“Team of students ventures into synthetic biology - Student Life” plus 4 more |
- Team of students ventures into synthetic biology - Student Life
- Fluxion Expands Into Asia With First China Sale, Distributors in Korea ... - TMCnet
- Fluxion Biosciences signs distribution agreement with DI Biotech and ... - News-Medical.Net
- Impact of environmental inputs on reverse-engineering approach to ... - BioMed Central
- PerkinElmer Introduces Expanded Reagent, Imaging, and Detection System ... - Newsblaze.com
| Team of students ventures into synthetic biology - Student Life Posted: 04 Dec 2009 04:40 AM PST A team of students earned international recognition for their design of an efficient light-harvesting bacterium with the potential to improve biofuel production. Ten students comprised Washington University's first-ever team to enter the premier undergraduate competition in synthetic biology, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM). They spent the summer working together to create a photosynthetic bacterium that would vary its productivity based on the amount of light available. For their efforts, they came home from the annual iGEM conference, held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the end of October, with a gold medal. Synthetic biology is a blossoming field that takes advantage of the wealth of genetics and molecular biology expertise that scientists have amassed in the last few decades. The goals of synthetic biologists are to manipulate existing organisms to do new tricks or work more efficiently, or even create totally novel organisms. "What I like most about it was the applicability…I've done research before, but it's all been very basic science," senior Stephanie Chang said. The tools and methods used in synthetic biology are run-of-the-mill, but the implications are major. Synthetic biology may be used to produce biofuels and medicines, but in theory, it could also be used to make more potent biological weapons. Current applications range from the efficient sunlight harvester the iGEM team is creating, to entirely new organisms, such as the synthetic bacterial genome designed by J. Craig Venter in 2006. Senior Jacob Rubens, a biology major, initiated the project while he was doing research in the laboratory of biology professor Robert Blankenship. "I really want to study this stuff in grad school, and I didn't really have a name for my interests…until I discovered synthetic biology, so iGEM really presented me with the opportunity to really go farther with that and try my hand at bioengineering," Rubens said. Other team members are biology majors and biomedical and chemical engineering students. Blankenship advised the students, along with professors Yinjie Tang and Chris Kirmaier, as well as several graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The team started out with the goal of doing something with bioenergy applications and a library of genetic parts at their disposal. "We decided to work with an organism that is relatively simple, Rhodobacter sphaeroides. And that was a bit of a challenge for us because it has never been worked with before in synthetic biology or iGEM," Rubens said. Their project depended on the fact that many photosynthetic bacteria and algae put out light-harvesting antennae to collect sunlight more efficiently. These organisms have evolved to grow large antennae, but this is actually a problem for humans who want to use them to make biofuels: in low light, the antennae are longer than they need to be, so some cells absorb more light than they can turn into energy, resulting in lower efficiency overall. Other researchers have tried to solve this problem by making cells with smaller antennae. But the iGEM team thought they could do better. They designed a set of genes that would allow bacteria to expand and retract their antennae according to how much light is available. They are the first people ever to do so, according to Blankenship. "The thing I thought was unique, and that was the brainchild of the iGEM team, was the fact that they were engineering in this dynamic response," Blankenship said. "I don't know of any scientists doing anything quite like that." To accomplish this, they relied on the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a catalogue of gene sequences with known functions, or "biological Lego pieces," that they could mix and match with standard techniques, Chang said. The parts they cobbled together constitute a genetic machine. Any cell expressing this DNA sequence would respond to high levels of light by building a larger light-harvesting antenna. Their project is still underway, and they are hoping to publish a paper with their results in the future. The bacterium they chose is not used in commercial biofuel research and development, but they took advantage of its simplicity to show that their idea works. In the future, people could adapt their genetic construct to work in other species. Sigma Aldrich and the Office of Undergraduate Research sponsored the team. No Comments YetYou can be the first to comment! Related PostsNo related posts.  Print This Post This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | |
| Fluxion Expands Into Asia With First China Sale, Distributors in Korea ... - TMCnet Posted: 04 Dec 2009 07:25 AM PST
