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Category: bioengineering – Page 8

The rod-shaped tuberculosis (TB) bacterium, which the World Health Organization has once again ranked as the top infectious disease killer globally, is the first single-celled organism ever observed to maintain a consistent growth rate throughout its life cycle. These findings, reported by Tufts University School of Medicine researchers on November 15 in the journal Nature Microbiology, overturn core beliefs of bacterial cell biology and hint at why the deadly pathogen so readily outmaneuvers our immune system and antibiotics.

“The most basic thing you can study in bacteria is how they grow and divide, yet our study reveals that the TB pathogen is playing by a completely different set of rules compared to easier-to-study model organisms,” said Bree Aldridge, a professor of molecular biology and microbiology at the School of Medicine and a professor of biomedical engineering at the School of Engineering, as well as one of the paper’s co-senior authors along with Ariel Amir of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

TB bacteria are successful at surviving in humans because some parts of the infection can quickly evolve within their host, allowing these outliers to avoid detection or resist treatment. If someone has TB, it takes months of various antibiotics to be cured, and even then, this approach is only successful in 85% of patients. Aldridge and her colleagues hypothesize that gaps in our understanding of the basic biology behind this phenomenon have been holding back the development of more effective treatments.

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A team of researchers led by Rice University’s Jacob Robinson and the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Peter Kan has developed a technique for diagnosing, managing and treating neurological disorders with minimal surgical risks. The team’s findings were published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

While traditional approaches for interfacing with the nervous system often require creating a hole in the skull to with the brain, the researchers have developed an innovative method known as endocisternal interfaces (ECI), allowing for electrical recording and stimulation of neural structures, including the brain and , through (CSF).

“Using ECI, we can access multiple brain and spinal cord structures simultaneously without ever opening up the skull, reducing the risk of complications associated with traditional surgical techniques,” said Robinson, professor of electrical and computer engineering and bioengineering.

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Researchers at Penn Engineering have developed PanoRadar, a system that uses radio waves and AI to provide robots with detailed 3D environmental views, even in challenging conditions like smoke and fog. This innovation offers a cost-effective alternative to LiDAR, enhancing robotic navigation and perception capabilities.

In the race to develop robust perception systems for robots, one persistent challenge has been operating in bad weather and harsh conditions. For example, traditional, light-based vision sensors such as cameras or LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) fail in heavy smoke and fog.

However, nature has shown that vision doesn’t have to be constrained by light’s limitations—many organisms have evolved ways to perceive their environment without relying on light. Bats navigate using the echoes of sound waves, while sharks hunt by sensing electrical fields from their prey’s movements.

Continue reading “Giving robots superhuman vision using radio signals” | >

Scientists are designing simplified biological systems, aiming to construct synthetic cells and better understand life’s mechanisms.

One of the most fundamental questions in science is how lifeless molecules can come together to form a living cell. Bert Poolman, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Groningen, has been working to solve this problem for two decades. He aims to understand life by trying to reconstruct it; he is building simplified artificial versions of biological systems that can be used as components for a synthetic cell.

His work was detailed in two new papers published in Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Communications. In the first paper, he describes a system for energy conversion and cross-feeding of products of this reaction between synthetic cells, while he describes a system for concentrating and converting nutrients in cells in the second paper.

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Novel magnetic nanodiscs could provide a much less invasive way of stimulating parts of the brain, paving the way for stimulation therapies without implants or genetic modification, MIT researchers report.

The scientists envision that the tiny discs, which are about 250 nanometers across (about 1/500 the width of a human hair), would be injected directly into the desired location in the brain. From there, they could be activated at any time simply by applying a magnetic field outside the body. The new particles could quickly find applications in biomedical research, and eventually, after sufficient testing, might be applied to clinical uses.

The development of these nanoparticles is described in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in a paper by Polina Anikeeva, a professor in MIT’s departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, graduate student Ye Ji Kim, and 17 others at MIT and in Germany.

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In an incredible feat that redefines biological boundaries, scientists have successfully engineered animal cells capable of photosynthesis.

This breakthrough, led by Professor Sachihiro Matsunaga at the University of Tokyo, could transform medical research and aid in advancing lab-grown meat production.

Photosynthesis, traditionally exclusive to plants, algae, and certain bacteria, is a process that uses sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen and sugars – essentially “feeding” the organism.

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RegenxBio, a publicly-traded biotech firm, released data this week from a Phase 2 clinical trial designed to test its leading genetic therapy product in patients with bilateral wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is characterized by abnormal growth of blood vessels in the retina, and is a leading cause of loss of vision in elderly populations globally.

ABBV-RGX-314, developed in collaboration with AbbVie, offers the potential of a one-time treatment for wet AMD and other retinal conditions, including diabetic retinopathy. This is in contrast to existing treatments which rely on repeated intraocular injections of drugs that inhibit a protein known as Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF), a protein responsible for the formation of new retinal blood vessels.

The ABBV-RGX-314 therapy is based on a an AAV8 viral vector as a delivery system. The AAV8 platform has been genetically engineered to encode an antibody that can inhibit VEGF for the long-term.

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The researchers’ recently published study describes a way to re-activate apoptosis in mutated cells, which would amount to forcing cancer to self-destruct through a bioengineered, bonding molecule.

Gerald Crabtree, one of the study’s authors and a professor of development biology, said he had the idea while hiking through Kings Mountain, California, during the pandemic period. The new compound would have to bind two proteins which already exist in the cancerous cells, turning apoptosis back on and making the cancer kill itself.

“We essentially want to have the same kind of specificity that can eliminate 60 billion cells with no bystanders,” Crabtree said, so that no cell gets destroyed if it isn’t the proper target of this new killing mechanism. The two proteins in question are known as BCL6, an oncogene which suppresses apoptosis-promoting genes in the B-cell lymphoma, and CDK9, an enzyme that catalyzes gene activation instead.

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