is launched today at the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute in Nairobi, which is leading the initiative.
pointing to possibilities such as screening large numbers of biological samples or laboratory animals all at once.""Giving people a new degree of freedom will hopefully lead to things that we haven't thought of at all. f
he remembered a paper he had read more than a decade earlier about HIV resistance in people who carry a specific genetic mutation.
The mutation is a short deletion in the CCR5 gene. The gene encodes a receptor that HIV uses to enter immune cells called CD4+T cells.
About 1%of the European population carries the CCR5 mutation in both copies of the CCR5 gene,
and H tter reasoned that one of those matches might also carry CCR5 mutations. Donor number 61 turned out to be the one,
Work by two independent groups will make it easier to find out the structure of single biological molecules such as proteins without destroying
He is one of the lead researchers in a multicenter clinical study using new exosomal diagnostic tests developed by New york city-based Exosome Diagnostics to identify a genetic mutation found exclusively in glioma, the most common form of brain cancer.
Once the specific cancer mutation is identified, clinicians will periodically draw additional bio-fluids to monitor the mutation levels to determine
whether a patient is responding to therapy. Whereas Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a useful tool, tumors only show up on imaging scans once they are at least one millimeter in diameter
researchers warn in a study due to appear in the journal Biological Conservation1. Known as Himalayan Viagra'because of its supposed libido-boosting powers,
says one of the study s co-authors, Kamaljit Bawa, a conservation biologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
India and Bhutan, says Liu Xingzhong, a mycologist in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microbiology in Beijing.
In one of the first attempts to explore atmospheric microbiology at high altitude, researchers analysed air samples from a six-week hurricane-research mission by NASA in 2010.
bacteria accounted for around 20%of all particles#biological and non-biological#a higher proportion than in the near-Earth atmosphere."
says Ulrich Karlson, an environmental microbiologist at Aarhus University in Denmark, who was involved not in the study."
says Konstantinos Konstantinidis, an environmental microbiologist at the Georgia Institute of technology in Atlanta and one of the study's authors.
Yoshiki Sasai, who has been wowing biologists and non-scientists alike by growing rudimentary retinas, brain parts and other tissues from stem cells (see Nature 488,444-446;
2012), has long been negotiating with the government for facilities to link basic research at the Center for Developmental biology in Kobe, where he works, with clinics and industry.
mainly to support Masayo Takahashi, who works next door at the Center for Developmental biology. Takahashi is planning the first trial of ips cells in humans,
says Anura Rambukkana, a regeneration biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who led the study.
and metabolic diseases, says Sheng Ding, a stem-cell biologist at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease in San francisco, California.
and they can also acquire mutations during the reprogramming process, which means that every ips cell must be evaluated thoroughly before it can be used in any study."
California, began selling them to cell biologists, who prize them as fluorescent imaging labels for proteins and other biological molecules.
As recently as 2010, the biomedical sector was responsible for US$48#million of $67#million in total quantum dot revenues, according to BCC Research of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
But a legacy of distrust of biological research among aboriginal groups means that genetic studies are viewed suspiciously
the sulphur-assisted amino acid transfer is found elsewhere in biology: some bacteria rely on it to synthesize proteins.
"It s laborious and not as effective as biology, says Leigh. Leigh and other chemists have used already rotaxanes to move droplets of fluid around2;
Molecular machines inspired by biology could eventually enable chemists to build materials with a specific sequence of molecules#a strand of polystyrene in which each component bears one of a range of extra chemical groups, for example.
"That s how biology does it, so why can t we? asks Leigh s
#Nearby star is almost as old as the Universe Astronomers have discovered a Methuselah of stars#a denizen of the Solar system's neighbourhood that is at least 13.2 billion years old and formed shortly after the Big bang."
says team leader S#bastien Calvignac-Spencer, an evolutionary biologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin.#
parallel universe of unexplored RNAS, says Nikolaus Rajewsky, the lead author of one of the studies and a systems biologist at the Max Delbr#ck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin.
or experimental artefacts, says Erik Sontheimer, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Instead,
But advances in sequencing have allowed biologists to accumulate large data sets of RNA sequences including some from RNA without tails.
Last year, Julia Salzman, a molecular biologist at Stanford university School of medicine in California, and her colleagues sent the first missive from the circular universe.
