Showing papers in "Trends in Biotechnology in 2015"

TL;DR: This work reviews studies that explored the association between an abnormal expansion of Proteobacteria and a compromised ability to maintain a balanced gut microbial community and proposes that an increased prevalence of ProTeobacteria is a potential diagnostic signature of dysbiosis and risk of disease.

TL;DR: Considerable advances in point-of-care testing (POCT) devices stem from innovations in cellphone (CP)-based technologies, paper-based assays, lab-on-a-chip platforms, novel assay formats, and strategies for long-term reagent storage.

TL;DR: This work reviews release-based antibacterial coatings and highlights recent approaches aimed at controlling the release of antibacterial agents, imparting multi-functionality, and enhancing long-term stability.

TL;DR: Poly(carboxylic acids) that can crosslink in both dry and wet conditions have been shown to provide the desired improvements in tensile properties, increase in stability under aqueous conditions, and also promote cell attachment and proliferation.

TL;DR: Electroporation is already an established technique in several areas of medicine, but many of its biotechnological applications have only started to emerge; some of the most promising are reviewed.

TL;DR: 3D cancer models that mimic the tumor microenvironment are discussed, providing a platform for deeper understanding of cancer pathology, anticancer drug screening, and cancer treatment development.

TL;DR: In this Opinion, possibilities for the bioprinting scale-up of functional tissue and organ constructs for transplantation are highlighted and alternative approaches, their limitations, and promising directions for new research prospects are provided.

TL;DR: The discrete biomechanical and biochemical mechanisms that underlie these architectural changes and highlight their particular relevance to the regulation of the alignment of ECM in the mesenchymal stroma are discussed.

TL;DR: The lignocellulosic SCO-based biorefinery will be feasible only if a combination of low- and high-value lipids are coproduced, while lignin and protein are upgraded to high- value products.

TL;DR: LPMOs offer tremendous promise for further process improvements owing to their ability to boost the activity of biomass-degrading enzyme consortia, and the academic literature in this area is reviewed.

TL;DR: The new biosynthesis routes 'tap' the metabolism ever more efficiently, particularly through the engineering of driving forces and utilization of cofactors generated during the light reactions of photosynthesis, resulting in higher product titers.

TL;DR: This review focuses on the DNA-based assemblies - primarily DNA origami nanostructures - that could perform complex tasks in cells and serve as smart drug-delivery vehicles in, for example, cancer therapy, prodrug medication, and enzyme replacement therapy.

TL;DR: Recent achievements in using light to control intracellular signaling pathways are reviewed and future prospects for the field are discussed, including integration of new genetic approaches into optogenetics.

TL;DR: The enormous potential provided by genome engineering for plant synthetic biology is discussed, owing to recent advances in the use of sequence-specific nucleases to precisely engineer genomes.

TL;DR: This work highlights selenium biomineralization and the potential biotechnological uses for it in bioremediation and wastewater treatment.

TL;DR: Non-immunoglobulin (non-Ig) scaffolds are, in contrast to antibodies, small single-domain proteins that require no post-translational modification, often lack disulfide bonds, and can undergo straightforward multimerization.

TL;DR: Constraints, opportunities, and the future outlook for the implementation of these key green engineering methods and the role of supporting tools such as mathematical models to establish sustainable production processes are discussed.

TL;DR: Modern methods of directed evolution and synthetic biology, especially those effecting changes in energy coupling, offer huge opportunities for increasing the flux towards extracellular product formation by transporter engineering.

TL;DR: Novel methods have been developed to identify the secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters by genome mining, to clone them, and to express them in heterologous hosts in much higher throughput than before.

TL;DR: This review focuses on assembling building blocks from the biomolecular level to the millimeter scale, and provides an overview of techniques for assembling molecules, cells, spheroids, and microgels and achieving bottom-up tissue engineering.

TL;DR: Current clinical and preclinical studies for advanced therapy cartilage regeneration and the progress of the field are reviewed and the status of these studies is evaluated.

TL;DR: New developments in nanotechnology applied to dentistry, focusing on the use of nanomaterials for improving the quality of oral care, are discussed, the perspectives of research in this arena, and discussions on safety concerns regarding theUse of dental nanommaterials are discussed.

TL;DR: Microbial electrochemical technologies (METs) have proved to be technically and economically viable for N recovery from urine, opening the path for novel decentralised systems focused on nutrient recovery and reuse.

TL;DR: This work has shown that solid-binding peptides show selectivity and bind with high affinity to the surfaces of a diverse range of solid materials, and have the ability to mediate the synthesis and construction of nanoparticles and complex nanostructures.

TL;DR: Recent progress in constructing protein-based switches is analyzed while assessing their potential in the assembly of defined signaling motifs to facilitate the construction of artificial signaling systems that operate in parallel to the signaling machinery of a host cell for applications in synthetic biology.

TL;DR: The existing assays for quantifying on- and off-target genome editing outcomes are reviewed and their utility in advancing the technology is described and their importance for the genome editing field is discussed.

TL;DR: An overview of the current needs for seafood origin traceability, along with the limitations and challenges for its implementation, focuses on geochemical, biochemical, and molecular tools and how they should be optimized to be implemented globally and to address societal needs.

TL;DR: A review of progress in understanding Fc biology suggests the prospect of engineering products that have an extended half-life and are able to modulate the immune system.

TL;DR: Progress in genome editing is reviewed, with an emphasis on designer nuclease and donor template delivery into mammalian target cell populations and the impact that incremental improvements to these tools are having on the specificity and fidelity attainable with state-of-the-art DNA-editing procedures.

TL;DR: Insights into diterpene metabolism may translate into the development of new bioengineered microbial and plant-based production systems.