biotechnology

we're playing with levers and tools that are so powerful.

Capra Biosciences harnesses the superpowers of a biofilm-forming organism Marinobacter atlanticus to make fat-soluble products like retinol which is used in anti-aging face creams, and high-end industrial lubricants for electric car engines

Some startups, like MicroByre, have been working to domesticate those reluctant, recalcitrant, and rebellious microbes by adapting them for use in the lab and creating genetic tools to manipulate them

Impossible Foods, Zymergen, Pivot Bio, Novartis, and Calyxt

DANIEL K. NOMURA, Ph.D.

One Test May Spot Cancer, Infections, Diabetes and More

Here we have developed a phage-assisted continuous evolution selection that rapidly evolves high-affinity protein–protein interactions, and applied this system to evolve variants of the Bt toxin Cry1Ac that bind a cadherin-like receptor from the insect pest Trichoplusia ni (TnCAD) that is not natively bound by wild-type Cry1Ac. The resulting evolved Cry1Ac variants bind TnCAD with high affinity (dissociation constant Kd = 11–41 nM), kill TnCAD-expressing insect cells that are not susceptible to wild-type Cry1Ac, and kill Cry1Ac-resistant T. ni insects up to 335-fold more potently than wild-type Cry1Ac. Our findings establish that the evolution of Bt toxins with novel insect cell receptor affinity can overcome insect Bt toxin resistance and confer lethality approaching that of the wild-type Bt toxin against non-resistant insects. At a glance