Qiagen has added 70 Institute for Product Quality molecular food safety assays to its fastest growing business segment.

The CSIRO’s Dr Ezio Rizzardo has been elected as a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Society for his work in the area of polymers. This year celebrating its 350th anniversary, the Royal Society boasts some of history’s most influential minds among its alumni, including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hawking. [ + ]

Brisbane-based biopharmaceutical company Xenome announced today its appointment of industry veteran Michael Aldridge as executive director. [ + ]

Ben Perrin has been promoted to Managing Director of Sigma-Aldrich with responsibilities for Australia and New Zealand.

Professor Rob Sutherland is this year’s recipient of the NSW Premier’s Award for Outstanding Cancer Researcher. [ + ]

GlaxoSmithKline will see its dominance of the Australian asthma treatment market eroded over the next few years by the arrival of new combination and generic products. That’s according to a new study from industry analysts Datamonitor . [ + ]

The plasma membrane is like border security for a eukaryotic cell, and we all know how important border security is, especially in an election year. Nothing gets in or out without passing across this specialised lipid bilayer, although for Professor Sandra Schmid from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, ‘in’ is the only direction that matters. [ + ]

A profluorescent nitroxide probe has been used to establish that biofuels may pose a health risk despite being more environmentally friendly.

Patrys Limited announced today that it has applied for approval to start human clinical trials testing its PAT-SM6 natural human antibody product on Australian melanoma melanoma patients. [ + ]

It's here at last: synthetic life. Or, at least, self-replicating life based on a synthetic DNA sequence that mimics one from nature. [ + ]

Dr John Parker, Chief Technology Officer at NICTA, has received a Clunies Ross Award for his work on the bionic ear at an exclusive black tie dinner in Melbourne last night. [ + ]

The developmental fate of cells was once thought to be determined when they began travelling down the road of differentiation, but research has shown that the identity of adult cells can be manipulated, opening intriguing prospects of using cellular reprogramming for therapeutic purposes. [ + ]

As the deadline looms, the Chief Scientist for Australia, Professor Penny D Sackett, has beckoned Australia’s top researchers to step forward and nominate for the nation’s most prestigious science awards.

When the full human genome was brought into the full light of day through the Human Genome Project, it was thought we could begin the task of uncovering the genetic bases of various diseases. [ + ]

Researchers suggest that the end of smallpox vaccination in the mid-20th century may have caused a loss of protection that contributed to the rapid contemporary spread of HIV.