A bacteria created by Princeton chemical engineers might just have the potential of enabling the discovery of new treatments for hormone-related medical problems due to its unique property of being able to respond to the human hormone, oestrogen. The bacteria have been designed to be sensitive to hormone mimicking pollutants as well, due to being linked with oestrogen-binding protein receptors. Such a design allows the researchers to distinguish between oestrogen receptor-stimulating compounds and those that block them by observing bacterial growth. This will allow wide, rapid screening of thousands of compounds which may inhibit oestrogen activity just by culturing.

Eating genetically-modified lettuce to treat diabetes may not sound as far-fetched as one thinks, according to biomedical researchers in University of Central Florida. According to them, insulin which was produced from genetically-engineered tobacco has shown great promise in treating diabetes in diabetic mice. The study has diabetic mice being administered the plant cells in powder for eight weeks and has the mice show normal blood and insulin levels at the end of the study. The next step might just be to introduce the insulin gene into lettuce plants which would have a less negative stigma association in comparison to tobacco.