At a Sydney conference last month, Kerri Hartland, the executive general manager of Commonwealth government agency Biotechnology Australia, revealed the results of a poll which asked Australian biotechs what they thought were their biggest challenges. [ + ]

Bioprocessing and fermentation are essential parts of the biotechnology product development cycle. If a drug or therapeutic is produced by a living organism, whether it's bacteria, yeast, plant cells or mammalian cells, some form of large-scale fermentation or culture is required to produce the entity, and usually some form of downstream processing is necessary to extract, purify, concentrate and formulate the end product. [ + ]

What began as a trickle of new genes in the late 1970s has become a flood, as genomics projects deliver new genetic maps, huge catalogues of genes, and a ticker-tape blizzard of DNA sequences almost every other week. [ + ]

Good ideas and good science are not the only things a biotechnology company needs to get itself off the ground. In order to raise the amount of capital needed to take a company from being a mere glint in the eye of a scientist to a successful, publicly listed biotechnology company requires a lot of behind the scenes planning and strategy, business acumen, and networking. [ + ]

Tucked away in the corner of the Austin and Repatriation Medical Centre campus in Melbourne suburb of Heidelberg is the Brain Research Institute (BRI), devoted to research into epilepsy and other neural disorders, as well as the function of the healthy brain. [ + ]

Bioclusters are complex animals whose care and feeding now commands respectful attention in the upper echelons of Australia's biotechnology community. [ + ]

There are two basic types of rodent model for investigating inherited genetic disorders or health problems in humans -- the 'knockout' and the 'knock-in' mouse. [ + ]

As you read these words, charged sodium, potassium and calcium atoms are streaming through tiny pores in the membranes of billions of nerve cells in your brain, generating the seething electrical activity that underlies conscious thought. [ + ]

Making mutant mice was once a challenge, but in the Speedy Gonzales business of biotech and medical research, it's now routine, and a time-consuming distraction from the real game of investigating gene function. [ + ]

Great strides made in the areas of genomics, proteomics and other key features across the developing biotech landscape have dramatically altered the playing field for bioinformatics groups Asia is now expected to realize a massive surge in demand for IT systems as the region races to catch up with the rest of the world. [ + ]

Thermometric titrimetry is versatile, robust, fast and reliable, ideally suited to the demands of modern process and quality control laboratories

A team of computer scientists working with cell biologists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created BioSig, a web-based bioinformatic system that links collections of microscope images to a wide variety of quantitative experimental data

Outside the industry, the words 'Australian biotechnology' immediately conjure up three names in particular -- CSL, Cochlear and ResMed. The irony is that none of these companies is strictly a biotechnology company. [ + ]

Oil prices are again pushing $US30 a barrel, glaciers are melting, and cuckoos are announcing spring in Europe's woodlands some 16 days earlier than they did half a century ago. And not for the first time since the OPEC-engineered oil supply crisis of the mid-1970s, an Australian government is talking up the need to develop a local fuel ethanol industry. [ + ]

Behind the headlines, hype and huff-and-puff politics surrounding the therapeutic use of stem cells, there is fierce debate even among the experts over which research route holds the greater promise: adult, or embryonic? [ + ]