If you could paint a gallon's worth of paint one nanometer thick, how much area could you cover? The surprising answer - about 930 acres, or slightly larger than New York's Central Park - certainly makes fun trivia fodder. More importantly, however, it points nanotechnology researchers to strategies that help them more effectively communicate the scale, scope, and "wow" of their work to non-technical audiences. With consumer applications in everything from clothing, personal-care products...Monday, 12-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
For several years now, cancer researchers have been studying a mechanism that contributes to the development of malignant tumors: The cell attaches small molecules containing a carbon atom, called methyl groups, to specific building blocks of DNA, thereby individually switching off the genes thus labeled. This silencing also affects the function of many tumor suppressor genes, which, in their unmethylated state, put the brakes on uncontrolled cell growth. In contrast to 'real' mutations, where D...Sunday, 11-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
A direct connection exists between the brain and the immune system - at least in mice. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig conducted a comprehensive study of mice intestine and the surrounding blood and lymph vessels using special microscopy and marking techniques. What they found: numerous immune cells imbedded in the tissue around the intestine are joined to nerve strands and cells. "We already have m...Sunday, 11-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have found a set of "master switches" that keep adult blood-forming stem cells in their primitive state. Unlocking the switches' code may one day enable scientists to grow new blood cells for transplant into patients with cancer and other bone marrow disorders.The scientists located the control switches not at the gene level, but farther down the protein production line in m...Thursday, 8-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
Carnegie Mellon University's Philip LeDuc predicts the use of artificially created cells could be a potential new therapeutic approach for treating diseases in an ever-changing world. LeDuc, an assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering, penned an article for the January edition of Nature Nanotechnology Journal about the efficacy of using man-made cells to treat diseases with...Wednesday, 7-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
Scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) report in the Journal of Bacteriology that two alphaproteobacteria lack the universal extra guanylate nucleotide typically found in the transfer RNA molecule tRNAHis. tRNAs are the molecules responsible for decoding sequence information specified by messenger RNA molecules, information which is ultimately encoded by the DNA template. tRNAHis...Wednesday, 7-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
The first draft of the horse genome sequence has been deposited in public databases and is freely available for use by biomedical and veterinary researchers around the globe, leaders of the international Horse Genome Sequencing Project announced today....Wednesday, 7-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
Many human proteins are not as good as they might be because the gene sequences that code for them have a double role which slows down the rate at which they evolve, according to new research published in PLoS Biology.By tweaking these dual role regions, scientists could develop gene therapy techniques that produce proteins that are even better than those found in nature, and could one day be used to help people recover from genetic di...Tuesday, 6-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
Wouldn't it be great if we could get computer chips to grow on trees? Or at least use the specific bonds of DNA molecules to get nanostructures to grow themselves right in the test tube? This technology could be used to build everything from tiny electronics components to machines that sequence DNA. This is shown in a dissertation from Mid Sweden University.Building structures as tiny as a few nanometers is a major problem with today's techno...Monday, 5-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]
Researchers at Delft University of Technology used a High Resolution Electron Microscope to observe in real-time the collective transportation of gold atoms in a thin layer. This research illustrates the rapid progress that is currently being made by real-time nano-microscopy. Within 5 years this research area should be able to take the step from the laboratory to realistic conditions, and this will open up a wealth of possibilities for industry ...Monday, 5-Feb-2007 / [ Details... ]