Engineered

Instead of injections or pills, why not engineer bacteria to secrete therapeutic molecules from within our gut? A new study is demonstrating this futuristic idea, showing how a genetically modified probiotic can produce an experimental anti-inflammatory molecule and effectively treat rheumatoid arthritis in rats."People don't like to have injections for the rest of their lives," said co-corresponding author Christine Beeton, from the Baylor College of Medicine. "In the current work, we explored the possibility of using…

By tinkering with fine details within wood, engineers in Sweden have come up with an interesting new way of harvesting electricity. The technology leverages natural processes that already take place in drying wood, but supercharges it to capture enough electricity to run LEDs and other small devices.Carried out by nanoengineers as KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the research centers on the sequence of events that play out when wood becomes wet and then dries. Called transpiration, this takes place in all plants as…

Used by humans as a stimulant and anesthetic for thousands of years, the drug commonly known as cocaine has been carefully shaped by species of the coca plant (Erythroxylum) over tens of millions of years in an arms race against hungry insects.Knowing just how the plants pull off this feat of chemical engineering would be a big win for the pharmaceutical industry while helping biologists better understand the evolution of similar pesticides across the plant kingdom.Yet the sheer complexity of the chemical's production…

We are surrounded by waves. Tiny vibrational waves transport sound to our ears. Light waves stimulate the retinas of our eyes. Electromagnetic waves bring radio, television and endless streaming content to our devices. Remarkably, all these different waves are governed largely by the same fundamental physical principles. And in the past few years there has been a revolution in our ability to control these waves using materials, engineered at the nanoscale, known as metamaterials. The Greek prefix meta means “beyond.”…

A Paris-based startup has created a genetically engineered houseplant that can literally clean the air within your home. The plant builds off the natural purifying properties that houseplants already offer. So, while it adds some color to whatever room you put it in, it’s also actively keeping the air cleaner than 30 air purifiers. The company, called Neoplants, modified both a pothos plant as well as its root microbiome to pump the plant’s natural air-cleaning properties up quite a bit. Called Neo P1, the…

In the muddy trenches of World War I, thousands of soldiers on both sides fell ill with dysentery, a diarrheal disease often spread by contaminated water. Curiously, one German soldier deployed in the Balkans didn’t become sick when the rest of his comrades did. When scientist Alfred Nissle isolated a strain of E. coli from the soldier’s stool in 1917, he found that it had strong protective effects against Shigella bacteria, a cause of dysentery. Over the past hundred years, this protective strain—now known as E. coli…

Our immune system is the first line of defense against disease, but unfortunately it can go rogue and attack healthy tissues. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have now engineered a protein that may help prevent these autoimmune diseases by boosting the number of regulatory T cells (Tregs).The immune system keeps a vigilant watch over our bodies at all times, tagging and destroying foreign pathogens or problematic cells to prevent illness. However, sometimes it can get a little overzealous and start attacking the…

While plants such as corn and soybeans are major sources of biofuel, they're grown on land that could otherwise be used for food crops. With that problem in mind, scientists have genetically engineered oil-producing duckweed that could be grown in wastewater.The study was conducted by researchers from the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory and New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. They started with an existing type of duckweed known as Lemna japonica, to which they added multiple genes which were…

Scientists have genetically modified a strain of the herpes virus to act as a cancer-killing agent in humans. Findings from an initial human trial are encouraging, with the experimental treatment proving safe and promisingly effective.“Viruses are one of humanity’s oldest enemies, as we have all seen over the pandemic,” explained Kristian Helen from the Institute of Cancer Research. “But our new research suggests we can exploit some of the features that make them challenging adversaries to infect and kill cancer…

As the hardest tissue in the human body, enamel is not an easy material for engineers to mimic, but doing so could mean big things in materials science and regenerative medicine. Researchers are now reporting a breakthrough in this area, by tweaking the composition of a naturally occurring mineral to emulate the microstructure of natural enamel in a new type of dental coating, and do so in a way that offers even greater strength.Carried out by scientists in Russia and Egypt, the newly developed dental coating uses…