Biotechnology

For the first time, scientists have successfully produced full-length spider silk fibers using genetically modified silkworms. This silk has the potential to provide a scalable, sustainable and better-quality alternative to current synthetic fibers.

While water lilies are perhaps most famous for starring in impressionist artist Claude Monet’s work, they may also have a molecular secret weapon that could help in our fight against deadly fungal infections, which are becoming increasingly worse.

Biotech giant Vaxxas has cut the ribbon on a warehouse manufacturing plant for its needle-free patches. After successful trials, the first needle-free, easy to store and easy to administer vaccines are set to be rolled out in as little as three years.

It may seem like snail's pace compared to our COVID-19 vaccines, but the wheels are certainly turning in the development of a universal mRNA influenza vaccine. The latest has just entered trial, with many others at the same stage or even further along.

This internal fuel cell powered by excess glucose in the blood works in tandem with engineered beta cells that can produce and secrete insulin on command. It could spell a new level of autonomy in treatment for type 1 diabetes sufferers.

Detecting circulating tumor cells among healthy blood cells is notoriously hard. Now an easy-to-use device can ID even a small number of cancer cells, potentially providing a huge breakthrough in non-invasive early detection, monitoring and treatment.

It sounds like a sci-fi movie scene, but scientists have successfully created electrodes in living tissue using a viscous gel of enzymes. It could signal a fresh approach to bioelectronics and, in the future, new therapies for neurological disorders.

Japanese scientists have engineered the smallest lifeform that can move on its own. The team introduced bacterial proteins that enable movement into a simple synthetic bacterium that normally cannot move, causing it to change shape and become mobile.

Transmitting data from medical implants in the body can be tricky, but a new technique can essentially write data to ions in human tissue, where it can then be read from a receiver outside the body at high transmission speeds.

Organ transplants save lives, but rejection is a serious issue. That risk can be reduced by stripping donor cells out of the donor organ and replacing them with the recipient’s own, and now scientists have made that process safer with a protein bath.

Scientists working with microfluids as part of biotechnology research often rely on large, clunky machines to manage the samples, but this tinkering could one day be handled by tiny robots that make the process far more efficient.

To peer back in time at certain key steps of evolution, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute have engineered synthetic microorganisms designed to be similar to some that might have lived billions of years ago.