The latest advance in solid-state nanopore sensors – devices that are made with standard tools of the semiconductor industry yet can offer single-molecule sensitivity for label-free protein screening – expands their bag of tricks through bionanotechnology. Researchers at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen have enhanced the capabilities of solid-state nanopores by fitting them with cover plates made of DNA. These nanoscale cover plates, with central apertures tailored to various "gatekeeper" functions, are formed by so-called DNA origami – the art of programming strands of DNA to fold into custom-designed structures with specified chemical properties. The results are published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Chinese scientists from BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, together with the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Shihezi University, Xinjiang province, made a significant breakthrough in animal cloning. The world's first transgenic sheep produced with a simplified technique, handmade cloning, was successfully born at 12:16pm, March 26, 2012, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. The project was also supported by the Animal Science Academy of Xinjiang.

A new study presented today at the International Liver Congress™ 2012 demonstrates that the gut microbiota has a profound systemic effect on bile acid metabolism.(1)

Living systems owe their existence to a pair of information-carrying molecules: DNA and RNA. These fundamental chemical forms possess two features essential for life: they display heredity—meaning they can encode and pass on genetic information, and they can adapt over time, through processes of Darwinian evolution.