Bacterial evolution can be accelerated with the MAGE technique to produce large numbers of  favorable mutations (micrograph image of E. coli bacteria magnified 10, 000 times)

Bacteria are prolific replicators, and some species can replicate into the millions in just a few hours. Bacteria, in the functioning of their cellular and biochemical machinery, also just happen to manufacture some very useful chemicals and bio-active molecules. The microbe populations also exhibit high rates of random mutation, which can confer adaptive traits, over time, onto the newer, variant population.

These attributes of bacterial life forms have been exploited in the biology lab (and in other industries) for some time, but generating genomic diversity in the lab has been challenging; inserting genes or entire genetic sequences into a cell’s nucleus (and DNA) can be done readily, but controlling or directing how exactly these hybrids mutate, is quite another thing. Further, new phenotypes (the main physical traits or properties) don’t usually happen fast or frequently enough for practical uses. But with a new technique called MAGE (Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering), bacteria are now being engineered (and “directed”) to perform these functions much faster and much more efficiently.

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As part of a National Science Foundation grant program to examine cutting edge ways to make nature work for us, a team of scientists at Iowa State University have been awarded $2 million to unravel how some plants and algae can make hydrocarbons and discover if the genes that govern that process might be isolated.

“These plants are capturing solar energy and creating something that’s chemically identical to petroleum,” said Jackie Shanks, Iowa State’s Manley R. Hoppe Professor of Chemical Engineering, in a statement.

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Austrian scientists are putting the ‘fun’ in ‘fungus’ by forcing organisms which are usually asexual to have sex instead.

The hope is that the fungus would then be easier to breed, which would allow researchers to create organisms that are more efficient at degrading cellulose for the purpose of making biofuel.

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A common garden slug, Arion lusitanicus, eating (note: the subject of these experiments was a sea slug) photo credit: Håkaan Svensson, Xauxa

After two weeks of a strict algae-only diet, a one-inch, green sea slug species (Elysia chlorotica) was somehow able to incorporate the plants chloroplasts (the cell-like organelles that trap solar energy and convert it to sugar), and then live out the rest of their single-year lives without eating.

The slug, a snail-like mollusk without a shell, was able to photosynthesize, just as plants do. Scientists are not sure exactly how it is able to pull this trick off, but they do know that the slug is able to harness the DNA found within the alga’s chloroplasts (note: chloroplasts in plants are like mitochondria, in that each has its own DNA apart from the DNA found in the cell’s nucleus). But this DNA only encodes a small percentage of the genes (and their proteins) needed for complete photosynthesis. The rest of the needed genes (in particular the nuclear osbO gene) are in the algae cell’s nuclear DNA. Not to worry, somehow, the slug is able to “steal” those genes as well, and incorporate them into their germ line cells–allowing them to pass this new capability on to their off-spring.

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Traditional farmers in the Thai hills are still growing rice the old fashioned way, and they may be single-handedly preserving the crop’s genetic diversity in the process.

Domesticated rice varieties have been selected for their high yield, and though they are necessary in order to feed the world’s growing population, they are genetically static. But a new study demonstrates that the traditional farming methods still practiced in remote areas of Thailand are preserving ancestral varieties of rice by keeping them genetically dynamic.

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Australian scientists are aiming to finish sequencing the genome for sugarcane by this time next year. Once completed, it could lead to the development of a super biofuel.

Sugarcane is already being widely harvested as a biofuel, but with the genome mapped researchers could pinpoint exactly where in its DNA specific traits are found. Those traits could then be more precisely manipulated to create “supercane”– sugarcane richer in energy and more suitable for transformation into biofuel.

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Two Harvard researchers say they have successfully constructed a ribosome.

Harvard Medical School Professor Greg Church and Research Fellow Michael Jewett extracted ribosomes from E. coli bacteria, processed them, and then made new ones from the molecules.

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There’s been a seven- to eight-fold increase of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cases in California since 1990.

I’ve suspected that the rise in diagnoses of ASD is linked to many factors, one of them better detection. You, too? Not so, says a new study.

“It’s time to start looking for the environmental culprits responsible for the remarkable increase in the rate of autism in California…We’re looking at the possible effects of metals, pesticides and infectious agents on neurodevelopment,” said researcher Irva Hertz-Piccoto.

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Will this research help revive extinct animals like the woolly mammoth or saber-toothed tiger?

The findings of this fascinating study were published this week in the journal Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences. So without further ado, here’s how they brought the long dead mice back to life.

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Certainly, anything that can digest itself warrants a closer look — and now a company in Kansas has licensed that proprietary corn offspring, dubbed Spartan Corn III (it even sounds like a name your drunk uncle Larry would approve of), for the ultimate consummation of the marriage in a baptism of commercialization.

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Researchers at Michigan State are trying to get corn-stover to digest itself after harvest. Doing so would mitigate the costly pretreatment steps needed for the production of cellulosic ethanol from the non-edible parts of the corn plant.

MSU’s scientists are adding genetic material to the corn’s genome, genes that would normally be responsible for the digestive enzymes produced by fungi and the microbes in cow rumens. The newly transgenic plants store these enzymes in vacuoles in the leaves and stalk in a way that doesn’t affect the plant while it’s alive.

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