Anything but Conventional Chromatography Approaches in Bioseparation

While packed bed chromatography, known as conventional chromatography, has been serving the biopharmaceutical industry for decades as the bioseparation method of choice, alternative approaches are likely to take an increasing leading role in the next few years. The high number of new biological drugs under development, and the need to make biopharmaceuticals widely accessible, has been driving the academia and industry in the quest of anything but conventional chromatography approaches. In this perspective paper, these alternative approaches are discussed in view of current and future challenges in the downstream processing field.     

Anything impossible with CRISPR/Cas9?

正Since the adaptation of the bacterial CRISPR/Cas9 system to eukaryotic cells,this"magic"tool has now been dramatically modified and applied to all kinds of biomedical research,clinics and agriculture(Jiao and Gao,2016).The system was first reported to rapidly,specifically and effectively target genomic sequences in human cells(Cong et al.,2013;Jinek et al.,2013).Since then it attracted scientists’     

Can Anything Significant Come Out of Monitoring?

The Proposed Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment (USEPA, 1996) identify five criteria for determining ecological adversity: nature and intensity of effects, temporal and spatial scale, and potential for recovery. Assessing changes in the assessment endpoints and reaching conclusions on ecological adversity or significance is ultimately founded on information obtained through monitoring and measurements on ecological systems. Although some monitoring programs have previously been criticized for lack of scientific rigor, answers to questions related to ecological and societal significance must come from assessments founded on ecological monitoring efforts. Identifying the appropriate questions and assessment endpoints for monitoring are critical steps in the design and implementation of the monitoring program. However, the process must be completed. This monitoring information subsequently must form the foundation for assessments that interpret and present the ecological and societal signficance of observed status and trends in resource condition.     

Caffeine: a well known but little mentioned compound in plant science.

Caffeine, a purine alkaloid, is a key component of many popular drinks, most notably tea and coffee, yet most plant scientists know little about its biochemistry and molecular biology. A gene from tea leaves encoding caffeine synthase, an N-methyltransferase that catalyses the last two steps of caffeine biosynthesis, has been cloned and the recombinant enzyme produced in E. coli. Similar genes have been isolated from coffee leaves but the recombinant protein has a different substrate specificity to the tea enzyme. The cloning of caffeine biosynthesis genes opens up the possibility of using genetic engineering to produce naturally decaffeinated tea and coffee.     

A lost opportunity for science: journals promote data sharing in metabolomics but do not enforce it

Introduction

Data sharing is being increasingly required by journals and has been heralded as a solution to the ‘replication crisis’.

Objectives

(i) Review data sharing policies of journals publishing the most metabolomics papers associated with open data and (ii) compare these journals’ policies to those that publish the most metabolomics papers.

Methods

A PubMed search was used to identify metabolomics papers. Metabolomics data repositories were manually searched for linked publications.

Results

Journals that support data sharing are not necessarily those with the most papers associated to open metabolomics data.

Conclusion

Further efforts are required to improve data sharing in metabolomics.

     

Anything to Stay Alive: The Challenges of a Campaign for an Experimental Drug

Drug‐resistant tuberculosis (TB) has a high mortality rate. Most medicines used to treat it are poorly tested and have terrible side effects. Activists have campaigned for patients with drug‐resistant TB to have access to experimental drugs, particularly one called bedaquiline, before these have been approved by regulatory authorities such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States (US) and the Medicines Control Council (MCC) in South Africa. Some activists have also campaigned for bedaquiline to be approved by regulatory authorities before testing of the drug is completed. These campaigns raise ethical concerns about whether patients should be offered experimental, unapproved, medicines for the treatment of life‐threatening illnesses, and if authorities should approve drugs for life‐threatening illnesses when vital questions about safety and efficacy remain outstanding.     

Analogies in science and science teaching

Analogies are often used in science, but students may not appreciate their significance, and so the analogies can be misunderstood or discounted. For this reason, educationalists often express concern about the use of analogies in teaching. Given the important place of analogies in the discourse of science, it is necessary that students are explicitly shown how they work, perhaps based on the structure-mapping theory we outline here. When using an analogy, the teacher should very clearly specify both its components and its limitations. Great care is required in developing an analogy to ensure that it is understood as intended and that misconceptions are minimized. This approach models the behavior of a scientist, which helps to develop student understanding of the practice of science.