http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Nanotechnology and synthetic biology continue to develop as two of the most exciting areas of scientific discovery, but research has shown that the public is almost completely unaware of the science and its applications. A groundbreaking poll of 1,001 American adults conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) found that 90 percent of Americans think the public should be better informed about the development of cutting-edge technologies. http://www.physorg.com/news173445237.html Nanotechnology Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:30:01 EST news173445237 US researchers have created 'bacterial computers' with the potential to solve complicated mathematics problems. The findings of the research, published in BioMed Central's open access Journal of Biological Engineering, demonstrate that computing in living cells is feasible, opening the door to a number of applications. The second-generation bacterial computers illustrate the feasibility of extending the approach to other computationally challenging math problems. http://www.physorg.com/news167636611.html Biology Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:43:52 EST news167636611 Biomedical engineers at Boston University have taught bacteria how to count. Professor James J. Collins and colleagues have wired a new sequence of genes that allow the microbes to count discrete events, opening the door for a host of potential applications, which could include drug delivery and sensing environmental hazards. http://www.physorg.com/news162738836.html Biology Thu, 28 May 2009 14:14:23 EST news162738836 In addition to providing a simple and much less expensive means of making artemisinin, the most powerful anti-malaria drug in use today, synthetic biology can also help to extend the effectiveness of this drug. Fermenting artemisinin via engineered microbes, such as yeast, can be done at far lower costs than extracting the drug from Artemsisia annua, the sweet wormwood tree, making microbial-based artemisinin a much cheaper but equally effective treatment. Restricting access to this technology to responsible manufacturers who will bundle artemisinin as part of an anti-malarial drug "cocktail" rather than selling it as a monotherapy should delay or even prevent malaria parasites from developing resistance. Recently, there have been reports of malaria parasites in West Africa showing some signs of resistance to artemisinin. http://www.physorg.com/news155588531.html Biology Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:02:34 EST news155588531 (PhysOrg.com) -- Building a cell from scratch is a lot more complicated than building a computer. But that's just what synthetic biologists, including many at MIT, are trying to figure out how to do. http://www.physorg.com/news151076880.html Biology Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:48:00 EST news151076880 UC San Diego bioengineers have created the first stable, fast and programmable genetic clock that reliably keeps time by the blinking of fluorescent proteins inside E. coli cells. The clock's blink rate changes when the temperature, energy source or other environmental conditions change, a fact that could lead to new kinds of sensors that convey information about the environment through the blinking rate. http://www.physorg.com/news144506053.html Biology Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:34:13 EST news144506053 College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but a group of Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals. http://www.physorg.com/news143391599.html Biology Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:59:59 EST news143391599 Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech have compiled a series of guidelines that should help researchers in their efforts to design, develop and manage next-generation databases of biological parts. The stakes are high: the concept of biological parts is essential if methods developed in other fields of engineering are to be applied to biology. http://www.physorg.com/news135431992.html Biology Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:59:52 EST news135431992