Genetic Engineering
Featured Topics in Life Sciences: Vaccines | Government Funding | Chemistry | Alternative Medicine | Laboratory Equipment | all topics
Filter by: News | Articles | New to Market | Tools & Technology | Videos | Podcasts | Journal Articles | White Papers
Mar 18 | News
The detection of tissue-damaging pungent chemicals like those found in wasabi, tear gas and cigarette smoke is called chemical nociception. It’s different than either taste or smell, and according to recent phylogenetics research, this defensive sensor has been conserved across 500 million years of evolution.
Mar 11 | News
Children inherit about 30 mutated genes from each parent, fewer than had been thought, but enough in at least one case to pass on inherited illnesses, according to a first detailed look at the blueprint for human life in a family. Genomic analysis is proving useful for diagnosing the origins of sometimes mysterious diseases.
Feb 12 | News
Arizona State scientists have come up with a new twist in their efforts to develop a faster and cheaper way to read the DNA genetic code. They have developed the first, versatile DNA reader that can discriminate between DNA's four core chemical components—the key to unlocking the vital code behind human heredity and health.
Feb 12 | News
UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic "gene" that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels, and the increased acidity of oceans.
Feb 8 | RDBlog
The editors at Wired Magazine have pointed out that today is the anniversary of Gregor Mendel's presentation of a painstakingly produced paper about his breeding experiments on some 28,000 pea plants. It's too bad that Charles Darwin, who was sent a copy in 1866, never bothered to read it.
Feb 8 | News
In an effort to better understand how a virus works to design better antiviral treatments, scientists have now quantified part of the physics of the virus. Specifically, they have measured the pent-up energy released when a virus enters a host cell and expels its viral DNA, turning the cell into a virus factory.
Feb 1 | News
Researchers in the UK and the U.S. have together grown a crystal that reveals the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV that use it to paste a copy of its genetic code into infected DNA. New antiretroviral drugs block integrase, but until now scientists didn’t know exactly how they worked.
Jan 27 | News
Researchers at Tufts Univ. have developed a new tool for gene therapy that increases gene delivery to cells in the retina compared to other carriers and DNA alone. The tool provides a vehicle for therapeutic genes and may help researchers develop therapies for degenerative eye disorders such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.
Jan 27 | News
Researchers at MIT and Rockefeller Univ. have successfully grown hepatitis C virus in otherwise healthy liver cells in the laboratory, an advance that could allow scientists to develop and test new treatments for the disease.
Jan 26 | News
A team of scientists from the Univ. of Manchester have found a way of hijacking so-called ‘riboswitches’ and directing gene activity. Working within cells of bacteria, the team rewired these genetic switches so they are no longer activated by small naturally occurring molecules found in cells—but through the addition of a synthetic molecule.