An international team, led by researchers from Australia, have developed a system using nanotechnology that could allow people with diabetes to take oral insulin in the future. The researchers say the new insulin could be eaten by taking a tablet or even embedded within a piece of chocolate.
A new study has been led by Prof. Xing-Hua Xia (State Key Lab of Analytical Chemistry for Life Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University). While analyzing the infrared photoinduced force response of quartz, Dr. Jian Li observed a unique spectral response that is different from the far field infrared absorption spectrum.
A team of chemists and bioengineers at Rice University and the University of Houston have achieved a significant milestone in their work to create a biomaterial that can be used to grow biological tissues outside the human body.
The results of a metagenomic study from the University of Trento suggest that the CRISPR toolbox will need to make room for another CRISPR enzyme. The disruption should be minimal because the newly identified enzyme is unusually compact. It consists of just over 1,000 amino acids. And yet it is also strongly active and highly precise. The hope is that it can be packaged with guide RNA within the tight quarters afforded by adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors, and thereby expand the use of in vivo gene editing in therapeutic applications.
The study was led by Anna Cereseto, PhD, and Nicola Segata, PhD, of the department of cellular, computational, and integrative biology. Cereseto leads a laboratory that develops advanced genome editing technologies and their application in the medical sector. Segata is the head of a laboratory of metagenomics, where he studies the variety and characteristics of the human microbiome and its role in health. Their collaboration has led to the identification, in a bacterium of the intestine, of new CRISPR-Cas9 molecules that could have a clinical potential to treat genetic diseases.
Detailed findings from the study recently appeared in Nature Communications, in an article titled, “CoCas9 is a compact nuclease from the human microbiome for efficient and precise genome editing.”
From unhackable communication networks to powerful computers, quantum technology promises huge advances.
Earth’s magnetic field plays a key role in making our planet habitable. The protective bubble over the atmosphere shields the planet from solar radiation, winds, cosmic rays and wild swings in temperature.
However, Earth’s magnetic field almost collapsed 591 million years ago, and this change, paradoxically, may have played a pivotal role in the blossoming of complex life, new research has found.
“In general, the field is protective. If we had not had a field early in Earth history water would have been stripped from the planet by the solar wind (a stream of energized particles flowing from the sun toward Earth),” said John Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester in New York and senior author of the new study.
“People often ask about this, and simulating these difficult-to-imagine processes helps me connect the mathematics of relativity to actual consequences in the real universe,” said Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who created the visualizations. “So I simulated two different scenarios, one where a camera — a stand-in for a daring astronaut — just misses the event horizon and slingshots back out, and one where it crosses the boundary, sealing its fate.”
Researchers have discovered a kind of “sperm whale phonetic alphabet” embedded in the strings of “click” sounds the whales use to communicate and hunt.
Move over, graphene. There’s a new, improved two-dimensional material in the lab. Borophene, the atomically thin version of boron first synthesized in 2015, is more conductive, thinner, lighter, stronger and more flexible than graphene, the 2D version of carbon. Now, researchers at Penn State have made the material potentially more useful by imparting chirality — or handedness — on it, which could make for advanced sensors and implantable medical devices. The chirality, induced via a method never before used on borophene, enables the material to interact in unique ways with different biological units such as cells and protein precursors.
The team, led by Dipanjan Pan, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering, published their work — the first of its kind, they said — in ACS Nano.
“Borophene is a very interesting material, as it resembles carbon very closely including its atomic weight and electron structure but with more remarkable properties. Researchers are only starting to explore its applications,” Pan said. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to understand the biological interactions of borophene and the first report of imparting chirality on borophene structures.”
