Showing papers in "Trends in Biotechnology in 2001"

TL;DR: Metal micro-/nano-particles with suitable chemical modification can be organized into new ceramic- metal (cermet) or organic-metal (orgmet) composites or structured materials, attracting significant attention because of their unique structures and highly optimized properties.

TL;DR: This review focuses on cadmium (Cd) because of the significant importance of this metal and because of its global presence in many food materials.

TL;DR: The specific activity of the mesophilic granular sludge was improved under psychrophilic conditions, which indicates that there was growth and enrichment of methanogens and acetogens in the anaerobic system.

TL;DR: This article concentrates mainly on surface-directed nanobiotechnologies because they are nearer to commercial realisation, such as use in tissue engineering, control of biofouling and cell culture, than those directed at producing nanoparticles.

TL;DR: The Virtual Cell is a computational environment designed for cell biologists as well as for mathematical biologists and bioengineers that serves to aid the construction of cell biological models and the generation of simulations from them.

TL;DR: Personalized medicine, the use of marker-assisted diagnosis and targeted therapies derived from an individual's molecular profile, will impact the way drugs are developed and medicine is practiced and replace the traditional trial-and-error practice of medicine.

TL;DR: TwoRedox-responsive transcription regulators have been well defined in Escherichia coli and serve as paradigms of redox-operated genetic switches.

TL;DR: Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are an important class of bone growth factors that might revolutionize how clinicians treat such diverse orthopedic applications as the healing of broken bones, increasing bone density lost through aging, and strengthening the spine.

TL;DR: E-CELL project has completed a couple of virtual cell models, and computer simulations have revealed some biological surprises, so attempts to construct whole cell models are described.

TL;DR: The use of a second, distinct, organic phase in a bioreactor has been shown to provide a virtually foolproof means of feeding substrate to cells because this process concept relies only on thermodynamic equilibrium and the cells' own rate of metabolism.

TL;DR: The structural components of cells, cellulose and hemicellulose, make biowaste very susceptible for bioproduct development and biotechnology offers biotechnology an opportunity to assist in maintaining environmental quality as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: Several technical developments are occurring that will increase the feasibility of cell-based biosensors for field applications; these developments include stem cell and 3D culture technologies.

TL;DR: The general strategy for design of thermostable proteins and perspectives for future studies are discussed, indicating a possibility that optimized interactions provide structural determinants for enhanced stability of proteins from thermophilic organisms.

TL;DR: Bioelectronics is a progressing interdisciplinary research field that involves the integration of biomaterials with electronic transducers, such as electrodes, field-effect-transistors or piezoelectric crystals.

TL;DR: A new class of materials that have artificially created receptor structures and their applications include chromatographic adsorbents, membranes, sensors and enzyme and receptor mimics.

TL;DR: Transgenes for shortening the juvenile phase or for phytoremediation purposes have now been incorporated, and the alteration of lignin biosynthesis and increased cellulose accumulation in forest trees have also been accomplished.

TL;DR: This work will try to answer the following questions: How can the biotechnological potential of piezophiles be exploited?

TL;DR: Approaches that use liquid chromatography or affinity purification and mass spectrometric identification have now been developed and applied successfully to the analysis of human body fluids.

TL;DR: Recent advances in this area indicate that antibiotic glycosyltransferases show some substrate flexibility that might allow us to alter the types of sugar transferred to the different aglycons or, less frequently, to change the position of its attachment.

TL;DR: The immunological principles underlying mucosal vaccine development are discussed and the application of immunomodulatory molecules and delivery systems to the selective enhancement of protective immune responses at mucosal surfaces are reviewed.

TL;DR: This work focuses on efforts to mimic the functionality of man-made information-processing systems within whole cells, which are only partially understood and not readily accessible for use in engineered systems.

TL;DR: This article discusses rational redesign and directed evolution, two complementary strategies for enzyme-engineering strategies that have met with great success but each has limitations.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors review supervised and unsupervised methods for grouping and reducing data in the context of a publicly available suite of tools called CLEAVER, and illustrate their application on a representative data set collected to study lymphoma.

TL;DR: The difficulty of constructing very large pieces of DNA in the laboratory is broached and some complications that might arise when attempting to transmit DNA-encrypted data to recipients who are a long period of time in the future are highlighted.

TL;DR: Tailor-made enzymes are being produced using protein-engineering techniques, enabling the specific removal of pitch contaminant compounds from paper pulp.

TL;DR: Recombinant Factor C (rFC), the endotoxin-inducible coagulation enzyme in LAL, forms the basis of a novel micro-enzymatic assay for high-throughput screens of endotoxin and opens a new era in endotoxin testing.

TL;DR: Electrogenic cells fire spontaneous or triggered action potentials and can be electronically coupled to external electrodes (arrays) and have potential applications in drug screening, such as measuring the dose-response curve of isoproterenol, a beta-adrenergic agonist with a positive chronotropic effect.

TL;DR: There are several complementary tools available for proteome analysis including 2D protein electrophoresis and mass spectrometry, but new technology is required to be able to fully integrate proteomic information with information obtained about DNA sequence, mRNA profiles and metabolite concentrations into effective models of biological systems.

TL;DR: The potential of emerging genomics technologies applied to bacterial pathogens for vaccine discovery is analyzed, taking into account the few existing examples of their application in vaccine discovery.

TL;DR: The photochemical mechanisms examined are photoinduced electron transfer, internal charge transfer and excimer formation, with emphasis on the first category.