Congratulations biotech community, you survived Monday. Now let’s see how biotechnology is HEALING, FUELING and FUELING the world TODAY! (Yes, fueling twice).

HEAL: TRACK DOWN CANCER, TAKE DOWN CANCER – According to The New York Times, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to monitor the progress of a patient’s cancer treatment using a new technique for rapidly sequencing, or decoding, large amounts of DNA. The article explains their discovery:

A cell becomes cancerous when the genes that stop runaway growth are sabotaged by mutations. Once the cell’s anticancer defenses are destroyed, genetic mayhem ensues, with further mutations and wholesale rearrangements of DNA in the chromosomes. If these altered bits of DNA could be picked up in a patient’s bloodstream, they would serve as a direct and sensitive marker of cancer. A surgeon could check if he had successfully removed all of a tumor, and chemotherapists could monitor the success of any treatment by testing for the reappearance of cancer cells.

There is A LOT more than goes into this process so make sure you check out the full article.

FUEL: MICROBE BIOFUEL – This story comes to us from the folks at CrunchGear. Japanese oil giant Nippon Oil and Hitachi Plant Technologies are developing a technology that would help to mass-produce eco-friendly jet fuel from Euglena, single-celled organisms that live in ponds and lakes. The companies stand by their efficient process of extracting oil from the organism, saying their production yield will exceed that of staple biofuel crops like sugarcane.

The current goal is to push down production costs per liter in a test plant to $0.80 per liter in order to be able to compete with regular jet fuel as far as prices are concerned. Another option, according to Euglena, is to use the biofuel for buses. The company says mass-producing Euglena-derived biofuel should be possible by 2015.

FUEL: JATROPHA STRIKES AGAIN, BIOFUEL IN HAWAII – In yesterday’s video roundup, we showed you what agricultural biotechnology means to Hawaiian farmers and their economy. So today, why don’t we look at how industrial biotechnology is affecting the people of Hawaii. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin published the story of Christian and James Twigg-Smith, father and son farmers, who were able to harvest their first jatropha crop last summer since planting the seeds two years ago. They had enough to make a few gallons of biodiesel and even run some tests on the oil they produced.

Christian Twigg-Smith, who also owns a coffee farm and construction company, said growing jatropha is similar to coffee because both are row crops, and the nuts have to be husked and dried before they are pressed for their oil. It takes about 100 pounds of nuts to make one gallon of biodiesel, Christian Twigg-Smith said. The first crop was harvested by hand, but the farmers are gearing up for their second-year harvest this summer and are looking to buy a mechanical harvester. They are seeking $1.3 million in financing to help purchase the equipment, a cold press to get the oil out of the nut and a covered building for the processing and storage of the nuts.