Capturing living cells in micro pyramids

Cells moving into the pyramids A field full of pyramids, but on a micro scale. Each of the pyramids hides a living cell. Thanks to 3D micro- and nano scale fabrication, promising new applications can be found. One of them is applying the micro pyramids for cell research: thanks to the open ‘walls’ of the pyramids, the cells interact. Scientists of the research institutes MESA+ and MIRA of the University of Twente in The Netherlands present this new technology and first applications in Small journal of the beginning of December. Most of the cell studies take place in 2D: this is not a natural situation, because cells organize themselves in another way than in the human body. If you give the cells room to move in three dimensions, the natural situation is approached in a better way while capturing them in an array. This is possible in the ‘open pyramids’ fabricated in the NanoLab...

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Solving the mystery of ageing

Why do we get older? When do we die and why? Is there a life without ageing? For centuries, science has been fascinated by these questions. Now researchers from Kiel (Germany) have examined why the polyp Hydra is immortal – and unexpectedly discovered a link to ageing in humans. The study carried out by Kiel University together with the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) will be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). It was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG. Hydra – mysteriously immortal The tiny freshwater polyp Hydra does not show any signs of ageing and is potentially immortal. There is a rather simple biological explanation for this: these animals exclusively reproduce by budding rather than by mating. A prerequisite for such vegetative-only reproduction is that each polyp...

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How Do Cells Tell Time? Scientists Develop Single-Cell Imaging to Watch the Cell Clock

A new way to visualize single-cell activity in living zebrafish embryos has allowed scientists to clarify how cells line up in the right place at the right time to receive signals about the next phase of their life. Under normal circumstances in zebrafish embryos, cells oscillate in synchrony with their neighbors as they prepare to make segments that later become muscle and vertebrae. When a color map (top left corner) is used to indicate the phase of oscillation in each cell at any fixed snapshot of time, with cool colors representing the peak of the gene activation wave and warm colors the lower levels of activation, it is evident in the top image that neighboring cells are in a similar phase, or transitioning smoothly to the next phase. However, in embryos lacking a powerful messaging system called Notch signaling, that synchrony is lost. In the bottom map, cells...

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GBioFin Entrepreneurship and Innovation Certificate

GBioFin proudly announces the launching of GEIC (GBioFin Entrepreneurship and Innovation Certificate). GEIC is 3 months Online Programme started for Promoting Biotechnology and Life-Sciences with its scope in Entrepreneurship.GEIC aims to provide all the Information regarding Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Research, Intellectual Property Rights and so on. Program Includes- 1-Online Interactive Sessions 2-Online best course material and module notes (having comparison with Cambridge and Oxford) with assignments 3- Launch of a student Educational Magazine E-Copy for GEIC enrolled Students (including Articles given as assignment for GEIC) 4-Interaction with the advisors assigned for the GEIC through email 5-GEIC Certificate will be sent at the home addresses of each candidate through post 6-Student Membership free for 1 year worth Rs.350 which includes the following:-   a) Free Access...

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Jellyfish-inspired device that rapidly and efficiently captures cancer cells from blood samples could enable better patient monitoring

Cells traveling through a microfluidic device can be trapped by strands of DNA (green). Image: Suman Bose and Chong Shen Tumor cells circulating in a patient’s bloodstream can yield a great deal of information on how a tumor is responding to treatment and what drugs might be more effective against it. But first, these rare cells have to be captured and isolated from the many other cells found in a blood sample. Many scientists are now working on microfluidic devices that can isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs), but most of these have two major limitations: It takes too long to process a sufficient amount of blood, and there is no good way to extract cancer cells for analysis after their capture. A new device from researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital overcomes those obstacles....

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First ‘snapshots’ of the electronic structure of a manganese complex related to water-splitting in photosynthesis

Together with a large international research team, Johannes Messinger of Umeå University in Sweden has taken another step toward an understanding of photosynthesis and developing artificial photosynthesis. With a combination of a x-ray free-electron laser and spectroscopy, the team has managed to see the electronic structure of a manganese complex, a chemical compound related to how photosynthesis splits water.  illustration of ultra-short x-ray pulse striking molecules containing manganese. Illustration: Greg Stewart, National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University The experiments used the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), which is a free-electron x-ray laser facility at Stanford University in the US. The wavelength of the laser is roughly the same as the breadth of an atom, and each pulse of light lasts 50 femtoseconds (10-15). This is an extremely short...

