Acclaimed by students and instructors, Molecular Biotechnology: Principles and Applications of Recombinant DNA is now in its fourth edition, bringing it thoroughly up to date with the latest findings and the latest industrial, agricultural, pharmaceutical, and biomedical applications…

Microscopic nematode worms can be a potent organic insecticide, killing crop-raiding bugs without harming plants or beneficial insects and without the environmental side effects of chemicals. But when the worms are mass-bred for agricultural purposes, they tend to, as Byron Adams says, “wimp out,” and are not as deadly as their cousins that grow in the wild…

A team of University of Minnesota researchers have discovered how PTTH, a hormone produced by the brain, controls the metamorphosis of juvenile insects into adults. The finding, published in the Dec…

Two Kent State University assistant professors recently received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue research beneficial to understanding the environment. The three grants total $890,000. Christopher Blackwood, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, was awarded grants to support two separate research projects.

Biologist Theodore Garland will give an hour-long lecture, titled “Born to Run: Evolution of Hyperactivity in Mice,” at 7 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 29, in the University Theatre on the UC Riverside campus. Doors open at 6 p.m. Seating is open.

A breed of pea seeds has been created that contains antibodies against coccidiosis, a disease caused by a parasite that attacks chickens. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Biotechnology describe the development of the GM seeds, and demonstrate their effectiveness in preventing this economically important illness. Sergej Kiprijanov worked with a team of researchers from Novoplant GmbH, Germany, to develop the seeds.

Researchers at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology have discovered a key missing link in the so-called signaling pathway for plant steroid hormones (brassinosteroids). Many important signaling pathways are relays of molecules that start at the cell surface and cascade to the nucleus to regulate genes. This discovery marks the first such pathway in plants for which all the steps of the relay have been identified.

Insects are about to be analyzed in a new way by a host of Virginia Tech engineering faculty. They will be using some fancy state-of-the-art equipment, such as a kilometer-long synchrotron x-ray light source, which might be enough to scare any bug. And first up will be beetles, grasshoppers and silk moths because they have some endearing characteristics.

A higher density of blood vessels and other unique physiological features in the flight muscles of bar-headed geese allow them to do what even the most elite of human athletes struggle to accomplish - assert energy at high altitudes, according to a new UBC study. Named for the dark stripes on the backs of their heads, bar-headed geese are native to South and Central Asia.

Nanostructured materials have garnered great interest worldwide due to their unique size-dependent properties for chemical, electronic, structural, medical and consumer applications. Singapore’s Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) has discovered a new environmentally friendly method to synthesize a wide variety of nanoparticles inexpensively. This new chemical synthesis has been recently published in Nature Materials.