This study is led by Dr. Xingpeng Wen and Dr. Yuxian Zhu (Institute for Advanced Studies, Wuhan University). About 180 billion tons of celluloses are produced by the world’s vegetation annually, making this polysaccharide the most abundant biological macromolecule on earth. It is produced predominantly by vascular plants, by a large number of algae and also by some bacteria, protists and tunicates. Cellulose microfibrils used for cell wall deposition are usually synthesized at the plasma membrane by the cellulose synthase…
Researchers at EMBL Heidelberg found that inversions in the human genome are more common than previously thought, which impacts our understanding of certain genetic diseases. Our DNA acts like a blueprint for the cellular machinery that lets cells, organs, and whole organisms function. Mutations in the DNA can result in genetic diseases. Such genetic variation can include point mutations at a single site, as well as deletions, duplications, and inversions. The term ‘inversion’ describes a piece of DNA flipping its…
Stem cells in the bone marrow keep replenishing us with blood cells until the day we die. They do this by dividing into a daughter cell that becomes a blood cell, and a second cell that remains a stem cell. But every time a cell divides, mistakes can occur that change the cell’s genome and increase the risk of it becoming a cancer cell. A team of researchers from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, the Max-Delbrück Center for…
HIV controllers are rare individuals able to control infection naturally without treatment. CD8+ T immune cells play a critical role for these individuals, suppressing viral load in the long term even without antiretroviral therapy. Scientists at the Institut Pasteur are examining key characteristics of these controllers’ CD8+ T cells, with a view to replicating them in other individuals who are incapable of controlling the virus without treatment. They have successfully reprogrammed CD8+ T cells from non-controllers and bestowed them with…
A new software tool makes it easier to study relationships between a host, its microbiome and pathogens like HIV or SARS-CoV-2. Researchers at Texas Biomedical Research Institute and Tulane University have developed a new software tool that makes it easier, faster and more cost effective to analyze genetic information about a host and its microbiome at the same time. The software, called “meta-transcriptome detector” (MTD), can be used by a wide range of microbiologists and drug developers, including those researching…
Research from the University of Warwick sheds new light on a key cause of cancer formation during cell division (or mitosis), and points towards potential solutions for preventing it from occurring. When a cell divides abnormally, it does not share the correct number of chromosomes with the two new cells, and this can lead to cancer New research from Warwick Medical School has discovered why and how this happens, using ‘cell surgery’ Understanding the origin of abnormal cell division and…
Researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated that neuron-like cells derived from human stem cells can serve as a model for studying changes in the nervous system associated with addiction. The work sheds light on the effect of dopamine on gene activity in neurons, and offers a blueprint for related research moving forward. “It is extremely difficult to study how addiction changes the brain at a cellular level in humans – nobody wants to experiment on somebody’s brain,” says…
Researchers uncover a new strategy to avoid cancer immunotherapy side effects. It’s not often that a failed clinical trial leads to a scientific breakthrough. When patients in the UK started showing adverse side effects during a cancer immunotherapy trial, researchers at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and University of Liverpool went back through the data and worked with patient samples to see what went wrong. Their findings, published recently in Nature, provide critical clues to…
Regulatory “tethering elements” control the expression of genes involved in embryo formation. Organisms such as plants, mammals and insects undergo a carefully orchestrated developmental program as they transition from single-celled embryos to their multicellular adult forms. In a paper that appeared May 4, 2022 in the journal Nature, researchers at Princeton University demonstrate how specialized genetic sequences coordinate the exquisite choreography of gene expression required for normal development of the early fly embryo. During embryonic development, specific sets of genes must be…
Eight different herpes viruses are known to date in humans. They all settle down permanently in the body after acute infection. Under certain circumstances, they wake up from this dormant phase, multiply and attack other cells. This reactivation is often associated with symptoms, such as itchy cold sores or shingles. In the course of evolution, most herpesviruses have learned to use small RNA molecules, so-called microRNAs, to reprogram their host cells to their advantage. A research team led by Bhupesh…
Mountains of sugar under seagrass meadows. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology report that seagrasses release large amounts of sugar into their soils – worldwide more than 1 million tons of sucrose, enough for 32 billion cans of coke. Such high concentrations of sugar are surprising. Normally, microorganisms quickly consume any free sugars in their environment. The scientists found that seagrasses excrete phenolic compounds, and these deter most microorganisms from degrading the sucrose. This ensures that the…
In poplars, two plant hormones boost each other in defense against pathogenic fungi. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology showed that higher levels of jasmonic acid were also detectable in poplars that had been modified to produce increased levels of salicylic acid or that had been treated with salicylic acid. Plants that had higher concentrations of both hormones were also more resistant to the rust fungus Melamspora larici-populina, with no negative effect on growth. Knowledge of the…
Combination of nucleic acid nanotechnology and cryo-EM gives unprecedented insights into the structures of large and small RNAs, advancing RNA biology and drug design. We live in a world made and run by RNA, the equally important sibling of the genetic molecule DNA. In fact, evolutionary biologists hypothesize that RNA existed and self-replicated even before the appearance of DNA and the proteins encoded by it. Fast forward to modern day humans: science has revealed that less than 3% of the human…
Ruthenium and copper catalyze a more environmentally friendly way to produce essential chemical. A dash of ruthenium atoms on a mesh of copper nanowires could be one step toward a revolution in the global ammonia industry that also helps the environment. Collaborators at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, Arizona State University and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory developed the high-performance catalyst that can, with near 100% efficiency, pull ammonia and solid ammonia — aka fertilizer — from low levels of nitrates that are widespread…
When it comes to fixing carbon, plants have nothing on soil bacteria that can do it 20 times faster. The secret is an enzyme that “juggles” reaction ingredients. Plants rely on a process called carbon fixation – turning carbon dioxide from the air into carbon-rich biomolecules – for their very existence. That’s the whole point of photosynthesis, and a cornerstone of the vast interlocking system that cycles carbon through plants, animals, microbes and the atmosphere to sustain life on Earth….
In the past decade, advances in synthetic biology paved the way toward the sustainable synthesis of complex natural products. The baking yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been widely used in food industry and has become one of the main platforms for building cell factories due to its robustness, convenient cellular engineering, and reliable safety. Recently, a research group led by Prof. ZHOU Yongjin from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with…
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