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SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Fluxion Biosciences announced today that it has expanded its sales and service network into Asia. The company signed a distribution agreement for its BioFlux™ line with Korea-based DI Biotech. A second agreement with Novel Science covers sales of both the BioFlux and IonFlux™ platforms in Japan. Fluxion has also sold its first BioFlux 1000 system into China. The China Academy of Chinese Medical Science will initially use this system for research on inhibition of thrombus formation on endothelial cells. Fluxion's BioFlux instruments enable live cell image analysis for physiologically-relevant shear flow assays in a standard well-plate format. Ideal applications include research in cell and platelet adhesion, cancer biology, stem cells and microbial biofilms. The IonFlux line combines Fluxion's proprietary microfluidic technology with integrated electronics to automate the traditional patch clamp assay, the "gold standard" in ion channel research. Ideal drug discovery applications include primary/secondary screening, lead optimization and toxicology screening. DI Biotech Ltd. is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, and has a branch office in Daejeon City. DI Biotech has been a market leader and pioneer in Korea's Life Science market. The company works closely with its customers, with a focus on genomics, molecular biology, peptide synthesis and cell imaging. S. E. Kim, CEO and President at DI Biotech comments, "Awareness of the importance of shear stress is increasing among researchers. The static biological method will move toward more dynamic assays using shear stress control to get closer in vivo data. I am delighted to introduce technology from Fluxion Bioscience to the Korean market and to our customers in cell biology research." Novel, Inc. serves a range of life science research customers, providing both instruments and consumable reagents. The company specializes in tools for immune research. Hiraoka Kazuhiko CEO, commented, "At Novel Science, we contribute to biotechnology advancement by importing and supplying leading edge cytometric research tools. The Fluxion tools will help us improve our range of offerings for our customers in cellular research." "We are confident that these two leading distributors will help us expand our research and drug discovery systems into the growing Asian markets," said Mark Atlas, sales director of Fluxion. About Fluxion Biosciences Fluxion Biosciences provides cellular analysis tools for use in critical life science research and drug discovery applications. Fluxion's proprietary microfluidic platform enables precise functional analysis of individual cells in a multiplexed format. Fluxion's systems meet the rigorous demands of life science and drug discovery scientists by providing an intuitive, easy-to-use operating system for single-cell biology. For more information about Fluxion Biosciences, visit www.fluxionbio.com.
Link to this release at: http://fluxionbio.com/news.aspx?q=38
Please send READER INQUIRIES from this news release directly to: Mark Atlas, sales@fluxionbio.com
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| Fluxion Biosciences signs distribution agreement with DI Biotech and ... - News-Medical.Net Posted: 04 Dec 2009 08:15 AM PST Fluxion Biosciences announced today that it has expanded its sales and service network into Asia. The company signed a distribution agreement for its BioFlux™ line with Korea-based DI Biotech. A second agreement with Novel Science covers sales of both the BioFlux and IonFlux™ platforms in Japan. Fluxion has also sold its first BioFlux 1000 system into China. The China Academy of Chinese Medical Science will initially use this system for research on inhibition of thrombus formation on endothelial cells. Fluxion's BioFlux instruments enable live cell image analysis for physiologically-relevant shear flow assays in a standard well-plate format. Ideal applications include research in cell and platelet adhesion, cancer biology, stem cells and microbial biofilms. The IonFlux line combines Fluxion's proprietary microfluidic technology with integrated electronics to automate the traditional patch clamp assay, the "gold standard" in ion channel research. Ideal drug discovery applications include primary/secondary screening, lead optimization and toxicology screening. DI Biotech Ltd. is headquartered in Seoul, Korea, and has a branch office in Daejeon City. DI Biotech has been a market leader and pioneer in Korea's Life Science market. The company works closely with its customers, with a focus on genomics, molecular biology, peptide synthesis and cell imaging. S. E. Kim, CEO and President at DI Biotech comments, "Awareness of the importance of shear stress is increasing among researchers. The static biological method will move toward more dynamic assays using shear stress control to get closer in vivo data. I am delighted to introduce technology from Fluxion Bioscience to the Korean market and to our customers in cell biology research." Novel, Inc. serves a range of life science research customers, providing both instruments and consumable reagents. The company specializes in tools for immune research. Hiraoka Kazuhiko CEO, commented, "At Novel Science, we contribute to biotechnology advancement by importing and supplying leading edge cytometric research tools. The Fluxion tools will help us improve our range of offerings for our customers in cellular research." "We are confident that these two leading distributors will help us expand our research and drug discovery systems into the growing Asian markets," said Mark Atlas, sales director of Fluxion. Source Fluxion Biosciences This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | |
