authors are Steven Carr, director of the Proteomics Platform at the Broad Institute; Karl Clauser, a research scientist at the Broad Institute;
It dependent on modern technology having the genome sequences, having mass spectrometry machines that are really good,
This study utilizes the power of proteomics to identify extracellular matrix proteins critical in metastasis. Many of the proteins identified interact with cancer cells by binding to proteins called integrins that are found on cell surfaces,
of which can trigger release of hundreds of biomarkers that are then easily detectable in a patient s urine.
When we invented this new class of synthetic biomarker we used a highly specialized instrument to do the analysis says Bhatia the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical engineering and Computer science.
and colleagues introduced the concept of a synthetic biomarker technology to amplify signals from tumor proteins that would be hard to detect on their own.
This is a clever and inspired technology to develop new exogenous compounds that can detect clinical conditions with aberrantly high protease concentrations says Samuel Sia an associate professor of biological engineering at Columbia University who was involved not in the research.
This is a new idea to create an excreted biomarker instead of relying on what the body gives you she says.
The team is also working to identify signatures of MMPS that could be exploited as biomarkers for other types of cancer as well as for tumors that have metastasized.
Stocker says in some cases that phenomenon could lead to new approaches to tuning flow rates to prevent fouling of surfaces by microbes potentially averting everything from bacteria getting a toehold on medical equipment to biofilms causing drag on ship hulls.
Microbiologists have taken rarely into account fluid flow as an ecological parameter whereas physicists have started just recently to pay attention to microbes he says adding:
One prominent location is near the walls of tubes where the result is a strong enhancement of the bacteria s tendency to adhere to those walls and form biofilms.
But this effect varies greatly depending on the speed of the flow opening the possibility that the rate of biofilm formation can be tweaked by increasing or decreasing flow rates.
Biofilms are found everywhere Rusconi says adding that the majority of bacteria spend significant fractions of their lives adhering to surfaces.
Bacteria concentrated in biofilms are up to 1000 times more resistant to antibiotics than those suspended in liquid.
and idea owing to the major importance of bacterial biofilms The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and by a Gordon and Betty Moore Marine Microbial Initiative Investigator award to Stocker r
the better, says Darrell Irvine, a professor of biological engineering and of materials science and engineering, and the senior author of the paper.
The robot, developed by the team at MIT Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation, has mainly been used as a rehabilitation tool:
or it could be that you re interrogating a biological sample and too much light could damage it.
but other biological systems are the same. There could also be remote-sensing applications where you may want to look at something
#Biologists ID new cancer weakness About half of all cancer patients have a mutation in a gene called p53
A new study from MIT biologists has found that tumor cells with mutated p53 can be made much more vulnerable to chemotherapy by blocking another gene called MK2.
and potentially useful approach for others to use says Titia de Lange a professor of cell biology
and genetics at Rockefeller University who was not part of the research team. Using these mice the researchers found that before treatment tumors lacking both MK2
and also provide a new toolkit from which one can develop other novel bioassays, Doyle says.
and the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies through the U s army Research Office u
#Resistance is futile Cisplatin is given a chemotherapy drug to more than half of all cancer patients. The drug kills cells very effectively by damaging nuclear DNA but if tumors become resistant to cisplatin they often grow back.
and an author of a paper describing the findings in the Oct 31 online edition of the journal Biology & Chemistry.
Kelley a professor of biochemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Toronto. Lead authors are Simon Wisnovsky who received his Phd from the University of Toronto and MIT alumnus Justin Wilson Phd 13.
or replicate its genome. If enough of these blockages form the cell undergoes a type of programmed cell suicide called apoptosis
because they can interact with so many different biomolecules Radford says. By targeting specific cellular organelles with the same therapeutic molecules we can learn a lot about how the cells respond to a given compound
Hogan and his colleagues in the Newman Laboratory for Biomechanics and Human Rehabilitation have measured the stiffness of the ankle in various directions using a robot called the nklebot.
Eric Perreault, a professor of biomedical engineering and physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern University, says the group findings present the first insight into how muscle activation alters the ankle mechanical properties over its normal range of motion,
Mutations in the gene for calcineurin have previously been found in some schizophrenia patients. Ten years ago MIT researchers led by Susumu Tonegawa the Picower Professor of Biology
and Neuroscience created mice lacking the gene for calcineurin in the forebrain; these mice displayed several behavioral symptoms of schizophrenia including impaired short-term memory attention deficits and abnormal social behavior.
and colleagues at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory recorded the electrical activity of individual neurons in the hippocampus of these knockout mice
In the previous version of the system reported last December in Nature Biotechnology the researchers used mass spectrometry to distinguish the fragments by their mass.
The technology could also be useful for predicting recurrence of clots says Henri Spronk an assistant professor of biochemistry at Maastricht University in The netherlands.
Now, Semprus Biosciences, a startup co-founded by two MIT alumni Christopher Loose Phd 7
the biomaterial has positioned Semprus as a fast-growing biotech firm in Kendall Square. In its six years, the startup seed-funded, in part,
Seeing commercial potential, Langer a chemical engineer, bioengineer, and famed MIT entrepreneur layed matchmakerbetween Loose and Lucchino,
The research was funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and Nanoscope Technologies, LLC n
The new technology is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, written by MIT Polina Anikeeva and 10 others.
