Ubiquitin is a small protein with a big impact. From yeast fungi to humans, it serves as a molecular tag that regulates many cellular processes. Ubiquitin ligases are indispensable labeling machines in this tagging process: They attach ubiquitin to target proteins. If this tagging fails, processes in the cell can be pathologically altered. A team led by Sonja Lorenz at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences has now visualized the ubiquitin ligase HACE1 bound to an important target…
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disease that usually leads to permanent disabilities. It affects around 2.9 million people worldwide, and around 15,000 in Switzerland alone. One key feature of the disease is that it causes the patient’s own immune system to attack and destroy the myelin sheaths in the central nervous system. These protective sheaths insulate the nerve fibres, much like the plastic coating around a copper wire. Myelin sheaths ensure that electrical impulses travel quickly and efficiently from…
Janus nanosheets bring unprecedented control to preparation of nanoscrolls. Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have come up with a new way of rolling atomically thin sheets of atoms into “nanoscrolls.” Their unique approach uses transition metal dichalcogenide sheets with a different composition on either side, realizing a tight roll that gives scrolls down to five nanometers in diameter at the center and micrometers in length. Control over nanostructure in these scrolls promises new developments in catalysis and photovoltaic devices. Nanotechnology…
Gravitational lensing maps from initial data promise even more detail. Argonne is part of a multi-institutional effort to survey the sky for clues about the origins and nature of our universe. For more than five years, scientists at the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica have been observing the sky with an upgraded camera. The extended gaze toward the cosmos is picking up remnant light from the universe’s early formation. Now researchers have analyzed an initial batch of data, publishing details…
A novel PET imaging technique can noninvasively detect active inflammation in the body before clinical symptoms arise, according to research published in the February issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Using a PET tracer that binds to proteins present on activated immune cells, the technique produces images of ongoing inflammation throughout the body, such as rheumatoid arthritis. This makes it easier for physicians to correctly diagnose and treat patients. Rheumatoid arthritis is the most common type of inflammatory arthritis and…
Bringing the smallest protein clusters into focus. Penn Engineers have pioneered a new way to visualize the smallest protein clusters, skirting the physical limitations of light-powered microscopes and opening new avenues for detecting the proteins implicated in diseases like Alzheimer’s and testing new treatments. In a paper in Cell Systems, Lukasz Bugaj, Assistant Professor in Bioengineering, describes the creation of CluMPS, or Clusters Magnified by Phase Separation, a molecular tool that activates by forming conspicuous blobs in the presence of…
Lung tumors called adenocarcinomas sometimes respond to initially effective treatments by transforming into a much more aggressive small cell lung cancer (SCLC) that spreads rapidly and has few options for treatment. Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have developed a mouse model that illuminates this problematic process, known as histological transformation. The findings advance the understanding of how mutated genes can trigger cancer evolution and suggest targets for more effective treatments. The researchers, whose results were published Feb. 8 in Science, discovered that…
Hardly any gemstone is more difficult to find than diamonds. Geologists from ETH Zurich and the University of Melbourne have now established a link between their occurrence and the mineral olivine. This could make the search for diamonds easier in the future. In brief The abundance of magnesium and iron in the mineral olivine provides information on whether or not diamonds could be present in a kimberlite rock sample. The more magnesium is found in the olivine, the more likely…
Unchanged over millions of years. They have a striking shape, are diurnal, predatory insects and occur only in the Northern Hemisphere. Snakeflies (Raphidioptera), also known as camel-neck flies, have gained further notoriety with the selection of the Black-necked Snakefly as “Insect of the Year 2022” in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Nevertheless, these dainty representatives of the Neuropterida are often overlooked. Scientists from Frankfurt, Müncheberg and Vienna have now sequenced the entire genome of a snakefly for the first time. The…
Efficient process holds promise for greener chemical production. Engineers at the University of Cincinnati created a more efficient way of converting carbon dioxide into valuable products while simultaneously addressing climate change. In his chemical engineering lab in UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, Associate Professor Jingjie Wu and his team found that a modified copper catalyst improves the electrochemical conversion of carbon dioxide into ethylene, the key ingredient in plastic and a myriad of other uses. Ethylene has been…
The new research project YESSS – Year-round EcoSystem Study on Svalbard – is focussing on how Arctic warming is changing over the seasons in Svalbard. The team of around 30 scientists observes the life cycles, foraging and overwintering strategies of selected key species all year round and conducts experiments at the AWIPEV station on Svalbard. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding the project, which is coordinated by the Alfred Wegener Institute, with 2.7 million euros until the…
As plants are sessile organisms, they must be highly flexible in their ability to adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions in order to survive. Researchers from the Department of Plant Physiology at the RPTU Kaiserslautern are investigating plant adaptation mechanisms, particularly to abiotic stress factors such as light intensity or temperature. They have now reached a new milestone: PhD student Annalisa John has used the model plant thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) in her research work to decode which…
A research team from the Department of Chemistry at the Universität Hamburg has succeeded for the first time in identifying at the molecular level the dynamic mechanism used by the enzyme RNase R to degrade the ribosomal 30S subunit. The results of the study were published in the scientific journal “Nature”. Protein synthesis is a vital and energy-intensive process in the cell in which ribosomes play a crucial role. These comparatively large molecules are found in all living organisms and…
Working with an international consortium, scientists at Leipzig University have identified new genes that may play a role in chronic kidney disease. They analysed data from more than 900,000 people and found effects that in some cases differed between men and women. These new findings may help scientists better understand sex-specific differences in the risk and progression of chronic kidney disease, and provide a starting point for appropriate treatments. The findings have recently been published in the prestigious journal “Nature…
The Joint European Torus (JET), one of the world’s largest and most powerful fusion machines, has demonstrated the ability to reliably generate fusion energy, whilst simultaneously setting a world-record in energy output. Looking inside the Joint European Torus tokamak at pulse #104522 from 3 October 2023, which set a new fusion energy record of 69 megajoules. © United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, courtesy of EUROfusion These notable accomplishments represent a significant milestone in the field of fusion science and engineering….
For decades it has been an open question in the ubiquitin research field how proteins are labeled as being defective or unneeded. In their recent study Brenda Schulman, Director at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Biochemistry, and Gary Kleiger, Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at University of Las Vegas Nevada, together with their teams were able to visualize this precise mechanism, catalyzed by the Cullin-RING Ligase E3s, for the first time. In an interview Brenda Schulman told us…
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