The oil industry, pharmaceutical companies and bioreactor manufacturers all face one common enemy: bubbles. Bubbles can form during the manufacturing or transport of various liquids, and their formation and rupture can cause significant issues in product quality. Inspired by these issues and the puzzling physics behind bubbles, an international scientific collaboration was born. Stanford University chemical engineer Gerald Fuller along with his PhD students Aadithya Kannan and Vinny Chandran Suja, as well as visiting PhD student Daniele Tammaro from the…
Stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar… Artificially designed, amyloid-silk hybrid protein developed in Zhang lab even outperforms some spider silks. Spider silk is said to be one of the strongest, toughest materials on the Earth. Now engineers at Washington University in St. Louis have designed amyloid silk hybrid proteins and produced them in engineered bacteria. The resulting fibers are stronger and tougher than some natural spider silks. Their research was published in the journal ACS Nano. To be precise, the…
As the world warms, sweeping changes in marine nutrients seem like an expected consequence of increased ocean temperatures. However, the reality is more complicated. New research suggests that processes below the ocean surface may be controlling what is happening above. Plankton are some of the most numerous and important organisms in the ocean. The balance of chemical elements inside them varies and is critical to shaping many marine processes, including the food web and the global carbon cycle. Temperature has…
Scientists collaborate to model the complex protein responsible for SARS-CoV-2 replication, revealing its potential weak spots for drug development. In February 2020, a trio of bio-imaging experts were sitting amiably around a dinner table at a scientific conference in Washington, D.C., when the conversation shifted to what was then a worrying viral epidemic in China. Without foreseeing the global disaster to come, they wondered aloud how they might contribute. Nearly a year and a half later, those three scientists and…
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) have discovered that acetate, a major metabolite produced by some intestinal bacteria, is involved in regulating other intestinal bacteria. Specifically, experiments showed that acetate could trigger an immune response against potentially harmful bacteria. The findings, published in the scientific journal Nature, will lead to the development of new ways to regulate the balance of intestinal bacteria. You may be surprised to know that 40 trillion important bacteria live in our…
Errors in the metabolic processes of mitochondria are responsible for a variety of diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Scientists needed to find out just how the necessary building blocks are imported into the complex biochemical apparatus of these cell areas. The TOM complex (translocase of the outer mitochondrial membrane) is considered the gateway to the mitochondrion, the proverbial powerhouse of the cell. The working group headed by Professor Chris Meisinger at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at…
There seems no room for new bacteria on sand grains. Whether summer or winter, midnight sun or polar night – the sand on the ocean floor is always inhabited by the same bacteria. Although the microbial communities differ between different ocean regions, they do not change between the seasons. Presumably, there is simply no room for change. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, now describe this phenomenon in a study published in the journal…
Representatives of numerous pathogenic fungal species are finding new habitat on microplastic particles in the soil and could thus be one of the possible causes of an increase in fungal infections. Researchers from Bayreuth, Hannover and Munich demonstrated this in a new study. Using high-throughput methods, the scientists analysed fungal communities from soil samples taken from sites near human settlements in western Kenya. The findings of this research have been published in the journal Scientific Reports. This study is the…
Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology and collaborators have investigated how different forms of cancer therapy can influence the efficacy of subsequent therapies. They found that administering targeted therapy, drugs which target mutated cells, could jeopardise the effectiveness of immune stimulating immunotherapies in skin cancer patients – an important finding as these treatments are often given to patients in this sequence. This phenomenon, called cross-resistance, highlights the need to understand how therapies shape tumours. The researchers’ findings, now…
The human recombinant anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody COR-101 was developed in close cooperation of Technische Universität Braunschweig, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the biotech company YUMAB GmbH in Braunschweig. The antibody is currently undergoing phase Ib/II clinical trials for the treatment of moderate to severe COVID-19 by CORAT Therapeutics GmbH. The story of the discovery and development of this antibody was now published in the Journal “Cell Reports”. In the first step, the genetic information of immune cells, which…
Scientists from three Max Planck Institutes (MPI), the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg, the MPI for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the MPI for Biophysics in Frankfurt and the Radboud University in Nijmegen have successfully determined the structure of the enzyme which produces a large part of the nitrate on earth. Microorganisms use this enzyme, called NXR or nitrite oxidoreductase, to convert toxic nitrite into nitrate. Both nitrite and nitrate are forms of nitrogen that have a major impact…
Cells, like many of us, fend off germs with cleaning products. Researchers have discovered that a molecule made throughout much of the body wipes out invading bacteria like a detergent attacking an oily stain. This killer cleaner, a protein known as APOL3, thwarts infections by dissolving bacterial membranes, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator John MacMicking and his colleagues report in the journal Science on July 15, 2021. His team tested the protein on the food-poisoning bacteria Salmonella and other similar…
A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Denz from University of Münster has developed a simplified method to perform the necessary calibration of optical tweezers. Shortening the measurement time helps to reduce the risk of damage to biological samples due to light-induced heating. Measurements of biomechanical properties inside living cells require minimally invasive methods. Optical tweezers are particularly attractive as a tool. It uses the momentum of light to trap and manipulate micro- or nanoscale particles. A team…
New artificial intelligence software can compute protein structures in 10 minutes. Scientists have waited months for access to highly accurate protein structure prediction since DeepMind presented remarkable progress in this area at the 2020 Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction, or CASP14, conference. The wait is now over. Researchers at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle have largely recreated the performance achieved by DeepMind on this important task. These results will be…
Researchers have found a way to enhance radiation therapy using novel iodine nanoparticles. Cancer cell death is triggered within three days when X-rays are shone onto tumor tissue containing iodine-carrying nanoparticles. The iodine releases electrons that break the tumor’s DNA, leading to cell death. The findings, by scientists at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) and colleagues in Japan and the US, were published in the journal Scientific Reports. “Exposing a metal to light leads to the release…
Hollow nano-objects made of DNA could trap viruses and render them harmless. To date, there are no effective antidotes against most virus infections. An interdisciplinary research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now developed a new approach: they engulf and neutralize viruses with nano-capsules tailored from genetic material using the DNA origami method. The strategy has already been tested against hepatitis and adeno-associated viruses in cell cultures. It may also prove successful against corona viruses. There are…
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