- Caltech engineers build mini drug-producing biofactories in yeast
August 16, 2008 08:58 PM
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have developed a novel way to churn out large quantities of drugs, including antiplaque toothpaste additives, antibiotics, nicotine, and even morphine, using mini biofactories--in yeast.
A paper describing the research, now available online, will be featured as the cover article of the September issue of Nature Chemical Biology.
Christina D. Smolke, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Caltech, along with graduate student Kristy Hawkins, genetically modified common baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) so that it contained the genes for several plant enzymes. The enzymes allow the yeast to produce a chemical called reticuline, which is a precursor for many different classes of benzylisoquinoline alkaloid (BIA) molecules. The BIA molecules are a large group of chemically intricate compounds, such as morphine, nicotine, and codeine, which are naturally produced by plants.
BIA molecules exhibit a wide variety of pharmacological activities, including antispasmodic effects, pain relief, and hair growth acceleration. Other BIAs have shown anticancer, antioxidant, antimalarial, and anti-HIV potential.
"There are estimated to be thousands of members in the BIA family, and having a source for obtaining large quantities of specific BIA molecules is critical to gaining access to the diverse functional activities provided by these molecules," says Smolke, whose lab focuses on using biology as a technology for the synthesis of new chemicals, materials, and products. However, the natural plant sources of BIAs accumulate only a small number of the molecules, usually "end products" like morphine and codeine that, while valuable, can't be turned into other compounds, thus limiting the availability of useful new products...
August 16, 2008 08:58 PM
Michigan State University scientists, armed with a half-million-dollar federal grant, are creating an easily accessible, Web-based genomic database of information on crops that can be used to make ethanol.
"Ultimately this will allow us to create better biofuel crops," said C. Robin Buell, associate professor of plant biology and project leader. "Right now, about half of the biofuel crops don't have genomic databases, and the ones that do are in many different places and are annotated differently, which makes it difficult to compare and use the information."
Genomic databases contain information on the molecular biology and genetics of a particular species.
Buell and Kevin Childs, a postdoctoral researcher in her lab, will use the $540,000 joint grant from the departments of Agriculture and Energy to centralize the genomic databases, create uniform annotations (notes or descriptions of the genomes), provide data-mining and search tools, and provide a Web site for scientists from around the world to access the databases. They also will regularly update the information...
August 18, 2008 12:10 PM
Mount Sinai researchers have developed a new gene silencing technology that could be used to target genes that can lead to the development of certain diseases. This technology could pave the way for preventing diseases where gene dysfunction plays a role. The groundbreaking research was led by Ming-Ming Zhou, Ph.D., Professor and Chairman of the Department of Structural and Chemical Biology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The findings, which will be published in the September issue of Nature Cell Biology, are available on the magazine's web site as of today.
"By being able to silence certain genes, we may be able to suppress genes that can cause diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cancer, inflammation and diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems. We now know we can focus on these genes and potentially change the ultimate course of many diseases that have a major impact on people's lives," says Dr. Zhou...
ScienceDaily (Aug. 18, 2008)
Scientists have known for decades that certain genes (called transposons) can jump around the genome in an individual cell. This activity can be dangerous, however, especially when it arises in cells that produce eggs and sperm. Such changes can threaten the offspring and the success of a species. To ensure the integrity of these cells, nature developed a mechanism to quash this genetic scrambling, but how it works has remained a mystery. Now a team of scientists, including researchers at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology, has identified a key protein that suppresses jumping genes in mouse sperm and found that the protein is vital to sperm formation.
"There is a tiny cell component that is unique to germ cells—the precursors to egg and sperm—called nuage, which means 'cloud' in French. Other researchers recently suspected that nuage was involved in keeping genes from jumping around in germ cells of the female fruit fly," explained Carnegie's Alex Bortvin, a senior author of the study. "But until this mouse study, no one knew for sure if it was involved in mammalian germ cells. To test if the mouse nuage played a similar role in mammals, we focused on a mouse protein called Maelstrom whose distant relative protein in the fruit fly was implicated in the other study."
In this research, published in the August 12th issue of Developmental Cell, the scientists first looked at where the protein Maelstrom resides during the formation of sperm. By marking the protein with a fluorescent antibody, they found that it was predominantly located in the cytoplasm, near the nucleus of the germ cell, at the nuage. To understand what Maelstrom does during the formation of sperm, the scientists created mutant mice that did not have the gene to produce the Maelstrom protein...
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