News by Subject Biology

Wearable brain monitoring sensors allowed researchers to measure cognitive workload while aircraft pilots completed memory tasks.

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed new technologies that can be used to convert industrial plants to produce fossil-free heat, electricity, fuel, chemicals and materials. The technical potential is enormous -- using only Sweden's currently existing power plants, renewable fuels equivalent to 10 percent of the world's aviation fuel could be produced.

MIT chemists have devised a way to rapidly synthesize and screen millions of novel proteins that could be used as drugs against Ebola and other viruses.

A nanoparticle vaccine developed by MIT researchers could help eradicate polio worldwide. The vaccine, which delivers multiple doses in just one injection, could make it easier to immunize children in remote regions of Pakistan and other countries where the disease is still found.

University of Groningen biotechnologists used a computational method to redesign aspartase and convert it to a catalyst for asymmetric hydroamination reactions. Their colleagues in China scaled up the production of this enzyme and managed to produce kilograms of very pure building blocks for pharmaceuticals and other bioactive compounds. This successful proof of principle study was published in Nature Chemical Biology on May 21.

Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, destroying up to 80 percent of them, new research by a joint Swansea University and Indian team has shown. The team made the discovery while they were testing out a new method of producing a type of nanoparticle called quantum dots. These are tiny particles which measure less than 10 nanometers. A human hair is 40,000 nanometers thick.

A UCLA Samueli-led team has developed a specially adapted 3D printer to build therapeutic biomaterials from multiple materials. The advance could be a step toward on-demand printing of complex artificial tissues for use in transplants and other surgeries.

A team led by a University of Delaware researcher has identified the protein essential for eye lens development and clear vision. Without the protein, eyes will form cataracts; with it, lens cells are cleared and ready to see. The work is providing fundamental new knowledge on the basic underlying mechanisms involved in eye development.

USC researchers have pinpointed a remedy to thwart a protein that helps the metastatic spread of breast cancer, a leading cause of death for women. The findings appear today in Nature Communications.