"I can t think of another form we might have missed, laughs Phillip Sharp, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts institute of technology in Cambridge."
a biologist and open-access advocate at the University of California, Berkeley, says that he is disappointed."
#How to turn living cells into computers Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in living cells.
Synthetic biology seeks to bring concepts from electronic engineering to cell biology, treating gene functions as components in a circuit.
a synthetic biologist at Boston University in Massachusetts who was involved not in the study. Collins developed the genetic toggle switch that helped to kick-start the field of synthetic biology more than a decade ago2.
A wide range of computational circuits for cells have been developed since, including a simple counter that Collins
a synthetic biologist at MIT who led the latest research.""We wanted to show you can assemble a bunch of simple parts in a very easy fashion to give you many types of logical functions.
Christopher Voigt, a synthetic biologist also at MIT, calls the artificial modules"a very digital and permanent way to store information in DNA.
#which would be important for a biologist wanting to record key moments in a cell s ancestry.
Linguists routinely construct such trees using techniques borrowed from evolutionary biology. The algorithm can automatically identify cognate words (ones with the same root) in the languages.
using robots to test chemicals for biological activity.""If it really works, it might provide a future model to operate early drug discovery,
is due to gaps in the range of biological targets that industry is pursuing and in the libraries of compounds screened for activity against those targets.
Any academic group or company can also propose assays to test molecules in the library for biological activity.
The hope is that members will build on the results to improve the molecules biological properties
but to identify biological pathways that might make good drug targets. The European initiative, by contrast, aims to propel drug development.
any tissue formed would yield better models of human biology than those formed from mouse cells.
says Jon Clardy, a biological chemist at Harvard Medical school in Boston, Massachusetts, who was involved not in the work
Ewen Callaway interviews biological chemist Jon Clardy about the significance of the new technique for deciphering molecular structures.
says co-author David Stuart, a structural biologist at the University of Oxford, UK, who is working with the World health organization
Geoffrey Chang, a structural biologist at the University of California, San diego, says that the findings are very similar to those for the MATE protein from Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera.
and cancer biologists that this new kind of immunotherapy can work, he says. Oncologist Renier Brentjens, also at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, remembers the day that he had to tell one of the patients in the trial that the weeks of high-dose chemotherapy the 58-year-old man had endured had worked not after all."
and identify mutations that might be causing the undiagnosed diseases that afflict his clients families.
Ingenuity Systems in Redwood City, California, allows users to upload a list of mutations in a person s genome,
) Craig Smith, a deep-sea biologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, will lead an initial assessment of seafloor life for Lockheed s project, gathering baseline data for the potential harvest zone
says Charles Brown, a biologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and one of the authors of the study.
Yuste has been leading the call for a big biology project2 that would do just that in the human brain,
but this time,"we had five microbiologists on board, says Lever. The team, which included scientists from six different countries, drilled through 265 metres of sediment
says Samuel Wasser, director of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle and one of the driving forces behind the push for forensic examinations of elephant ivory.
so harder implants that don bend with their surrounding biological environment can easily shift and move to a different area than they were implanted,
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
Current research indicates that well over 100 distinct gene mutations can manifest as intellectual disability and autism.
Studies at other institutions have identified mutations in the gene for Syngap associated with autism and intellectual disability.
To see how these mutations affect the protein function the Johns Hopkins research team altered their lab-grown cells
so that they had genes with one of three of these mutations. All three of the disability-associated mutations showed similar effects:
Compared to normal neurons, there was less Syngap in synapses when they were at rest, but activating Camkii did not noticeably change anything. his gives us a much clearer idea of how some Syngap mutations cause problems in the brain,
Huganir says. The findings may one day lead to drugs or other interventions that would lessen the effects of the mutations,
he says. Other authors on the paper are Menglong Zeng and Mingjie Zhang, both of Hong kong University of Science and Technology c
but that they can help pinpoint key biological pathways relevant to ALS that then become the focus of targeted drug development efforts,
caused by dozens of different genetic mutations, which wee only beginning to discover. The more of these mutations we identify
the better we can deciphernd influencehe pathways that lead to disease. The other co-leaders of the study are Richard M. Myers, Phd, president and scientific director of Hudsonalpha,
TBK1 mutations appeared in about 1 percent of the ALS patients large proportion in the context of a complex disease with multiple genetic components, according to Dr. Goldstein.
