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South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday. In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams. A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said. "It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned," the ministry said in a statement.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2007) — In a feat that seems like something out of a microscopic version of Star Trek, MIT researchers have found a way to use a “tractor beam” of light to pick up, hold, and move around individual cells and other objects on the surface of a microchip. The new technology could become an important tool for both biological research and materials research, say Matthew J. Lang and David C. Appleyard, whose work is being published in the journal Lab on a Chip. The idea of using light beams as tweezers to manipulate cells and tiny objects...

Spider web silk, the strongest natural fiber known, could possess untapped medical potential in artificial tendons or for regenerating ligaments, scientists now say. A body of folklore dating back at least 2,000 years tells of the potential medical value of spider webs in fighting infections, stemming bleeding and healing wounds, explained molecular biologist Randolph Lewis at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Spider webs have even found a place in Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream," where the character dubbed Bottom noted, "Good Master Cobweb: if I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you." While research has found...

SITTING in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was "printed", using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering. Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his "bioprinting" technique last week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting in San Francisco. It relies on droplets of "bioink", clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid. This means that...

Synthetic Biologists String Genes into Living Machines. Enjoy bacteria that make a picture of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! See some visions of the future via Biotechnology.

AP SCIENCE WRITER NEW YORK -- Bird flu virus found in a Vietnamese girl was resistant to the main drug that's being stockpiled in case of a pandemic, a sign that it's important to keep a second drug on hand as well, a researcher said Friday. He said the finding was no reason to panic. The drug in question, Tamiflu, still attacks "the vast majority of the viruses out there," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Tokyo and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The drug, produced by Swiss-based Roche Holding AG, is in short supply as nations around the world...

A Singapore scientific institute says it has invented a urine-powered micro battery that can be used in disposable test kits for diabetes and other diseases. The state-funded Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology said a drop of urine placed on the paper battery will generate enough electricity to power a "biochip device" that can analyse the urine sample for disease "biomarkers". "We are striving to develop cheap, disposable credit card-sized biochips for disease," the institute's principal research scientist Dr Lee Ki Bang said in a press statement. "Our battery can be easily integrated into such devices, supplying electricity upon contact with...

What happens when you cross a human and a mouse? Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but, in fact, it's a serious experiment recently carried out by a team headed by a distinguished molecular biologist, Irving Weissman, at Stanford University. Scientists injected human brain cells into mouse foetuses, creating a strain of mice that were approximately 1% human. Weissman is considering a follow-up that would produce mice whose brains are 100% human. What if the mice escaped the lab and began to proliferate? What might be the ecological consequences of mice who think like human beings, let loose...

Scientists say they may have worked out how spiders and silkworms are able to produce such strong fibers to spin their webs and cocoons. They say that if they are right, their research could be used to produce silk in the laboratory for extra-strong protective clothing, sports equipment and even replacement bone tissue. Silk is the strongest natural fiber known to man but scientists have yet to replicate its strength. They have managed to purify silk into powder but have not been able to turn it into material. "The problem is that when people take these purified powders and try...

<p>Local scientists are working on a tissue engineering project that could one day allow doctors to repair a damaged heart with a bioengineered blood vessel or a patch of cardiac muscle.</p> <p>The National Institutes of Health has awarded $4.9 million to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh's bioengineering department and the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine to test the idea in rats and other laboratory animals.</p>

CNSNews.com) - Time Magazine's decision to honor an Indian organic farming activist for her opposition to genetically modified foods is drawing fire from critics around the world who accuse Vandana Shiva of advocating a return to the "days when people died like flies." The "Green Century" special Earth Summit edition of Time Magazine named Shiva one of the environmental "heroes," and lauded her for representing "tradition's voice," by setting "an eco-friendly standard that agribusiness must show it can outperform." Shiva has campaigned against GM foods, claiming high-tech agriculture will ultimately destroy the land. She's also championed chemical-free organic farming...