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Archive for the ‘biological’ category: Page 139

Apr 16, 2019

Inside Arzeda’s synthetic biology lab, where industrial ingredients are brewed like beer

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biological, chemistry

Alexandre Zanghellini can’t help but think about what makes up the world around him. Sitting in a conference room, Zanghellini considered the paint on the walls, the table, the window shades, the plastic chairs. It’s all oil.

“The entire world is made from oil. We just don’t realize it,” he said.

Zanghellini’s job, as the CEO of Seattle-based synthetic biology company Arzeda, is to reconsider how we make the basic molecules that go into anything and everything in the human world. And he has a bias for processes that use living organisms. “The tools of biology, proteins, are better at doing chemistry than chemists,” he said.

Continue reading “Inside Arzeda’s synthetic biology lab, where industrial ingredients are brewed like beer” »

Apr 10, 2019

You Are What You Eat: Neanderthals, Woolly Mammoths Apparently Shared Genetic Traits

Posted by in categories: biological, food, genetics

In a new study published in the journal Human Biology, archaeologists from the Tel Aviv University reveal the molecular similarities between Neanderthals and woolly mammoths by studying three case studies.


Scientists discover that two completely different species can evolve and develop the same genetic characteristics. In a landmark study, Neanderthals and woolly mammoths are found to be very similar to each other.

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Apr 6, 2019

Sjaak Vink — CEO, TheSocialMedwork — IdeaXme — Ira Pastor

Posted by in categories: aging, biological, biotech/medical, business, chemistry, education, finance, health, innovation, life extension

Apr 5, 2019

Microbes May Take Some of the Blame for the Reproducibility Crisis

Posted by in category: biological

Scientists find varied microbiota among the same strain of mice from four vendors—and that variability affects their susceptibility to infection.

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Apr 4, 2019

Unknown Species of Ancient Four-Legged Whale Uncovered in Peru

Posted by in categories: biological, evolution

The discovery of a fossilized, 42-million-year-old, four-legged whale is shedding new light on the evolution and geographical spread of these aquatic mammals.

The ancestors of modern whales and dolphins evolved from a small, four-limbed hoofed animal that lived in south Asia around 50 million years ago, during the Eocene. Fossil evidence suggests these aquatic mammalian pioneers reached North America by 41.2 million years ago, swimming from West Africa across the Atlantic. The surprise discovery of a previously unknown, 42.6-million-year-old quadrupedal whale along the coast of Peru has resulted in an important addendum to this story: Ancient whales made South America, and not North America, their first home in the New World. Details of this discovery were published today in Current Biology.

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Apr 3, 2019

Nature versus nurture: Environment exerts greater influence on corn health than genetics

Posted by in categories: biological, food, genetics, health, sustainability

Oops, duh, Eureka… shouted Archimedes… Or something.


Corn leaves are teaming with bacteria communities (the leaf “microbiome”) that influence plant health and performance, and scientists are still figuring out how. A team of scientists led by Dr. Jason Wallace recently published a study in the open access Phytobiomes Journal that advances what we know about these bacterial communities by investigating their relationships with corn genetics. According to Dr. Wallace, “the end-goal of all this research is to understand how crops interact with their microbial communities so we can harness them to make agriculture more productive and sustainable.”

In one of the largest and most diverse leaf microbe studies to date, the team monitored the active bacteria on the leaves of 300 diverse lines of corn growing in a common environment. They were especially interested to see how corn genes affected bacteria and found there was little relationship between the two — in fact, the bacteria were much more affected by the environment, although genetics still had a small role.

This is an interesting discovery that “breeding probably isn’t the best way to address this,” Dr. Wallace says. Instead, “the leaf community is probably better changed through farmer management.” That is, farmers should be able to change growing practices to enhance their current crops rather than seek out new plant varieties.

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Apr 2, 2019

Information theory: explaining life with physics

Posted by in categories: biological, physics

Physicist Paul Davies discusses an emerging area of research that aims to merge physics and biology, to explain how life began.

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Mar 27, 2019

I Am Groot: Is a Walking, Talking Plant-Person Possible?

Posted by in categories: biological, space

Groot, the walking, talking tree from ‘Guardians of the Galaxy,’ seems bizarre. But real-life biology shows how plant and animal traits can blend.

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Mar 27, 2019

Organisms Survived on the Outside of the Space Station

Posted by in categories: biological, space

Outer space is a tough environment for living organisms: no atmosphere, no oxygen, no gravity, a ton of radiation, and extreme temperatures.

But the German Aerospace Center just made a bombshell discovery: as part of a project called the Biology and Mars Experiment, they found that samples of organisms including bacteria, algae, lichens and fungi survived on the exterior of the International Space Station for 533 days.

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Mar 26, 2019

Scientists Reactivate Cell of 28,000 Year Old Mammoth

Posted by in category: biological

Biologists have just succeeded in restoring some biological functions in a cell belonging to awoolly mammoth that lived 28,000 years ago.

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