Showing papers in "Current Opinion in Biotechnology in 2000"

TL;DR: The number and diversity of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor applications continue to increase, and innovations in instrument and sensor chip technology, experimental methodology, and data analysis are making it possible to examine a wider variety of biomolecular interactions in greater mechanistic detail.

TL;DR: Aromatic hydrocarbon dioxygenases have a broad substrate specificity and catalyze enantiospecific reactions with a wide range of substrates and make them attractive synthons for the production of industrially and medically important chiral chemicals.

TL;DR: Microorganisms play important roles in the environmental fate of toxic metals and radionuclides with a multiplicity of mechanisms effecting transformations between soluble and insoluble forms and are of potential for both in situ and ex situ bioremedial treatment processes for solid and liquid wastes.

TL;DR: The conversion of both cellulose and hemicellulose for the production of fuel ethanol is being studied intensively, with a view to developing a technically and economically viable bioprocess.

TL;DR: First-generation microfluidic devices have been designed for performing continuous-flow biochemical and cell-based assays, and offer the potential for implementing high-throughput screening in formats that integrate up-front compound handling with unique assay functionality.

TL;DR: With molecular methods allowing the characterization of microbial community structure and activities, the performance of microorganisms under in situ conditions and in concert with the indigenous microflora will become predictable.

TL;DR: Vascular endothelial growth factor is an endothelial cell-specific mitogen and an angiogenic inducer as well as a mediator of vascular permeability.

TL;DR: The ability to systematically modify the properties of nanostructures by controlling their structure and their surface properties at a nanoscale level makes them extremely attractive candidates for use in biological contexts, from fundamental scientific studies to commercially viable technologies.

TL;DR: There have been several important advances in the elucidation of the mechanisms of biodesulfurization and the development of a biocatalytic desulfurizing process.

TL;DR: It is essential that field studies be performed to acquire the requisite information for determining the overall effectiveness and risks associated with GEM introduction into natural ecosystems.

TL;DR: Over the past year, methods for the construction of M13 phage-display libraries have been significantly improved and new display formats have been developed for the rapid determination of binding energetics at protein-protein interfaces.

TL;DR: Economic analysis of plant production systems has helped identify the types of protein that would be most suitable for manufacture using tissue culture methods, and the major advantages associated with in vitro plant systems include the ability to manipulate environmental conditions for better control over protein levels and quality.

TL;DR: The utility of inducible promoters has been successfully demonstrated by the development of a marker-free transformation system and large-scale gene profiling and field applications appear to be promising through the use of registered agrochemicals (e.g. RH5992) as inducers.

TL;DR: Future areas of research should further characterize the induction of the mucosal immune system and appropriate crop species for delivery of animal and human vaccines.

TL;DR: The ultimate goal of genome research on the model flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana is the identification of all of the genes and understanding their functions; however, functional studies of newly discovered genes have not yet kept up to this pace.

TL;DR: The synthetic and mechanistic aspects of the use of heme peroxidases as functional mimics of the cytochrome P450 monooxygenases in oxygen-transfer reactions have been described.

TL;DR: Well-annotated proteomics databases are now emerging in a number of fields to provide a platform for systematic research, with particularly promising progress in clinical applications such as cardiology and oncology.

TL;DR: In the past few years, a variety of methods have been developed to allow the in vitro evolution of a range of biomolecules including novel and improved biocatalysts (enzymes).

TL;DR: Both stoichiometric and kinetic models have been used to investigate the metabolism, which has resulted in defining the optimal fermentation conditions, as well as in directing the genetic changes to be introduced in order to obtain a good producer strain or cell line.

TL;DR: This work has new insights into the molecular mechanisms that regulatory proteins use to sense a given signal and to activate transcription initiation from the cognate promoters.

TL;DR: By providing a simple and reliable route to enzyme improvement, directed evolution has emerged as a key technology for enzyme engineering and biocatalysis.

TL;DR: Over the past year, exceptional progress has been made towards developing a new technology base for the precise quantification and identification of proteins in complex mixtures, that is, quantitative proteomics.

TL;DR: Bacterial virulence may offer unique opportunities to inhibit the establishment of infection or alter its course as a method of antimicrobial chemotherapy.

TL;DR: Microarray analysis of nucleic acid related phenomena on a genome-wide scale is now a proven technology and problems unique to the handling and interpretation of the large data sets produced by the technique are beginning to be addressed.

TL;DR: A complex network of regulatory controls governs the patterns of gene expression and the potential to further the understanding of the biochemical mechanisms of transcriptional regulation and to accelerate the delineation of regulatory control regions in the human genome is enormous.

TL;DR: Analysis of surface-induced and biofilm-induced changes in gene expression has begun in earnest, providing new insights into biofilm development and physiology.

TL;DR: Although there is still a paucity of general methods for enzyme library screening, in recent years a number of promising strategies have emerged and are increasingly being used to explore challenging issues in protein engineering.

TL;DR: In Pseudomonas strains, the metabolic pathway from eugenol via ferulic acid to vanillin has been characterised at the enzymic and molecular genetic levels.

TL;DR: This work reports the development of large phage-antibody libraries that contain high-affinity binders to almost any target protein, and new methods for high-throughput selection of antibody-antigen interactions.

TL;DR: The past year has seen the fruits of biotechnological manipulation of forest trees approach commercial application, and advances in somatic embryogenesis and efficient gene transfer systems have been developed for a number of conifers and hardwoods.