and now we have shown that mutations in either gene are associated with ALS, said Dr. Goldstein. hus there seems to be no question that aberrations in the pathways that require TBK1
and mouse models with mutations in TBK1 or OPTN to study ALS disease mechanisms and to screen for drug candidates.
professor of biological psychiatry at the University of Oslo and a senior co-author. Sudha Seshadri, MD, professor of neurology at the Boston University School of medicine, the principal investigator of the Neurology Working group within the Cohorts for Heart and Aging research in Genomic Epidemiology consortium and a study co-author added:
#Researchers Enlarge Brain Samples Making Them Easier to Image New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens.
in biology that right where things get interesting, says Boyden, who is a member of MIT Media Lab and Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research.
And the cast itself is swollen, unimpeded by the original biological structure, Tillberg says. The MIT team imaged this astwith commercially available confocal microscopes,
and map how they connect to each other across large regions. here are lots of biological questions where you have to understand a large structure,
The discovery, published in the scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology, comes on the heels of a study published last month in the journal PLOS ONE.
In Monday's study, synthetic biologists at the University of California at Berkeley inserted an enzyme gene from beets to coax yeast into converting tyrosine--an amino acid easily derived from sugar--into a compound called reticuline.
scientists working in the field of tissue engineering have been unable to construct a basic framework to hold together all of the biological components that make up a leg or arm,
Dr. Bruce Conklin, a stem cell biologist at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular disease in San francisco, along with colleagues developed these tiny hearts using stem cells derived from skin tissue.
microbiologist Kim Lewis, along with his colleague at Northeastern University in Boston, microbial ecologist Slava Epstein, described a new technique for coaxing bacteria to grow:
and grow new bacterial coloniesany scooped out of soil in the backyard of microbiologist Losee Ling,
when a small percentage of microbes escape an antibiotic because of a mutation and then those bacteria multiply.)
a microbiologist at the University of California, San francisco. But there are many paths to developing resistance,
Researchers led by biologist Stephen Elledge of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical school wanted to develop a test that could look at every current or past infection in one fell swoop.
however, says microbiologist Vincent Racaniello of Columbia University. efore we view this as a definitive definition of what people have been infected with,
a cancer biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical center in Dallas. Researchers have used magnets before to levitate whole creatures,
and memory, says biologist Irina Conboy of the University of California, Berkeley, who recently published a scientific paper showing that targeting a separate molecule can lower levels of B2m
Now, a team of physicists and biologists have gone a key step further, coaxing a cell to envelop a tiny plastic sphere that acts like a resonant cavityhown in green in the micrograph abovehus placing a whole laser within a cell.
Scientists have been hunting for years for mutations in crystallin proteins that might offer new insights
molecular biologist Ling Zhao may have done just that. Her team came up with the eye drop idea after finding that children with a genetically inherited form of cataracts shared a mutation that stopped the production of lanosterol, an important steroid in the body.
When their parents did not have the same mutation, the adults produced lanosterol and had no cataracts.
So the researchers wondered: What if lanosterol helped prevent or reduce cataracts? The team tested a lanosterol-laden solution in three separate experiments.
a molecular biologist at Massachusetts institute of technology in Cambridge not affiliated with the study. He has been investigating cataract proteins
and molecular biologist at UC San diego, is looking forward to seeing what the lanosterol drops can dissolve next. think the natural next step is looking to translate it into humans,
so seeing molecules would suggest something is replenishing them hinting at possible biological activity. Europa is sized a good moon
what was going on what you might call proto-biology before life even got started he says.
if you have imaging probes that can sense specific biomolecules Johnson says. Dual actionjohnson and his colleagues designed the particles
These engineered bacteria could also be used as biological computers Lu says adding that they would be particularly useful in types of computation that require a lot of parallel processing such as picking patterns out of an image.
and Therapeutics a new interdisciplinary center dedicated to advancing the understanding of the microbiome s role in human biology
Molecular biologists microbiologists and cell biologists seek to understand microbe/microbe and microbe/host cell function and communication he says.
ut it was really interesting to learn about how they were trying to solve this problem from a biological standpoint,
if we could create a synthetic active system that could sense gradients in biological receptors Alexander-Katz explains.
