A biotech startup wants to coax fuels from engineered microbes.

The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That’s the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.

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::: Better biofuel: Stephen del Cardayre, a biochemist and LS9’s vice president for research and development.
Credit: Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover :::::
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LS9, a company based in San Carlos, CA, and founded by geneticist George Church, of Harvard Medical School, and plant biologist Chris Somerville, of Stanford University, had previously said that it was working on what it calls “renewable petroleum.” But at a Society for Industrial Microbiology conference on Monday, the company began speaking more openly about what it has accomplished: it has genetically engineered various bacteria, including E. coli, to custom-produce hydrocarbon chains.
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Un grupo de científicos del MIT han modificado genéticamente la levadura para maximizar su producción de etanol.

El etanol es un alcohol clave en la producción de biocombustibles. Aunque se lo considera como una potencial solución a la crisis de los combustibles, actualmente solo se lo utiliza como aditivo para mejorar la combustibilidad de la gasolina. Un ejemplo es el E85 (85% de etanol). Esto se debe supuestamente a su baja eficiencia.

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On 6th August, the US Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) approved Pfizer’s drug maraviroc, the first in a new class of HIV drugs designed to prevent the virus entering the immune system’s CD4 cells. Maraviroc, sold under the name Selzentry, is different because it will not work for all patients. To enter cells, HIV binds to both the CD4 receptor and one of two co-receptors, CCR5 or CXCR4. Maraviroc specifically blocks the CCR5 co-receptor, so the FDA has approved the drug for the 50 to 60 per cent of people with HIV who have forms of the virus that latch onto CCR5. The drug will only be given to people who have had pharmacogenetic testing to show that their type of HIV enters CD4 cells via CCR5. Maraviroc taken twice a day by patients, as an oral pill in combination therapy (HAART) with other HIV medications.

http://microbiologybytes.wordpress.com/

Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA. A year ago, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of silicon microchips. Now the team has gone one step further. In the new device, the single DNA molecule that provides the computer with the input data also provides all the necessary fuel. The design is considered a giant step in DNA computing. The Guinness World Records last week recognized the computer as “the smallest biological computing device” ever constructed. DNA computing is in its infancy, and its implications are only beginning to be explored. But it could transform the future of computers, especially in pharmaceutical and biomedical applications.

Site - http://news.nationalgeographic.com

This year, as every year, we present our list of the 10 technologies we find most exciting—and most likely to alter industries, fields of research, and even the way we live. The list comprises projects in a broad range of fields.
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Flow-Thru™ Technology offers unrivaled advantages for assay automation

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JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments

The New Video-Broadcasting for science is the JoVE: Journal of Visualized Experiments. Where investigators can upload and share their experiments in a video format.
Entirely dedicated to Science, this new media of Science propose:
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CHICAGO (AFP) - In a breakthrough that could potentially lead to a cure for HIV infection, scientists have discovered a way to remove the virus from infected cells, a study released Thursday said
The scientists engineered an enzyme which attacks the DNA of the HIV virus and cuts it out of the infected cell, according to the study published in Science magazine.
The enzyme is still far from being ready to use as a treatment, the authors warned, but it offers a glimmer of hope for the more than 40 million people infected worldwide. (more…)

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