Developmental biology: Putting up barriers

Basement membrane: Putting up the barriers

The basement membrane is a highly organized extracellular matrix with adhesive and barrier functions. Assembly of this matrix uses two types of cell surface receptor, integrins and dystroglycan, to coordinate formation of a polygonal network of laminin, a major basement membrane protein.

Synthetic biology - putting engineering into biology

Synthetic biology is interpreted as the engineering-driven building of increasingly complex biological entities for novel applications. Encouraged by progress in the design of artificial gene networks, de novo DNA synthesis and protein engineering, we review the case for this emerging discipline. Key aspects of an engineering approach are purpose-orientation, deep insight into the underlying sc...

Putting up and Putting Down: Tolerance Reconsidered

Synthetic biology: putting synthesis into biology.

The ability to manipulate living organisms is at the heart of a range of emerging technologies that serve to address important and current problems in environment, energy, and health. However, with all its complexity and interconnectivity, biology has for many years been recalcitrant to engineering manipulations. The recent advances in synthesis, analysis, and modeling methods have finally prov...

Putting up with self.

Five years ago Denise Faustman stunned the biomedical world--and not in a good way, it seemed. She declared that she had cured diabetic mice by getting them to regrow their insulin-producing beta cells, a finding that, if it could be translated to humans, would spare the million-odd Americans with type 1 diabetes their daily needle pricking and insulin dosing. Since her announcement, the academ...