#Fast modeling of cancer mutations Sequencing the genomes of tumor cells has revealed thousands of genetic mutations linked with cancer.
However sifting through this deluge of information to figure out which of these mutations actually drive cancer growth has proven to be a tedious time-consuming process.
MIT researchers have developed now a new way to model the effects of these genetic mutations in mice.
which require genetically engineering mice that carry the cancerous mutations. It s a very rapid and very adaptable approach to make models says Thales Papagiannakopoulos a postdoc at MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
With a lot of these mutations we have no idea what their role is in tumor progression.
If we can actually understand the biology we can then go in and try targeted therapeutic approaches.
Cutting out cancer genescrispr originally discovered by biologists studying the bacterial immune system involves a set of proteins that bacteria use to defend themselves against bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria.
Scientists have begun recently exploiting this system to make targeted mutations in the genomes of living animals either deleting genes
This process is much faster than generating mice with mutations inserted at the embryonic stem cell stage
This method also offers new ways to seek personalized treatments for cancer patients depending on the types of mutations found in their tumors the researchers say.
This opens up a whole new field of being personalized able to do oncology where you can model human mutations
and start treating tumors based on these mutations Papagiannakopoulos says. The research was funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute the Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology at MIT and the National Cancer Institute u
#Nanoparticles get a magnetic handle A long-sought goal of creating particles that can emit a colorful fluorescent glow in a biological environment
Compactness is critical for biological and a lot of other applications. In addition previous efforts were unable to produce particles of uniform and predictable size
Initially at least the particles might be used to probe basic biological functions within cells Bawendi suggests.
Melanie Gonick/MIT The ability to manipulate the particles with electromagnets is key to using them in biological research Bawendi explains:
The next step for the team is to test the new nanoparticles in a variety of biological settings.
This work goes a long way to squeezing the last drop of ethanol from sugar adds Gerald Fink an MIT professor of biology member of the Whitehead Institute and the paper s other senior author.
#High-speed biologics screen MIT engineers have devised a way to rapidly test hundreds of different drug-delivery vehicles in living animals making it easier to discover promising new ways to deliver a class of drugs called biologics
In a study appearing in the journal Integrative biology the researchers used this technology to identify materials that can efficiently deliver RNA to zebrafish and also to rodents.
This type of high-speed screen could help overcome one of the major bottlenecks in developing disease treatments based on biologics:
Biologics is the fastest growing field in biotech because it gives you the ability to do highly predictive designs with unique targeting capabilities says senior author Mehmet Fatih Yanik an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and biological engineering.
However delivery of biologics to diseased tissues is challenging because they are significantly larger and more complex than conventional drugs.
because their larvae are transparent making it easy to see the effects of genetic mutations or drugs.#
and other small animals have teamed up with Anderson et al. who are leading experts in RNA delivery to create a new platform for rapidly screening biologics
Yanik s lab is currently using this technology to find delivery vehicles that can carry biologics across the blood-brain barrier a very selective barrier that makes it difficult for drugs
#Biologists find an early sign of cancer Years before they show any other signs of disease pancreatic cancer patients have very high levels of certain amino acids in their bloodstream according to a new study from MIT Dana-Farber
What that means for the tumor and what that means for the health of the patient those are long-term questions still to be answered says Matthew Vander Heiden an associate professor of biology a member of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
This is a finding of fundamental importance in the biology of pancreatic cancer says David Tuveson a professor at the Cancer Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who was involved not in the work.
if this type of technology could find use in domestic maritime operations ranging from the detection of smuggled nuclear biological
CRISPR originally discovered by biologists studying the bacterial immune system involves a set of proteins that bacteria use to defend themselves against bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria.
They also successfully targeted another antibiotic resistance gene encoding SHV-18 a mutation in the bacterial chromosome providing resistance to quinolone antibiotics and a virulence factor in enterohemorrhagic E coli.
We re excited about the application of Combigem to probe complex multifactorial phenotypes such as stem cell differentiation cancer biology
Professor of Biology and Neuroscience director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at MIT s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and senior author of the paper.#
David Anderson a professor of biology at the California Institute of technology says the study makes an important contribution to neuroscientists fundamental understanding of the brain
it a good way to study cancer biology and diagnose whether the primary cancer has moved to a new site to generate metastatic tumors,
It was developed originally in the laboratory of Koch Institute Director#Tyler Jacks the#David H. Koch Professor of Biology#who is co-senior author of this paper.
