(Press-News.org) Scientists at the University of Strathclyde and City University of New York have created methods that dramatically simplify the discovery of biological gels for food, cosmetics and biomedicine, as published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
Strathclyde's Dr Tell Tuttle and Professor Rein Ulijn, the director of nanoscience at City University New York's new advanced research centre who also holds a position at Strathclyde, believe their team's breakthrough dramatically simplifies discovery of functional gels that can be used in a wide range of applications.
Until now, discovery of new gels relied largely on chance discoveries. They developed a screening method to accurately predict how peptides - the building blocks of living systems - could combine to form stable gels.
Professor Ulijn said: "Most people are familiar with the DNA as the code for life. This code translates into only 20 chemical building blocks - amino acids - that are combined in specific sequences, known as peptides, that provide structures of living systems.
"It is our aim to design structures based on peptides that are inspired by biology, but are much simpler, making them scalable, tunable, robust and functional and we now have predictive methods to achieve this."
The number of possible sequences of amino acids is huge, meaning it is not feasible to test them all - previously limiting the discovery of new candidate peptides for specific applications.
Prior to this discovery, there was no way to reliably predict whether a particular peptide - e.g. a tripeptide composed of three amino acids - would form a structure, such as a biological gel, and scientists would rely on chance or time-consuming individual experiments of each one.
Dr Tuttle said: "There are 8,000 possible tripeptides and we have developed computational methods to predict which of these could be used to develop materials with desirable properties.
"These methods led to the discovery of a new family of simple tripeptides that are able to form hydrogels at neutral pH. These materials are much simpler compared to the gels of biological systems but they have some interesting properties that may be exploited in various areas, such as cell culture and ingredients for cosmetics."
INFORMATION:
The Nature Chemistry article is available to view in full here. http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.2122.html
The drug daclatasvir (trade name Daklinza) has been available since August 2014 for the treatment of adults with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) infection. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy.
The drug manufacturer presented data for patients without cirrhosis of the liver who are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1, and for patients with HCV genotype 4. However, these data are unsuitable in various aspects to ...
Pioneering new research by the University of Exeter could revolutionise global diagnostic procedures for one of the most common forms of epilepsy.
Scientists from Exeter have investigated using mathematical modelling to assess susceptibility to idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE) by analysing electrical activity of the brain while the patient is in a resting state.
Current diagnosis practices typically observe electrical activities associated with seizures in a clinical environment.
The ground-breaking research has revealed differences in the way that distant regions ...
"A tree must be bent while it is young," as one saying about learning a foreign language goes. In other words, the earlier you start learning a foreign language systematically, the better the language level will be in the long run. The second widely held view is that you need to be solid in your first language (L1) in order to develop good literacy skills in the foreign language. Linguist Simone Pfenninger from the University of Zurich has been examining these two myths in her five-year study involving Swiss high-school children in order to identify the optimal starting ...
Reston, Va. (December 9, 2014) - Cancer therapy can be much more effective using a new way to customize nuclear medicine treatment, researchers say in the December 2014 issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. The process could also be useful for other diseases that could benefit from targeted radiation.
Targeted therapy with radiopharmaceuticals--radioactive compounds used in nuclear medicine for diagnosis or treatment--has great potential for the treatment of cancer, especially for cancer cells that have migrated from primary tumors to lymph nodes and secondary organs ...
London, United Kingdom, December 9, 2014 - As the Ebola Virus Diseases (EVD) epidemic continues to rage in West Africa, infectious diseases experts call attention to the striking lack of treatment guidelines. With over 16,000 total cases and more than 500 new infections reported per week, and probable underreporting of both cases and fatalities, the medical community still does not have specific approved treatment in place for Ebola, according to an editorial published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Not only are treatment guidelines lacking, but ...
Studying the social interaction of bears through the use of camera traps and visual observations requires that humans be able to tell individuals apart. A study done using volunteers to study the vulnerable Andean bear indicates that people can learn to identify individual bears, given a little practice. The research, done by San Diego Zoo conservationists with international collaborators using photos spanning many years, also indicates that young bears usually retain many of their unique markings as they grow older.
"Knowing, scientifically, that people who have been ...
Researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg are proposing potential new active substances for treating the dengue virus. Just like Ebola, dengue fever is also caused by a virus for which there is currently no cure and no vaccine and can be fatal.
In the quest for medication to treat the dengue virus, the scientific community is focusing on a particular enzyme of the pathogen, the protease known as NS2B/NS3. The reason for this is that inhibitors of similar proteases have been revealed to be very effective ...
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A marker of immune function that predicts for better outcomes in patients treated with chemotherapy for triple negative breast cancer is also linked to improved prognosis in patients treated with chemotherapy for HER2-positive breast cancer. But that marker -- the quantity of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (S-TILs) in a biopsy -- appears irrelevant when trastuzumab is used.
And since trastuzumab, and not chemotherapy alone, is the standard of care for the HER2-positive sub-class of breast cancer, there is no need to test for these lymphocytes in ...
In patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer--a disease with no approved targeted therapies--infusion of pembrolizumab produced durable responses in almost one out of five patients enrolled in a phase-Ib clinical trial, according to data presented Dec. 10, at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
The multi-center, non-randomized trial was designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and antitumor activity of bi-weekly infusions of pembrolizumab (MK-3475, marketed as Keytruda®). The researchers enrolled 27 patients, aged 29 to 72 years, who had ...
Several past studies have suggested that the magnetic fields created by phones, high-voltage power lines and other electrical equipment are harmful for humans.
Research first carried out in the 1970's and again subsequently, found an association between people living near overhead power lines and an increased risk of childhood leukaemia. Although some later studies have failed to find such a link, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has categorised low frequency magnetic fields as "possibly carcinogenic."
But a mechanism for this association has never been ...
