Category: bioengineering

Biomolecular informational content of biomedical engineering and bioengineering

December 7, 2023

To the student, it may be difficult to choose between a programme in biomedical engineering or bioengineering. So, at the biomolecular level, what are the differences between these two allied disciplines? Firstly, biomedical engineering focuses its analysis at the tissue and organ levels, and use this as an analytical platform to build up to the … More Biomolecular informational content of biomedical engineering and bioengineering

Sourcing of a suitable host for heterologous expression of silent biosynthetic gene cluster

May 20, 2021

Biosynthetic gene clusters for natural products synthesis in microbes are tightly regulated gene cassettes that often remain silent under standard laboratory growth conditions. Specifically, they are poorly expressed or not expressed at all during laboratory cultivation of the microbe. Hence, researchers have been developing various methods for activating silent biosynthetic gene clusters given the myriad … More Sourcing of a suitable host for heterologous expression of silent biosynthetic gene cluster

Targeting enzymes to subcellular compartment increases metabolite concentration and productivity in metabolic engineering

May 10, 2021

Traditional metabolic engineering approaches sought to overexpress key enzymes in pathways leading to the production of desired metabolites and products. This approach also commonly requires the deletion of genes encoding enzymes in competing pathways to help boost productivity of the production strain in synthesizing the compound of interest. While useful, cytosolic expression of heterologous enzymes … More Targeting enzymes to subcellular compartment increases metabolite concentration and productivity in metabolic engineering

Single cell RNA sequencing increasingly needs to be augmented by detection of protein product of RNA transcripts profiled

April 29, 2021

Current thinking in biological research posits that many phenomena is potentiated by events at the single cell level. This drove the desire to understand differential gene expression at the single cell level and its correlation with diseased phenotype at the cellular level. Advent of high throughput next-generation sequencing has brought forth technologies able to support … More Single cell RNA sequencing increasingly needs to be augmented by detection of protein product of RNA transcripts profiled

Utility of single cell RNA-sequencing depends on the biological question asked

April 20, 2021

Understanding differential gene expression at the single cell level offers a unique view into cellular transcriptional dynamics as well as stochasticity of gene expression at the population level. Single cell RNA-sequencing has emerged as the de facto tool for understanding differential gene expression in cells. However, when should we probe differential gene expression at the … More Utility of single cell RNA-sequencing depends on the biological question asked

Leaky expression from T5 inducible promoter

April 16, 2021

Promoters are genetic control elements that regulate the expression of genes appended to them through mediating the binding of RNA polymerase to the site that initiates gene transcription. Strong promoters refer to ones with strong binding affinity between the promoter sequence and RNA polymerase, and conversely, weak promoters are ones with low affinity of binding … More Leaky expression from T5 inducible promoter

Disadvantages of traditional restriction-digestion plasmid construction

March 21, 2021

Restriction enzymes are key enabling tools of recombinant DNA technology. Specifically, by recognising specific recognition sequence, restriction enzymes cut DNA at specific sites and generates either sticky or blunt ends useful for downstream annealing with a different piece of DNA. However, several problems are inherent in the approach of restriction digestion for plasmid construction. Firstly, … More Disadvantages of traditional restriction-digestion plasmid construction

Spatially-resolved single cell RNA-seq would provide unprecedented access to differential gene expression at the sub-tissue level

February 26, 2021

Neighbouring cells or cell clusters of a tissue likely have differentiated functions even as they cooperate at the aggregate level to maintain organ function. However, up-to-now such spatially-resolved differential gene expression has been difficult to probe as current methods for interrogating gene expression at the single cell level destroys spatial information embedded within the tissue … More Spatially-resolved single cell RNA-seq would provide unprecedented access to differential gene expression at the sub-tissue level

Thermodynamic considerations in metabolic engineering

February 22, 2021

Whether chemical or biological reactions, free energy is the driving force for the transformation of substrates to products. Thus, a reaction must be thermodynamically feasible before it would proceed. Or, in other words, a reaction must have a negative Gibbs free energy prior to product formation. Metabolic engineering seeks to overproduce a particular molecule (whether … More Thermodynamic considerations in metabolic engineering

Utility of metal-organic frameworks as drug delivery devices

February 19, 2021

Nanoparticles and microspheres have been used in drug delivery applications where functionalized nanoparticles and microsphere could, for example, locate cancer cells and release the drug payload at the target site. Since then, research in drug delivery applications has cast the search for platforms able to target particular cell types, home in on them, and release … More Utility of metal-organic frameworks as drug delivery devices