Over the past year, amid falling oil prices, an ongoing food vs. fuel controversy, and a few over-anxious market predictions, the bioenergy bandwagon may have picked up a few scratches and dings. But James Liao and Anastasios Melis say a new kind of photosynthetic biofuel could provide the spark for a clean energy revolution. President Barack Obama announced earlier this year that by 2022, he wants to "more than double the amount of biofuel produced in the United States" to an annual rate of 36 million barrels. But the most popular biofuels on the market today, such as ethanol and ... Read More
Teaching an Old Immune System New Tricks
February 11, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
Researchers from Germany's Hemholtz Centre for Infection Research may have discovered a treatment to make old immune systems young again. Their results, published in the Journal of Pathology, suggest that a growth protein may have a "fountain of youth" effect on the immune system. The scientists, led by Eva Medina, examined the immune system decline associated with aging. By comparing immune system responses of young mice (2 to 3 months old) and old mice (equivalent of 70- and 80-year-old humans) to bacterial infections, the researchers discovered that as mice age, they lose ... Read More
‘Roach Motels’ for Bacteria
February 5, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In the age-old battle between man and microbe, people have tried in countless ways to keep their surroundings germ-free, ranging from plain old scrubbing, heat sterilization and chemical disinfectants to high-tech solutions like irradiation or drug-eluting coatings. Now a new approach could make it easier to keep disease-causing bacteria from forming noxious invisible biofilms on surfaces. Researchers at the University of New Mexico and the University of Florida have developed polymer microspheres that trap and kill bacteria — in effect tiny antimicrobial "roach motels." Coatings ... Read More
Toxicology of the Tiny
February 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Already incorporated into consumer products ranging from baseball bats and clothing to sunscreens and toothpaste, engineered nanoparticles — ENPs — hold great promise in such areas as energy, pollution remediation, medicine and materials science. The nanotechnology industry is projected to be worth $1 trillion by 2015. It is all made possible by the peculiar properties of nanoparticles, which are defined as having at least one dimension measuring 100 nanometers or less (a nanometer being one-billionth of a meter, or about one one-hundred-thousandth the width of a human hair). As the ... Read More
Flu Vaccine Inoculates Against Antibiotic Overuse
September 8, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Researchers in Canada have hurled a stone at two relatively large birds: annual outbreaks of influenza and increasing proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their question: Would providing an opportunity for universal flu immunization result in a decrease in antibiotic use, even though antibiotics don't work on influenza? The answer is a resounding yes. Results of the 10-year study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases show that after universal flu vaccinations in Ontario, there was a 64 percent decline in antibiotic prescriptions. A larger study shows a 39 percent drop in ... Read More
Surely Some Flora Out There Can Fuel My Car
August 7, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
Biological fuels received a black eye earlier in the decade when the rush to embrace corn ethanol came to a crashing halt as the technology's economics and carbon footprint became clear, Doug Struck wrote in Part I ("Reality Pricks Corn Ethanol's Bubble"). William Frey holds up a beaker of brown slush, plucked from the clutch of an automated carousel swirling dozens of glass containers. The liquid, a mix of ground corn stocks and a microscopic organism named the Q-Microbe, may just be the fuel of the future, Frey says. "We're on the right path. This works," says Frey, president of ... Read More
Burning Fat With E. Coli’s Help
June 10, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Scientists have shown they can make animals burn more fat by inserting a molecular shunt into the livers of mice. The shunt consists of two metabolic enzymes not normally found in mammals, but common in bacteria and plants, according to the article in the June issue of the journal Cell Metabolism. In this case, the enzymes were taken from E. coli bacteria. The shunt is "an additional channel for burning fat to control obesity," said James Liao of the University of California, Los Angeles, in a press release announcing the findings. His UCLA colleague Katrina Dipple put it this way: "It's ... Read More
A New Weapon Against Staph Infections
May 13, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
Every year in the United States, staph infections result in more than 11 million outpatient and emergency room visits, plus more than 460,000 hospital admissions. The bacteria Staphylococcus aureus also frequently infects patients while they're in the hospital for other reasons; if the bacteria reach the bloodstream, heart, lungs or urinary tract, the infections can be fatal. And drug-resistant strains of staph are on the rise. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 94,000 of these cases occur each year, killing 19,000 people. "We've seen ... Read More
Lessons From the Reverse Engineering of Nature
April 20, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
On the Significance of Species Beginning in the mid-1980s with evolutionary biologist and writer Stephen J. Gould, the University of Minnesota has invited world-renowned speakers to give public addresses in a lecture series named for the university's longtime president and Graduate School dean, Guy Stanton Ford. In 1994, I had just started as assistant professor in the department of ecology, evolution and behavior when I was thrilled to discover that the speaker for that year would be Richard Dawkins, another famous evolutionary biologist and writer. I joined the hundreds in the packed ... Read More
