(Phys.org)—Decision-making—the ability to choose one path out of several options—is generally considered a cognitive ability possessed by biological systems, but not by physical objects. Now in a new study, researchers ...
Researchers at North Carolina State University used a CRISPR gene-editing system to breed poplar trees with reduced levels of lignin, the major barrier to sustainable production of wood fibers, while improving their wood ...
Biotechnology
Jul 13, 2023
2
114
Researchers from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne in Switzerland, used a geometric deep-learning tool that generates "fingerprints" of protein surfaces to describe geometric and chemical features critical to ...
An enzyme variant created by engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin can break down environment-throttling plastics that typically take centuries to degrade in just a matter of hours to days.
Polymers
Apr 27, 2022
19
1100
Morphogenesis is nature's way of building diverse structures and functions out of a fixed set of components. While nature is rich with examples of morphogenesis—cell differentiation, embryonic development and cytoskeleton ...
Materials Science
Feb 23, 2022
0
107
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disease usually diagnosed in young boys, gradually weakens muscles across the body until the heart or lungs fail. Symptoms often show up by age 5; as the disease progresses, ...
Biochemistry
Aug 10, 2021
0
680
If you've eaten vegan burgers that taste like meat or used synthetic collagen in your beauty routine—both products that are "grown" in the lab—then you've benefited from synthetic biology. It's a field rife with potential, ...
Biotechnology
Sep 25, 2020
0
477
(Phys.org) —A new generation of miniature biological robots is flexing its muscle. Engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated a class of walking "bio-bots" powered by muscle cells and controlled ...
Robotics
Jun 30, 2014
2
0
Much of what living cells do is carried out by "molecular machines" – physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function. How the minute steps of evolution produced these ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 8, 2012
21
0
Life sciences have never been more digital. To learn more about life processes, biologists are collecting massive quantities of data that computer scientists analyze by means of sophisticated computational models that they ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 11, 2024
0
70
