Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology

Macroalgae are the most productive plants in coastal ecosystems. They have attracted worldwide interest due to their ability to sequester carbon. The growth of macroalgae can produce significant amounts of particulate organic carbon (POC), but it is unclear how these POC are metabolized and how they affect carbon sequestration.

A new platform established by researchers at the Single-Cell Center, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (QIBEBT/CAS) improves accuracy, throughput, and stability in profiling dynamic metabolic features of cells—the basic building blocks of all life forms on Earth.

Researchers from the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have proposed a new technology, called optical tweezer-assisted pool-screening and single-cell isolation (OPSI) system, which achieves 99.7% purity of sorting target cells, with all done in real-time.

In animals, DNA damage could lead to cancers. Although plants live for a long time without cancers, their growth is always challenged by many environmental factors, such as radiation, salinity, heavy metals and flooding, which can lead to DNA damage and impair crop production.

Currently, the best way for scientists to isolate a specific microbe with a particular metabolic function from an environment is to take a sample of cells, culture them, and then screen them for the desired cell functions.

Pectin is a complex cell wall polysaccharide. It plays an important role in modulating cell adhesion, cell morphogenesis and growth.

Cellulosomes are multi-enzyme complexes known for their efficient lignocellulose degradation, which is valuable in bioenergy technique development. The diverse composition and intricate assembly of cellulosomes give them exceptional substrate degradation capabilities, and deciphering their complex assembly mechanisms can provide a better understanding of their efficiency and promote their applications in bioenergy…

Scaling down single-cell reactions to the nanoliter level is critical to minimize the risk of contamination, increase reaction efficiency, and reduce costs. Researchers from the Single-cell Center of the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a centrifugally driven system for precise manipulation of nanoliter liquids in single-cell analysis,…

Protein glycosylation is one of the most important post-translational modifications that can be exploited to improve various aspects of therapeutic proteins and industrial enzymes. Different types of glycosylation have a variety of effects on protein properties and functions, and a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms can provide valuable guidance for rational glycoengineering of proteins.

The formation of persisters is an important feature of bacteria like Escherichia coli (E. coli). These noxious cells, which are able to go dormant, are highly resistant to antimicrobial treatments and account for various relapsing chronic infections with common symptoms such as severe stomach pain, vomiting and bloody diarrhea.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), the bacteria that can cause human gastritis, peptic ulcers and stomach cancer, infects about half of the world's population. It is essential to quickly identify the infection and select the right combination of sensitive antibiotics. Current tools, however, are limited, mainly because H. pylori are slow-growing and hard to cultivate.

Alcohols are widely applied in life sciences and the chemical industry. Selective hydrogenation of epoxides using hydrogen molecules as a reductant is considered to be one of the most facile and atom-economical strategies for alcohol synthesis. However, controlling the regioselective ring opening of epoxides remains a challenge.

Glucose is the most abundant monosaccharide, serving as an essential energy source for cells and as an important feedstock for the biorefinery industry. The plant-biomass-sugar route dominates the current glucose supply, while it is influenced by multiple parameters, such as plant-cultivation cycles, biomass-collection radius, and pre-treatment costs.

A phytoplankton almost as old as Earth—about 3 billion years compared to the planet's 4.5 billion years—still holds secrets, including how it can survive starvation in the most nutrient-deficient oceans. Synechococcus is the most geographically diverse of three phytoplankton species, contributing to a quarter of the oceans' primary production and appearing in both frigid polar waters and warm tropical seas.

In China, a research group led by the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), has revealed that biological nanofibrils could efficiently extract valuable metal elements from water. Their findings were published in ACS Nano on August 15. In recent years, the group has carried out a lot of […]

Linear alcohols, as an important class of chemical products, are indispensable in the production of food, pharmaceuticals, plasticizers, and lubricants. Direct conversion of readily available alkenes into high-value alcohols is important but challenging in both organic synthesis and industry.

Algae and bacteria are inseparable in ocean ecosystems, with bacteria playing a crucial role in regulating the growth and metabolism of algae. In addition to mutualism, bacteria have developed various molecular-based strategies to combat algae.

In China, sequencing the genome of single bacterial cells has long been technically difficult due to the seemingly unalterable bias in the gene amplification stage of the process, making it hard to produce high-coverage genome sequence from precisely just one bacterial cell. A new process developed by researchers at the Single-Cell Center, Qingdao Institute of […]

Transmembrane signaling involves sensing and communicating with the extracellular environment. Part of the transmembrane signaling is a process known as autoproteolysis, which is key in different functions of a cell.

Droplet microfluidics allows for quicker point-of-care testing (POCT), but it is not always as accurate and currently requires an amount of external effort for proper handling.