Resistant to most monoclonal antibodies but neutralized by a booster dose. The Omicron variant was detected for the first time in South Africa in November 2021 and has since spread to many countries. It is expected to become the dominant variant within a few weeks or months. Initial epidemiological studies show that the Omicron variant is more transmissible than the currently dominant virus (the Delta variant). It is capable of spreading to individuals who have received two vaccine doses and…
Enzymatic hydrolysis of planteose: α-Galactosidase is a promising molecular target for root parasitic weed control. Witchweed (Striga spp.) and broomrapes (Orobanche and Phelipanche spp.) are root parasitic weeds that inflict major losses in agriculture globally. Being obligate parasitic flowering plants in nature, they parasitize other autotrophic plants of agricultural importance. The plants are attached to their host by means of haustoria, which transfer nutrients from the host to the parasite. Weeds reduce crop yield by competing for resources (nutrients, water…
Genetic mechanism found that enables communities of bacterial cells to organize into surprisingly sophisticated segments, revealing a similarity to how plants and animals develop. Over the past several years, research from University of California San Diego biologist Gürol Süel’s laboratory has uncovered a series of remarkable features exhibited by clusters of bacteria that live together in communities known as biofilms. Biofilms are prevalent in the living world, inhabiting sewer pipes, kitchen counters and even the surface of our teeth. A…
Scientists at IST Austria discover a mechanism that helps immune cells to invade tissues. Knowing, when exactly immune cells will try to invade a tumor is difficult. In order to be able to study this cell invasion process in detail, scientists like Professor Daria Siekhaus and her team need something more reliable. That’s why they turn to fruit fly embryos. During the development of these embryos, macrophages, the dominant form of immune cells in the fruit fly, travel from the…
Combination of switches deactivates surplus X chromosome at just the right time. Two X chromosomes are actually one too many. Female mammalian cells hence switch off one of them – but only when the cells start to specialize into tissues. A Berlin research team has now discovered how cells “count” their chromosomes and at the same time sense which stage of development they are in. The cells of female mammals have a dosage problem, because they have twice as many…
Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have developed a color-coded test that quickly signals whether newly developed nanoparticles — ultra small compartments designed to ferry medicines, vaccines and other therapies — deliver their cargo into target cells. Historically, nanoparticles have a very low delivery rate to the cytosol, the inside compartment of cells, releasing only about 1%–2% of their contents. The new testing tool, engineered specifically to test nanoparticles, could advance the search for next-generation biological medicines. The technology builds upon nanoparticles…
Retrons could revolutionize gene editing for research and medicine. Over the past decade, the CRISPR genome-editing system has revolutionized molecular biology, giving scientists the ability to alter genes inside living cells for research or medical applications. Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes have fine-tuned an additional system for more efficient gene editing, using molecules called retrons. Retrons, the group reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, can be optimized for efficiency and used to edit genes in a variety of cell…
Paper by chemists from Rostock and Olomouc in NATURE CATALYSIS. Hydrogen (H2) is the smallest chemical molecule and a beacon of hope for a more environmentally friendly energy transition in the coming years. In addition, it is already used in a variety of industrial processes – so-called hydrogenations – for the environmentally friendly production of chemical products. For hydrogen to be used both for energy production and in hydrogenations, it is necessary to selectively activate the relatively stable hydrogen-hydrogen bond…
Aggressive and relatively common lymphomas called diffuse large B cell lymphomas (DLBCLs) have a critical metabolic vulnerability that can be exploited to trick these cancers into starving themselves, according to a study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell’s Ithaca campus. The researchers, whose study was published Dec. 13 in Blood Cancer Discovery, showed that a protein called ATF4, a genetic master-switch that controls the activities of hundreds of genes, has a key role in supporting the fast growth of DLBCLs. The…
Research team at Göttingen University develops new method to complete genetic data. The use of genetic information is now indispensable for modern plant breeding. Even though DNA sequencing has become much cheaper since the human genome was decoded for the very first time in 2003, collecting the full genetic information still accounts for a large part of the costs in animal and plant breeding. One trick to reduce these costs is to sequence only a very small and randomly selected…
New simulations reveal the mechanism of action and substrate specificity of lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2, a biomarker for cardiovascular disease. Membrane-associated proteins play a vital role in a variety of cellular processes, yet little is known about the membrane-association mechanism. Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2) is one such protein with an important role in cardiovascular health, but its mechanism of action on the phospholipid membrane was unknown. To address this, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine used state-of-the-art…
The venom of a single spider can contain up to 3000 components. These components, mostly peptides, can be used to develop promising drug leads for the treatment of diseases. Spider venom can also be used as a biological pesticide. A team of scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME and the Justus Liebig University in Giessen is primarily researching the venoms of spiders native to Germany, which have mostly been neglected until now. Their results…
Scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), together with colleagues from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the university hospitals in Bonn and Aachen, have found a type of immune cells that is particularly active in severely ill COVID-19 patients. The CD16 positive T cells have an increased cytotoxic effect, especially on the inner cell layer of blood vessels. Their presence, along with complement system factors, is associated with a highly fatal outcome of the disease. The scientists…
Researchers invented a technique that combines bioprinting with cryopreservation to construct frozen, cell-laden structures that can be used in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug discovery. A new technique takes bioprinting — in which an ink of cells is printed, layer by layer, to form a structure — to a whole new, and icy level. Investigators from the Zhang lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a technology that they term “cryobioprinting,” a method that uses a bioink embedded…
Scripps Research and collaborators find new target for universal influenza vaccine. Scientists at Scripps Research, University of Chicago and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a new Achilles’ heel of influenza virus, making progress in the quest for a universal flu vaccine. Antibodies against a long-ignored section of the virus, which the team dubbed the anchor, have the potential to recognize a broad variety of flu strains, even as the virus mutates from year to year, they…
In the study, the researchers have developed new approaches that allow DNA repair to be visualised by analysing hundreds of proteins at once. Each one of the trillions of cells that make up the human body suffers more than 10,000 DNA lesions every day. These injuries would be catastrophic if cells were unable to repair them, but a very delicate machinery that detects and repair genetic damage is at work to prevent DNA mutations and diseases such as cancer. With…
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