Biological warfare: an emerging threat in the 21st century
... he says, ``but any technology that can be used to insert genes into DNA can be used for either good or bad.`` Block points out that genetic maps of deadly viruses, bacteria and other microorganisms already are widely available in the public domain. Last summer, for example, a leading scientific journal pub...Pharmaceutical 'smart bomb' targets cancer cells
...cells is used as the activator. When researchers insert a gene for this enzyme into cancer cells, the cells start to express the nitroreductase, making them an easy target. The prodrug "bomb" goes off and unleashes the toxin that spreads to neighboring cells which ultimately kills the tumor. The English...... of a nucleotide, meaning a virus would mistakenly insert ribavirin into newly formed copies of its RNA genome, Crotty said. Crotty and his colleagues then found that this insertion of ribavirin into the virus' RNA created genetic mutations in a culture of the virus growing in cells in a petri dish. The......plants from water weevils, Hall and his colleagues insert insect-killing genes in the seeds of rice plants. Ideally, when the plants grow, these genes produce insect-killing proteins in the plant roots, preventing water weevils from eating the roots. However, Hall and his group discovered that many of the ...Brown researchers use wildcards to develop better way to sequence DNA
... hybridization. In their method, they insert gaps that act as wildcards in DNA probes. When sequencing DNA, scientists look for the arrangement of bases (amino acids represented by the letters C,T,G and A) contained in a particular strand of DNA, which is too small t...Tiny microchips have big promise in fighting serious diseases
...'re ready to create the chips and use the robot to insert them into the hearts of lab animals," Michler said. "We're looking at probably five years before human clinical trials begin." Joining Michler on the panel were Costantino Benedetti, director of cancer pain, therapy and palliative medicine at the Jam...'Gatekeeper' protein is key to cellular life; links bacteria, chloroplasts and mitochondria
...dependent," that is, researchers believed it would insert itself into the membrane on its own. But in bacteria lacking YidC, even the Procoat was blocked from entering the membrane. "To everyone's surprise, the protein nearly everybody thought inserted spontaneously requires YidC to succeed in entering the ...Understanding of floral scents blossoms in Purdue laboratory
... bee must land on the lower lobe of the flower and insert himself partially into the tube. As he does this, the back of the bee brushes against the upper lobe of the snapdragon flower. When a bee does this, scent molecules are deposited on his back and legs, and he carries the scent back to the hive, attrac...Artificial chromosomes could cure diseases
... available to the public, Chromos says it plans to insert the chromosomes into cells which will be grown in fermenters to produce beneficial proteins and to genetically engineer animals so that they produce valuable proteins in their milk. It has already produced a second line of mice, this time carrying a ...Molecular structure suggests how a gene can "jump"
...-1) uses a process similar to DNA transposition to insert itself into human DNA. "Just as enzymes called transposases make transposition possible, enzymes called integrases catalyze similar events in retroviruses, including HIV-1," Rayment says. "Researchers have now studied the catalytic core of five diffe...Genomics project aims to create a "virtual plant"
...ful predictive value, or even enable scientists to insert an Arabidopsis gene directly into a crop plant or manipulate the crop plant gene." The 2010 Project will take into account the limitations of Arabidopsis as a model plant by advocating similar studies in other plant species, noted workshop co-ch...UF researchers develop tiny tool kit to study genes and unhealthy cell
...r than the human hair, that physicians may one day insert into individual cells to test for disease. Additionally, he's pioneering microscopic "nanoparticles" that could carry drugs directly to sickly cells to treat or exterminate them. All the tools meld biotechnology with the fast emerging field of nanote......mical called neutral red. Molecules of neutral red insert themselves into the bacterial membrane, where they hijack the reaction's electron-transport process, and shuttle electrons onto an electrode. "It's like an electric plug," says Zeikus. "You put it in the cell membrane and put the cells in a cathode......rial and error. The team's ultimate goal is to insert the artificial DNA into bacteria and get the new codons read without disrupting normal cellular operations. "That is not an easy project," says Eric Kool, a chemist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. But if successful, bacteria could pr...Scientists develop most efficient mouse cloning strategy to date, create transgenic clone
...an important research tool because it allows us to insert mutations in a gene and study how it affects the whole animal. If we know which gene is mutated in a particular human disease, we can develop mouse models with the same mutation," says Dr. Rideout. Today, mouse models of diseases such as epilepsy,...Chromosome centers defined and sequenced for model plant
...plants, said Preuss. Previously, researchers could insert only one gene at a time, but by connecting several genes on one long strand to a centromere, it may be possible to move whole sets of genes into an organism. These altered plants, even a weed like Arabidopsis, could then provide an inexpensive source......sease inmonkeys. Researchers at OHSU were able to insert DNA material into the monkey eggs by attaching foreigngenes to the outside of monkey sperm. The scientists inserted DNA from jellyfish that encodes a genefor a glowing green protein. The DNA was then inserted into the egg using an innovative procedur......y the U.S. Department of Energy. The capability to insert genes also makes D. radiodurans a candidate for Mars pharmacists and to become "the plow that broke the plains" on Mars. But first, it may help search for life on Mars as a stand-in for Martian microbes in simulated Mars environments. The changi...Scientists at TIGR uncover the minimal number of cellular genes needed for life
...y call "global transposon mutagenesis" to randomly insert unrelated DNA into the middle of genes, thereby disrupting gene function. The cells which grow and divide after this procedure can have disruptive insertions only in non-essential genes. Researchers at TIGR have now uncovered the number of non-essent...... exposure of this major cavity. The loops can then insert into the interior of the membrane, helped by favorable electrostatic interactions between the negatively charged phospholipid head groups and basic amino acid residues located at the barrel surface. The results of this structural analysis are relev...