'Molecular beacons' light up stem cell transformation

(Phys.org)—A novel set of custom-designed "molecular beacons" allows scientists to monitor gene expression in living populations of stem cells as they turn into a specific tissue in real-time. The technology, which Brown ...

Programmable DNA scissors found for bacterial immune system

(Phys.org) -- Genetic engineers and genomics researchers should welcome the news from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) where an international team of scientists has discovered a new and possibly more ...

A SMART(er) way to track influenza

In April 2009, the world took notice as reports surfaced of a virus in Mexico that had mutated from pigs and was being passed from human to human. The H1N1 "swine flu," as the virus was named, circulated worldwide, killing ...

When will artificial molecular machines start working for us?

Physicist Richard Feynman in his famous 1959 talk, "Plenty of Room at the Bottom," described the precise control at the atomic level promised by molecular machines of the future. More than 50 years later, synthetic molecular ...

DNA engine observed in real-time traveling along base pair track

In a complex feat of nanoengineering, a team of scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have succeeded in creating a programable molecular transport system, the workings of which can be observed in real ...

New study examines how bacteria acquire immunity

In a new study this week, Rice University scientists bring the latest tools of computational biology to bear in examining how the processes of natural selection and evolution influence the way bacteria acquire immunity from ...

Tracking new cancer-killing particles with MRI

Researchers at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) have created a single nanoparticle that can be tracked in real time with MRI as it homes in on cancer cells, tags them with a fluorescent dye and kills them ...

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