Life Sciences and Chemistry

The cosmetic, textile, and food industries and even the construction industry use starch, the main energy reserve of plants, as a biodegradable and renewable substance for a variety of applications. To get to know the metabolism of this carbohydrate better and thus facilitate its industrial use and application, Milagros Rodríguez López proposed, in her PhD thesis, the identifying and isolating of the enzyme (or enzymes) responsible for the degradation activity of the precursor molecule for starch: A

Important goal achieved in potential animal-to-human organ transplantation

In a session today at the annual meeting of the International Embryo Transfer Society (IETS), Randall Prather, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Reproductive Biotechnology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, announced the successful cloning of the first miniature swine with both copies of a specific gene “knocked out” of its DNA. The ultimate goal of this research, which is being conducted in partnership wi

A research team led by Johns Hopkins scientists has discovered that a special, tiny group of cells at the back of the eye help tell the brain how much light there is, causing the pupil to get bigger or smaller. The findings, which appeared in the Jan. 10 issue of Science, largely complete the picture of how light levels are detected in the eye.

“This tiny group of cells, together with rods and cones, are the bulk of the eye’s mechanisms for detecting levels of light and passing that in

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) report in an upcoming article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society their synthesis of a form of the bacterium Escherichia coli with a genetic code that uses 21 basic amino acid building blocks to synthesize proteins–instead of the 20 found in nature.

This is the first time that anyone has created a completely autonomous organism that uses 21 amino acids and has the metabolic machinery to build those amino acids.

“We

Expanding the genetic code: the world’s first truly unnatural organism
From time immemorial, every living thing has shared the same basic set of building blocks – 20 amino acids from which all proteins are made.

That is, until now: A group of scientists say they have, for the first time, created an organism that can produce a 21st amino acid and incorporate it into proteins completely on its own. The research should help probe some of the central questions of evolutionary theory.

ADE Biotec and the INASMET Foundation, both from the Basque Country, after three years of working together, have developed a new purification technique for purines. The technique is based on electroflotation and could be very beneficial for agriculture as it has a high level (80%+) of purification and very low costs (1 euro/m3). Most of the development project has been carried out at a pilot plant on a Toledo pig farm.

Nowadays purines (excrements plus sewage water from farms) constitute one