In chemistry, there are structures that are particularly stable, such as the so-called “benzene ring” consisting of six interconnected carbon atoms. Such rings form the structural basis for graphite and graphene, but they also occur in many dyes – such as the jeans dye indigo and in many drugs such as aspirin. When chemists wanted to build such rings in a targeted manner, they used so-called coupling reactions, which usually bear the name of their inventors: for example, the Diels-Alder…
Have you ever wondered if bacteria make distinctive sounds? If we could listen to bacteria, we would be able to know whether they are alive or not. When bacteria are killed using an antibiotic, those sounds would stop – unless of course the bacteria are resistant to the antibiotic. This is exactly what a team of researchers from TU Delft , led by dr. Farbod Alijani, now have managed to do: they captured low-level noise of a single bacterium using…
Researcheres tested the nanoparticles on human immune cells cultured in vitro and found that the chiral nanoparticles induced production of substances associated with an immune response even in the absence of an antigen. Vaccines can be made over 25% more effective by adding left-handed chiral gold nanoparticles as adjuvants, according to a study by an international collaboration in which Brazilian researchers took part. An article reporting the results is published in Nature. Three research groups collaborated on the study, one affiliated with…
Breathing, seeing, hearing – the family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) is involved in a variety of physiological processes and is also the cause of diverse diseases. As has now been discovered by a team of scientists led by Professor Ines Liebscher from Leipzig University, some members of the GPCR family respond to mechanical stimuli. In collaboration with Chinese research groups, they have achieved another milestone on the way to understanding the mechanism by which this receptor class is activated….
Sponges in coral reefs, less flashy than their coral neighbors but important to the overall health of reefs, are among the earliest animals on the planet. New research from the University of New Hampshire examines coral reef ecosystems with a novel approach to understanding the complex evolution of sponges and the microbes that live in symbiosis with them. With this “genomic time machine,” researchers can predict aspects of reef and ocean ecosystems through hundreds of millions of years of dramatic…
Deuterium, the heavy brother of hydrogen, is considered a promising material of the future – because of its wide range of applications: in science, for energy generation, or in the production of pharmaceuticals. However, the extraction of deuterium from its natural isotope mixture has so far been complex and expensive. With a porous material developed at the Technische Universität Dresden, this could soon be done more efficiently and cost-effectively. The new method has now been published in the scientific journal…
Scripps Research scientists make fundamental advance in understanding salivary gland biology. Scientists at Scripps Research and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research have discovered a special type of cell that resides in salivary glands and is likely crucial for oral health. As the researchers described in Cell Reports on April 12, 2022, the new type of salivary gland cell called “ionocyte” that works to maintain healthy concentrations of charged molecules—ions—of potassium, calcium, chlorine, and other electrolytes in saliva….
Milling rice to separate the grain from the husks produces about 100 million tons of rice husk waste globally each year. Scientists searching for a scalable method to fabricate quantum dots have developed a way to recycle rice husks to create the first silicon quantum dot (QD) LED light. Their new method transforms agricultural waste into state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes in a low-cost, environmentally friendly way. The research team from the Natural Science Center for Basic Research and Development, Hiroshima University,…
‘We analysed the genomic profile of over one million cells from 1,000 people to identify a fingerprint linking genetic markers to diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, type 1 diabetes, spondylitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and Crohn’s disease,’ says Professor Joseph Powell, joint lead author at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research. ‘We were able to do this using single cell sequencing, a new technology that allows us to detect subtle changes in individual cells,’ he says. The discovery…
Glycosylation is a common post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins and plays a crucial role in many biological processes. Many disease biomarkers are glycosylated proteins. Mass spectrometry-based intact glycopeptide identification can provide information on glycosite and the attached glycans. However, the interpretation of acquired glycopeptide spectra is still challenging. Recently, a research team led by Prof. YE Mingliang from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has developed a new glycoproteomics software tool, Glyco-Decipher,…
One cutting-edge cancer treatment exciting researchers today involves collecting and reprogramming a patient’s T cells – a special set of immune cells – then putting them back into the body ready to detect and destroy cancerous cells. Although effective for widespread blood cancers like leukemia, this method rarely succeeds at treating solid tumors. Now, Stanford University engineers have developed a delivery method that enhances the “attack power” of the modified immune cells, called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. Researchers…
A new platform designed by Gladstone scientists for studying how the immune system responds to hepatitis C virus could speed the hunt for a vaccine. A vaccine for hepatitis C has eluded scientists for more than 30 years, for several reasons. For one, the virus that causes the disease comes in many genetic forms, complicating the creation of a widely effective vaccine. For another, studying hepatitis C has been difficult because options in animals are limited and lab methods using infected cells have…
WEHI has joined forces with the leading science and technology company Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany on a drug discovery campaign to find new cancer therapeutics. The partnership will leverage WEHI’s expertise in minor splicing and the genetic regulation of rapid cellgrowth and proliferation. At a glance WEHI has joined forces with the leading science and technology company Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany on a drug discovery campaign to find new cancer therapeutics for a broad spectrum of cancers. WEHI scientists have shown that…
Scientists at ISTA use brain organoids to understand how a mutated gene affects brain development. Study published in Cell Reports. Several hundred genes are associated with autism spectrum disorders. Some patients are only mildly affected, while others have severe disabilities. In addition to characteristic symptoms like difficulties in social interaction and communication with other people, as well as repetitive-stereotypic behaviors, patients with mutations of the gene CHD8 oftentimes have intellectual disabilities and macrocephaly – an unusually large brain. How CHD8…
Cutting-edge technology used to fingerprint different types of cells in one of deadliest cancers. Houston Methodist researchers have identified the genetic and molecular fingerprints of different cancer and immune cells in glioblastoma, the deadliest and most common type of brain cancer in adults. Their in-depth molecular analysis of over 200,000 single cells revealed a protein, called S100A4, that could be a potential therapeutic target for restoring antitumor action of immune cells toward glioblastomas that have otherwise tricked the immune system…
Electrical synapses – omnipresent and yet hardly explored. They are part of the brain of almost every animal species, yet they remain usually invisible even under the electron microscope. “Electrical synapses are like the dark matter of the brain,” says Alexander Borst, director at the MPI for Biological Intelligence, in foundation (i.f). Now a team from his department has taken a closer look at this rarely explored brain component: In the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila, they were able…
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