With efficient delivery of therapeutic RNA any individual small RNA or combination of RNAS could be deployed to regulate the genetic mutations underlying a given patient s cancer.
This investigation typifies the Koch Institute s model of bringing biologists and engineers together to engage in interdisciplinary cancer research.
This study is a terrific example of the potential of new RNA therapies to treat disease that was done in a highly collaborative way between biologists
#New analysis reveals tumor weaknesses Scientists have known for decades that cancer can be caused by genetic mutations
The other key component of Sikes system is a biochip a glass slide coated with hundreds of DNA PROBES that are complementary to sequences from the gene being studied.
When a DNA sample is exposed to this chip any strands that match the target sequences are trapped on the biochip.
The MIT team is now adapting the device to detect methylation of other cancer-linked genes by changing the DNA sequences of the biochip probes.
because we ve struggled with the technical aspects of doing these genetic experiments says Kirk Deitsch a professor of microbiology
#A new way to model cancer Sequencing the genomes of tumor cells has revealed thousands of mutations associated with cancer.
One way to discover the role of these mutations is breed to a strain of mice that carry the genetic flaw
They have shown that a gene-editing system called CRISPR can introduce cancer-causing mutations into the livers of adult mice enabling scientists to screen these mutations much more quickly.
They are now working on ways to deliver the necessary CRISPR components to other organs allowing them to investigate mutations found in other types of cancer.
Tyler Jacks director of MIT s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the David H. Koch Professor of Biology is the paper s senior author.
Previous studies have shown that genetically engineered mice with mutations in both of those genes will develop cancer within a few months.
which requires introducing mutations into embryonic stem cells can take more than a year and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
if additional mutations occur later on. To create this model the researchers had to cut out the normal version of the gene
Using CRISPR to generate tumors should allow scientists to more rapidly study how different genetic mutations interact to produce cancers as well as the effects of potential drugs on tumors with a specific genetic profile.
In the near term the material could also be embedded in lab-on-a-chip devices to magnetically direct the flow of cells and other biological material through a diagnostic chip s microchannels.
when it s needed such as in a microfluidic device used to test biological or chemical samples by mixing them with a variety of reagents.
MIT postdoc Seyed Mahmoudi a co-author of the paper notes that electric fields cannot penetrate into conductive fluids such as biological fluids so conventional systems wouldn t be able to manipulate them.
The biological causes of mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have mystified scientists for decades; in the last five years however understanding has accelerated dramatically driven by advances in human genomics.
The discovery of specific genes associated with these disorders provides significant clues to their biological basis and points to possible molecular targets for novel therapies.
Stanley s new commitment is the culmination of a 25-year personal mission to discover the biology of psychiatric disorders
and begun to identify specific gene mutations and the critical underlying biological processes such as an impaired ability of neurons to communicate with each other.
We are going to illuminate the biology behind these conditions says Eric Lander founding director and president of the Broad Institute and a professor of biology at MIT.
If we know the biological causes we can begin to dispel the stigma around people battling mental illness
Ten years ago finding the biological causes of psychiatric disorders was like trying to climb a wall with no footholds says Hyman who Is distinguished also the Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard.
Celebrating its 10th anniversary this month the Broad Institute is today home to a community of more than 2000 members including physicians biologists chemists computer scientists engineers staff and representatives of many other disciplines.
They also plan to expand their sample collection efforts dramatically especially among understudied populations such as those in African nations to reveal the many as-yet-undiscovered mutations relevant to disease.
Reveal the biological pathways in which these genes act. To do so they will push technological boundaries working with new techniques that allow them to manipulate
In contrast to researchers studying cancer or diabetes researchers studying psychiatric disorders have been unable to identify animal models that correctly capture important biological aspects of the disorders
which allows them to precisely introduce any mutations they choose. Develop chemicals to modulate biological pathways to serve as drug leads.
The researchers plan to build on the existing therapeutic efforts within the Stanley Center and draw on the Broad s Therapeutics Platform a technological powerhouse with the capacity to create
and screen hundreds of thousands of compounds to identify molecules that can powerfully and precisely influence specific biological pathways relevant to psychiatric disorders.
We re still at the beginning of the curve of translating the emerging genetics into actionable biology but it s happening much faster than
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