News by Subject Technology & Engineering

Scientists at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have implicated a largely hidden part of the human genome in the severity of autism symptoms, a discovery that could lead to new insights into the disorder and eventually to clinical therapies for the condition.

A cutting-edge technique called cellular barcoding has been used to tag, track and pinpoint cells responsible for the spread of breast cancer from the main tumour into the blood and other organs. Dr Delphine Merino, Dr Tom Weber, Professor Jane Visvader, Professor Geoffrey Lindeman and Dr Shalin Naik led the highly collaborative research that involved breast cancer biologists, clinician scientists, biotechnologists and computational experts at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.

Scientists of the Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (PIBOC) of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FEB RAS) and the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) found out marine invertebrates living in Troitsa Bay, the Sea of Japan, contain biologically active compounds with strong antitumor and antimicrobial properties, and also capable of killing insects. An article on that was published in the Russian Journal of Marine Biology.

Although magnetic nanoparticles are being used more and more in cell imaging and tissue bioengineering, what happens to them within stem cells in the long term remained undocumented. Researchers have shown substantial degradation of these nanoparticles, followed in certain cases by the cells "re-magnetizing." This phenomenon is the sign of biosynthesis of new magnetic nanoparticles from iron released in the intracellular medium by the degradation of the first nanoparticles.

Using a small and inexpensive biosensor, researchers in the School of Engineering have developed a novel low-cost technique that quickly and accurately detects cryptosporidium contamination in water samples.