| Impact of environmental inputs on reverse-engineering approach to ... - BioMed Central Posted: 04 Dec 2009 06:06 AM PST Abstract (provisional)BackgroundUncovering complex network structure from a biological system is one of the main topic in system biology. The network structures can be inferred by dynamical Bayesian network or Granger causality, but neither techniques have seriously taken into account the impact of environmental inputs. ResultsWith consideration of natural rhythmic dynamics of the biological data, we propose a system biology approach to reveal the impact of environmental inputs on network structures. We represent the environmental inputs by harmonic oscillator and combine it with Granger causality to identify environmental inputs and then uncover the causal network structures. We also generalize it to multiple harmonic oscillators to represent various exogenous influences. This system approach is extensively tested with toy models and successfully applied to a real biological network of microarray data of the flowering genes of the model plant Arabodopsis Thalia. The aim is to identify those genes that are directly affected by the presence of the sunlight and uncover the interactive network structures associating with flowering metabolism. ConclusionsWe demonstrate that environment inputs are crucial for correctly inferring network structures. Harmonic causal method is proved to be a powerful technique to detect environment inputs and uncover network structures, especially when the biological data exhibit periodic oscillations. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. | |
| PerkinElmer Introduces Expanded Reagent, Imaging, and Detection System ... - Newsblaze.com Posted: 04 Dec 2009 05:02 AM PST SAN DIEGO - (BUSINESS WIRE) - ASCB 2009 - PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader focused on the health and safety of people and the environment, today announced the introduction of a wide range of new tools to improve the speed and effectiveness of life sciences research. These new products offer a higher degree of sensitivity, precision, and ease of use that allow for more physiologically relevant results in researching several diseases including cancer, inflammatory, and neurodegenerative disorders. "PerkinElmer continues to play an integral part at the American Society of Cell Biology's annual conference by offering a range of solutions for cell signal transduction," said Richard M. Eglen, PhD, president, Bio-discovery, PerkinElmer. "This year we are introducing several new tools to study cell pathways, including many novel cellular and biochemical assays, 3D live cell imaging and innovative data management software, and a new ultra-sensitive luminescent plate reader. All of these tools enable scientists to improve the speed and efficiency of their research." The new technologies featured at PerkinElmer's American Society of Cell Biology Conference (Booth No. 1121) include:
PerkinElmer events at the conference include the following: PerkinElmer's Exhibitor Showcase: "Cells in Context" Come explore the knowledge, expertise and growing innovation of PerkinElmer's products and applications that are helping to make continued advancements in the research of cell signaling and transduction. There will be a series of short presentations offering an overview of the leading solutions for the future of cellular biological research all under one roof. 3D Live Cell Imaging Seminar Explore live cell imaging and discover the benefits of 3D image acquisition and analysis during a series of brief educational presentations from guest scientists and from PerkinElmer's imaging experts. This symposium will discuss and showcase some of the new techniques and technologies that are addressing today's challenges in cellular imaging and analysis. Beyond ELISA Workshop Join us to learn how leading researchers are discovering how new technologies are impacting their analyses of biomarkers and cellular kinases. At this ground-breaking seminar, guests will hear directly from their peers about the advanced methodologies that are making a difference in their research. For more detail on all of PerkinElmer's activities, visit http://www.perkinelmer.com/ASCB2009. About PerkinElmer, Inc. PerkinElmer, Inc. is a global leader focused on improving the health and safety of people and the environment. The Company reported revenue of approximately $2 billion in 2008, has around 8,500 employees serving customers in more than 150 countries, and is a component of the S&P 500 Index. Additional information is available through www.perkinelmer.com or 1-877-PKI-NYSE.
PerkinElmer, Inc.
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