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Wyss Institute Models a Human Disease in an Organ-on-a-Chip

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have mimicked pulmonary edema in a microchip lined by living human cells, as reported today in the journal Science Translation Medicine. They used this "lung-on-a-chip" to study drug toxicity and identify potential new therapies to prevent this life-threatening condition.  The study offers further proof-of-concept that human "organs-on-chips" hold tremendous potential to replace traditional approaches to drug discovery and development. "Major pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of time and a huge amount of money on cell cultures and animal testing to develop new drugs," says Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., founding director of the Wyss Institute and senior author of the study, "but these methods often fail to predict the effects of these agents when they reach humans." The lung-on-a-chip...

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We are launching E-Copy of BiotechRings:edition 1

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dExpdnEyZThzQnhEMGlPcEI4OUNDU2c6MQ ...

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Biochemists Discover New Mechanism in Ribosome Formation

A new mechanism in the formation of ribosomes has been discovered by researchers from the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center. In an interdisciplinary approach, the Heidelberg scientists, along with colleagues from Switzerland and Japan, describe a heretofore uncharacterised protein that plays a specific role in ribosome assembly in eukaryotes, organisms whose cells contain a cell nucleus. This protein makes sure that specific factors required for ribosome synthesis are transported together, like hitchhikers, into the nucleus to the site of assembly. The results of this research were published in “Science”. The figure shows the large subunit of the ribosome in its high-resolution 3D structure. The ribosomal RNA is depicted in grey, the myriad of ribosomal proteins in blue-grey. The r-protein Rpl5 is shown in yellow, the r-protein Rpl11 in green. The ruby-coloured area...

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NYU researchers use simulations on TACC, XSEDE supercomputers to understand how some carcinogens evade removal by stabilizing the very DNA they attack

A person doesn't have to go far to find a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH). These carcinogen precursors are inhaled through automobiles exhaust during the morning commute, are present in a drag of cigarette smoke, and are part of any barbequed meal. Once ingested or inhaled, these big, bulky multi-ringed molecules are converted into reactive carcinogenic compounds that can bind to DNA, sometimes literally bending the double helix out of its normal shape, to form areas of damage called lesions. The damaged DNA can create errors in the genetic code during replication, which may cause cancer-initiating mutations. It is the job of the nuclear excision repair (NER) system to repair damage caused by PAH lesions by removing the segment of DNA where the lesion is bound and patching up the resulting gap. But some lesions are especially resistant to this repair machinery, making...

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Ames Lab researchers find three unique cell-to-cell bonds

Sanjeevi Sivasankar leads a research team that uses atomic force microscopy and other technologies to study the bonds that connect biological cells.  Photo by Bob Elbert. The human body has more than a trillion cells, most of them connected, cell to neighboring cells. How, exactly, do those bonds work? What happens when a pulling force is applied to those bonds? How long before they break? Does a better understanding of all those bonds and their responses to force have implications for fighting disease? Sanjeevi Sivasankar, an Iowa State assistant professor of physics and astronomy and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, is leading a research team that’s answering those questions as it studies the biomechanics and biophysics of the proteins that bond cells together. The researchers discovered three types of bonds when they subjected common...

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New Technique Enables High-Sensitivity View of Cellular Functions

Tiny amounts of carbohydrates (1 zmol, correspnding to a few hundred molecules) can be detected quantitatively by a real-time method based on the conjugation of carbohydrates with DNA marker. The  method called glyco-qPCR uses amplification to provide uniform, ultrasensitive detection of carbohydrates, which can be applied to glycobiology, as well as carbohydrate-based drug discovery. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an ultrasensitive method for detecting sugar molecules — or glycans — coming from living organisms, a breakthrough that will make possible a more detailed understanding of cellular functions than either genetic or proteomic (the study of proteins) information can provide. The researchers hope the new technique will revolutionize...

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