Showing papers in "Trends in Biotechnology in 2007"

TL;DR: Ethanol made biologically from cellulosic biomass, including agricultural and forestry residues, portions of municipal waste, and herbaceous and woody crops, is finally being widely recognized as a unique transportation fuel with powerful economic, environmental and strategic attributes.

TL;DR: This review describes how demands are being addressed to make biocatalysis successful, particularly by the use of micro-scale technology for high-speed catalyst screening and process development alongside discipline integration of biology and engineering with chemistry.

TL;DR: Recent advances in arsenic tolerance are discussed and their potential applications, particularly in the context of multigenic engineering approaches, are discussed.

TL;DR: Novel methods formulating nanoparticles into the form of micron-scale dry powders have been developed, which exhibit improved handling and delivery, while releasing nanoparticles upon deposition in the lungs.

TL;DR: Enzyme condition promiscuity has, for a long time, been used to run reactions under conditions of low water activity that favor ester synthesis instead of hydrolysis and has begun to be recognized as a valuable research and synthesis tool.

TL;DR: Some of the cell and molecular biomechanics research carried out on human diseases such as malaria, sickle cell anemia and cancer are highlighted and it is hoped that this can lead to new methods of early detection, diagnosis and treatment.

TL;DR: The massive (mis)use of antibiotics to control infections in aquaculture has resulted in the development of resistant strains, which have rendered antibiotic treatments ineffective, and new strategies toControl infections are urgently needed.

TL;DR: The most representative methods of producing thermoresponsive substrates for cell sheet engineering are reviewed and compared.

TL;DR: Recent work shows that bacterial 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase regulates ethylene levels in plants by metabolizing its precursor ACC into alpha-ketobutyric acid and ammonia, which can lead to enhanced uptake of heavy metals or rhizodegradation of xenobiotics.

TL;DR: The importance of evaluating the environmental impact of bio-based products with respect to their entire life cycle is highlighted, demonstrating that the choice of the raw material often turns out to be an important parameter influencing the life cycle performance.

TL;DR: This review summarizes the knowledge of plants that can serve as alternative sources of natural rubber, of rubber biosynthesis and the scientific gaps that must be filled to bring the alternative crops into production.

TL;DR: This review highlights the current and novel analytical technologies used for PSA detection, which will benefit clinicians, patients and forensic workers in the future.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight the pitfalls in using k(cat)/K(M) to compare the catalytic effectiveness of enzymes and highlight pitfalls of using the specificity constant as an index for comparing the relative rates of enzymes acting on alternative, competing substrates.

TL;DR: This review presents recent developments of in silico mining of microsatellites to reveal various facets of the distribution and dynamics of microSatellites in eukaryotic genomes.

TL;DR: There is an increasing need for methods for the selection of mammalian cell lines stably expressing recombinant products at high levels in an efficient, cost-effective and high-throughput manner.

TL;DR: Examples are presented that illustrate this broader perspective of tools and concepts, including a recent approach for global transcriptional machinery engineering (gTME), which has demonstrated the ability to elicit multigenic transcriptional changes that have improved phenotypes compared with single-gene perturbations.

TL;DR: This review concludes that the final safety issue is the absence of potentially tumorigenic hESC from the final product and will form the focus of this review.

TL;DR: Clinical and scientific challenges to support the development of combination therapy to treat bacterial infections using combinations of two antibiotics or antibiotics with adjuvants are discussed.

TL;DR: The background on why this treatment has been advocated, the data supporting its use and the current encouraging outcome from clinical use in horses treated with bone-marrow-derived cells are presented together with the future challenges of stem-cell therapy for the veterinary community.

TL;DR: In this review, the current status in genetically engineered (strept)avidins is highlighted and their versatility as advanced tools in the multiple fields of modern bioscience, medicine and nanotechnology is illustrated.

TL;DR: Cisgenesis is an improvement for gene transfer from crossable plants: it is a one-step gene transfer without linkage drag of other genes, whereas induced translocation and introgression breeding are multiple step gene transfer methods with linkage drag.

TL;DR: Current research focuses on the development of carriers with remote guiding and activation (optical, magnetic or ultrasound), thereby addressing unique in vivo applications with multifunctional biomaterials and possible solutions as well as promising applications.

TL;DR: This review focuses on the recent trends in antibody engineering for improving their clinical utility.

TL;DR: With the emerging threat of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, phage have begun to provide technologies to combat these problems and the promising uses of phage in these important areas of biotechnology are examined.

TL;DR: The scientific ground of vibrational spectroscopy is now undergoing a real boost, with the application of this analytical technique in biology and biomedicine.

TL;DR: Specific research priorities addressed in this article include identification of molecular targets against which highly specific antagonists can be designed or discovered, and management strategies to manipulate the incidence and properties of facultative microorganisms that influence insect pest traits.

TL;DR: Recent publications that have used a proteomic approach to develop a better understanding of filamentous fungi are reviewed, highlighting sample preparation methods and whole-cell cytoplasmic proteomics, as well as subproteomics of cell envelope, mitochondrial and secreted proteins.

TL;DR: Current methods of nanopore preparation are examined, ranging from organic pore preparations to recent developments in synthetic nanopore fabrications, primarily by electron-beam-assisted techniques.

TL;DR: The challenges of rapid prototyping face are discussed and evidence for the usefulness of RP in overcoming them is provided, including the variety of cell types, matrices and regulatory factors involved in liver development.

TL;DR: The use of nanostructures with surface-bound ligands for the targeted delivery and ablation of colorectal cancer, the third most common malignancy and the second most common cause of cancer-related mortality in the US, is outlined.