Baker's yeast is one of biotechnology's most important microorganisms. It has long been used to leaven bread and ferment beer. More recently, advances in synthetic biology have enabled engineered yeast to convert sugar into a wide range of products, including medicines, fuels and industrial chemicals. Yet even well-engineered yeast cells can be difficult to control in a precise and timely way.

Baker's yeast is one of biotechnology's most important microorganisms. It has long been used to leaven bread and ferment beer. More recently, advances in synthetic biology have enabled engineered yeast to convert sugar into a wide range of products, including medicines, fuels and industrial chemicals. Yet even well-engineered yeast cells can be difficult to control in a precise and timely way.

Every living cell, from the simplest bacterium to a human neuron, relies on the same basic machinery to read, interpret, and use its DNA. This molecular machinery is so fundamental that life as we know it cannot exist without it. And because it is so essential, it has long been a target for drugs; it shuts down a bacterium's ability to access its own genes and it quickly dies.

The global expansion of chicken farming has created conditions that allow Campylobacter to spread, mix and adapt more readily. Commercial poultry farms now hold billions of chickens, creating a vast habitat where bacteria can move, mix and adapt. An analysis from the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research at the University of Oxford found that [...]

Photosynthetic microorganisms can use light energy to convert carbon dioxide into useful compounds under mild, environmentally compatible conditions. However, many current photosynthetic production systems rely on cells growing freely in large volumes of liquid. This creates a substantial demand for water and requires extensive mixing to keep the cells evenly distributed and exposed to light, increasing the resource and energy requirements of the process.

For most healthy people, Cryptococcus is an unnoticed infection. The immune system walls it off in the lungs and keeps it dormant for life. But in patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy, recovering from an organ transplant, living with HIV or taking newer immunosuppressing drugs for autoimmune disease, the fungus can reactivate, spread to the brain and cause meningitis.