For example, light could be transmitted through the optical channels to enable optogenetic neural stimulation, the effects
or silence neurons with pulses of light, a method called optogenetics. Activating the projections led to compulsive sucrose-eating
However, in recent years neuroscientists have shown in animal models that it is possible to reverse the debilitating effects of these gene mutations.
whether different gene mutations disrupt common physiological processes. If this were the case, a treatment developed for one genetic cause of autism
Different genes, same consequences Another cause of autism and intellectual disability is the loss of a series of genes on human chromosome 16,
Current research indicates that well over 100 distinct gene mutations can manifest as intellectual disability and autism.
where biomaterials are chosen and rationally designed to match specific tissue types and disease states. After characterizing the adhesive material performance in different diseased tissues,
Joseph Bonventre, chief of the renal unit and director of the bioengineering division at Brigham and Women Hospital in Boston, agrees that the study represents an important step toward a more personalized approach. ou want the best adhesive possible,
rather than developing biomaterials that try to work for all conditions. Doctors have begun using this kind of personalized approach
but it has not yet spread to the selection of biomaterials such as tissue glue. The MIT team now hopes to move the sealant into clinical trials
Fang says, of biomolecules placed on the hybrid material surface. Sheng Shen, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie mellon University who was involved not in this research,
and other biological components. n the biological domain, there are various molecules and atoms in contact with one another, sliding along like biomolecular motors,
as a result of friction or lack of friction, Gangloff says. o this intuition for how to arrange atoms so as to minimize
from the nanoscale to the macroscale. he applications and related impact of their novel method propels a huge variety of research fields investigating effects relevant from raft tectonics down to biological systems
Earlier this month, MIT spinout Microchips Biotech partnered with a pharmaceutical giant to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable,
Invented by Microchips Biotech cofounders Michael Cima, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, the microchips consist of hundreds of pinhead-sized reservoirs,
and osteoporosis. Now Microchips Biotech will begin co-developing microchips with Teva Pharmaceutical, the world largest producer of generic drugs,
Microchips Biotech says these microchips could also improve medication-prescription adherence a surprisingly costly issue in the United states. A 2012 report published in the Annals of Internal medicine estimated that Americans who don stick to prescriptions rack up $100 billion to $289 billion
Microchips Biotech will continue work on its flagship product, a birth-control microchip, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
Cima, who now serves on the Microchips Biotech board of directors with Langer, sees this hormone-releasing microchip as one of the first implantable rtificial organsecause it acts as a gland. lot of the therapies are trying to chemically trick the endocrine systems Cima says. e are doing that with this artificial organ we created. ild ideasinspiration for the microchips came in the late 1990s,
For years, the technology underwent rigorous research and development at Microchips Biotech. But in 2011, Langer and Cima,
EMS innovationsmicrochips Biotech made several innovations in the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) manufacturing process to ensure the microchips could be commercialized.
To do so, Microchips Biotech modified a cold-welding ongue and grooveprocess. This meant depositing a soft,
Biometric sensors are getting smaller and the ease with which data can be analyzed and shared is improving.
biometric sensors will be featured in 40 percent of smartphones shipped to end users With the way technology is developing and the increasing consumer demand,
Using two biocompatible parts, University at Buffalo researchers and their colleagues have designed a nanoparticle that can be detected by six medical imaging techniques:
"says researcher Jonathan Lovell, Phd, UB assistant professor of biomedical engineering.""Once such systems are developed, a patient could theoretically go in for one scan with one machine instead of multiple scans with multiple machines."
"Combining these two biocompatible components into a single nanoparticle could give tomorrow's doctors a powerful,
While this can be achieved through biological conversion (using bacteria to convert the nitrate to nitrogen gas),
and prevents attachment and biofilm formation. These pores can be as small as 15 nanometers;
according to a study recently published in the journal Biofouling. The study also investigates how the size of the nanopores changes the repulsive forces on bacteria."
"Anodized metals could be used to prevent buildups of biofilms slick communities of bacteria that adhere to surfaces
a recently discovered urinary antigen and a potential biomarker for bladder cancer. The new tool could be used as a high-throughput screening platform to identify patients at risk of developing the urologic condition.
the SERS-based bioassay has two practical advantages: the low-volume sample requires no purification prior to testing
and induce negative biological effects. However until this study their effect on the development of atherosclerosis has been largely unknown.
This reality leads to increased human exposure and interaction of silica-based nanoparticles with biological systems.
and Chemical Biology and Professor Walter Kolch in Systems Biology Ireland synthesised nanorods with a long iron segment coated with polyethylene glycol
and biological materials said Kong a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering. Kong the lead author of the Oct 31 article describing the current work in the journal Nano Letters said that the contact lens project on the other hand involved the printing of active electronics using diverse materials.
or biological cells or to create antennas or photonic components. For this work we focused on creating nanostructures using photosensitive polymers
The research team received funding for their study from the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology the European Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council.
revealing how they selectively block certain molecules from entering, protecting genetic material and normal cell functions.
and new ways of delivering gene therapies, say the scientists behind the study. At the heart of every cell in our body is a cell nucleus,
the research may also hold promise for the development of new antiviral drugs and better delivery mechanisms for gene therapy.
It may also be possible to improve on the design of current mechanisms for delivering gene therapy to better cross the nuclear pores
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