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Tag Archives: Biology

Fields of gold

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — On a drive around Sandia National Laboratories, ecologist Jennifer Payne sees more than wide-open desert, grasslands, cacti and dirt. She notices tiers of soil that have experienced stress, looks closely at the height and spacing of vegetation and recites the Latin names of native New Mexico plants and where they belong. “No […]

Sandia storing information securely in DNA

Sandia researchers explore a biologically inspired information storage system ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider generate 15 million gigabytes of data per year. That is a lot of digital data to inscribe on hard drives or beam up to the “cloud.” George Bachand, a Sandia National Laboratories bioengineer at the Center for […]

Sandia researchers discover mechanism for Rift Valley fever virus infection

Virus uses known cancer pathway LIVERMORE, Calif. — Viruses can’t live without us — literally. As obligate parasites, viruses need a host cell to survive and grow. Scientists are exploiting this characteristic by developing therapeutics that close off pathways necessary for viral infection, essentially stopping pathogens in their tracks. Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) and […]

Engineering alternative fuel with cyanobacteria

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories Truman Fellow Anne Ruffing has engineered two strains of cyanobacteria to produce free fatty acids, a precursor to liquid fuels, but she has also found that the process cuts the bacteria’s production potential. Micro-algal fuels might be one way to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign energy. Such fuels […]