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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) report in an upcoming article in the Journal of the American Chemical Society their synthesis of a form of the bacterium Escherichia coli with a genetic code that uses 21 basic amino acid building blocks to synthesize proteins–instead of the 20 found in nature.
This is the first time that anyone has created a completely autonomous organism that uses 21 amino acids and has the metabolic machinery to build those amino acids.
“We
Expanding the genetic code: the world’s first truly unnatural organism
From time immemorial, every living thing has shared the same basic set of building blocks – 20 amino acids from which all proteins are made.
That is, until now: A group of scientists say they have, for the first time, created an organism that can produce a 21st amino acid and incorporate it into proteins completely on its own. The research should help probe some of the central questions of evolutionary theory.
ADE Biotec and the INASMET Foundation, both from the Basque Country, after three years of working together, have developed a new purification technique for purines. The technique is based on electroflotation and could be very beneficial for agriculture as it has a high level (80%+) of purification and very low costs (1 euro/m3). Most of the development project has been carried out at a pilot plant on a Toledo pig farm.
Nowadays purines (excrements plus sewage water from farms) constitute one
Researchers have identified a protein fragment that keeps at least one major tumor suppressor gene from preventing cancer like it should. The fragment belongs to a class of proteins known as apoptotic enhancers (ASPP), named for their ability to stimulate programmed cell death, or apoptosis, by the p53 gene.
But a study published in Nature Genetics finds that one member of this group, called iASPP, actually inhibits p53’s normal cell killing power. When iASPP levels were reduced in experime
With a high-tech fix for faulty cellular editing, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have moved a step closer to developing treatments for a host of diseases as diverse as breast cancer, muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis.
Many human diseases have been linked to defects in a cellular editing process called pre-messenger RNA splicing. Adrian Krainer, a molecular biologist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, has spent years investigating this complex editing process, which t
Researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research are gaining new insight into the molecular players involved in the process of vertebral column formation in the embryo.
A research team headed by Dr. Olivier Pourquie, currently an Associate Scientist at the Stowers Institute, were pioneers in providing evidence for an oscillator called the segmentation clock, a timing mechanism responsible for the periodic production of the somites (the precursors of the vertebrae) in the embr