The 2009 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Promega Biotechnology Research Award is being presented to George M. Church, Ph.D., professor of genetics, Harvard Medical School, and director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics in Boston. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to the application of biotechnology through fundamental microbiological research and development.

Described as a "truly unique" and "extraordinarily creative" scientist, Dr. Church's forward thinking and wide-range of interests have resulted in numerous new technologies that have led to...

For more than 3 decades, researchers have been engineering microbes with the aim of harnessing these simple creatures to clean up pollution, make drugs, and produce biofuels. They have largely been limited to tinkering with individual genes, however. Now, two new developments, one of which is described in a paper published online this week by Science, have brought genetic engineers closer to a major goal: routinely manipulating sets of genes and even whole genomes....

Every living cell, even the simplest bacterium, teems with molecular contraptions that would be the envy of any nanotechnologist. As they incessantly shake or spin or crawl around the cell, these machines cut, paste and copy genetic molecules, shuttle nutrients around or turn them into energy, build and repair cellular membranes, relay mechanical, chemical or electrical messages—the list goes on and on, and new discoveries add to it all the time.

It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could...

J. Craig Venter, the visionary biologist and intellectual entrepreneur who was a leading figure in the decoding of the human genome, will join Harvard University as a visiting scholar at the University’s Origins of Life Initiative.

Venter, who left his last academic post in 1982, is founder and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute. He accepted the one-year appointment last week (Feb. 22). It starts March 1.

Read the Harvard Gazette article...

Harvard scientists have unveiled a new laser-measuring device that they say will provide a critical advance in the resolution of current planet-finding techniques, making the discovery of Earth-sized planets possible.

The discovery of planets outside of our solar system, called “exoplanets,” is one of the hottest fields in astronomy and holds great promise to increase our understanding of Earth’s solar system and of how life first took hold on this planet.

Read the ...

Research presented at a recent astronomical conference is being hailed as ushering in a new era in the search for Earth-like planets by showing that they are more numerous than previously thought and that scientists can now analyze their atmospheres for elements that might be conducive to life.

“This conference was very well timed. People came with new results. It clicked together. There was a lot of excitement,” said Professor of Astronomy Dimitar Sasselov, who heads Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative and who co-chaired the conference’s Scientific Organizing Committee. “What...

A team of biologists and chemists is closing in on bringing non-living matter to life.

It’s not as Frankensteinian as it sounds. Instead, a lab led by Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School, is building simple cell models that can almost be called life.

Szostak’s protocells are built from fatty molecules that can trap bits of nucleic acids that contain the source code for replication. Combined with a process that harnesses external energy from the sun or chemical reactions, they could form a...

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet somewhat larger and more massive than Neptune orbiting a star 120 light-years from Earth. While Neptune has a diameter 3.8 times that of Earth and a mass 17 times Earth's, the new world (named HAT-P-11b) is 4.7 times the size of Earth and has 25 Earth masses.

HAT-P-11b was discovered because it passes directly in front of (transits) its parent star, thereby blocking about 0.4 percent of the star's light. This periodic dimming was detected by a network of small,...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proud to announce that 34-year-old David Charbonneau, currently the Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, will receive its 2009 Alan T. Waterman Award. Discover Magazine's 2007 Scientist of the Year, Charbonneau's research focuses on the development of novel techniques for the detection and characterization of planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars--extra-solar planets, also known as exoplanets.

Read the...

Harvard Professor Cynthia M. Friend, the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Materials Science, is the 2009 recipient of the George A. Olah Award in Hydrocarbon or Petroleum Chemistry by the American Chemical Society.

Friend is “one of the outstanding surface scientists in the world and one who has consistently built connections between surface science and molecular chemistry — organic and hydrocarbon chemistry in particular,” said Roald Hoffmann, a Nobel laureate and the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters at Cornell...

Harvard scientists have created a biological machine in the lab that manufactures proteins, mimicking the activity of a cellular structure, called a ribosome, that is critical for life.

If it is verified by other scientists, the work by Harvard Medical School professor George Church would be an important step in the quest to create life from scratch.

Read the Boston Globe article. 

As NASA’s Kepler space telescope this week begins scanning the Milky Way for planets that might harbor life, scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) are keeping their fingers crossed and waiting for the data to start flowing.

The information stream is their reward for years of work dedicated to getting the space telescope off the ground and on the job. Kepler, which Astronomy Professor and Co-Investigator Dimitar Sasselov described as a giant space camera, was launched March 6 atop a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Read the...

The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation announced that George M. Whitesides, a Wyss faculty member and the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University, has won the inaugural Dreyfus Prize in the Chemical Sciences.

The prize, to be given biennially by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, recognizes exceptional and original research in a selected area of chemistry that has advanced the field in major ways. Conferred this year in materials chemistry, the prize consists of a monetary award of $250,000 — one of the largest awards dedicated...