Bread wheat can grow in highly diverse regional environments. An important reason for its great genetic variety is the cross-hybridization with many chromosome fragments from wild grasses. This is shown by the genome sequences of 10 wheat varieties from four continents, which an international consortium including researchers from the University of Zurich has now decoded. A variety of bread wheat that flourishes across Switzerland would remain just a poorly growing grass in India. This ability to adapt to regional climate…
Scientists determine the structure of glass-shaping protein in sponges. Sponges are some of the oldest animals on Earth. They live in a wide range of waters, from lakes to deep oceans. Remarkably, the skeleton of some sponges is built out of a network of highly symmetrical glass structures. Researchers from TU Dresden and the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland are the first to determine the three dimensional (3D) structure of a protein responsible for glass…
Reduced food intake, known as dietary restriction, leads to a longer lifespan in many animals and can improve health in humans. The molecular mechanisms underlying the positive effects of dietary restriction are still unclear. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing have now found one possible explanation in fruit flies: they identified a protein named Sestrin that mediates the beneficial effects of dietary restriction. By increasing the amount of Sestrin in flies, researchers were able to extend…
Data from Greenland and Antarctica show: under ice trace elements are mobilised at higher rates than previously assumed. Trace elements such as iron, manganese and zinc are an integral part of the biogeochemical processes on the Earth’s surface. As micronutrients, they play an essential role for the growth of all kinds of organisms and thus the Earth’s carbon cycle. Below ice sheets, which cover around ten percent of the Earth’s land surface, larger quantities of these substances are mobilised than…
Research team at Kiel University uses Aurelia aurita as an example to demonstrate the relationship between microbial colonization and reproduction in marine cnidarians The body tissue of all multicellular living beings is colonized by an unimaginably large number of microorganisms. Host organisms and microbes have developed together from the very beginning of the evolutionary history of multicellular life. The natural microbiome, i.e. the totality of these bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in and on a body, therefore plays a…
In the COVID-19 pandemic, 57 million people have already been infected worldwide. In the search for vaccines and therapies, a precise understanding of the virus, its mutations and transmission mechanisms is crucial. A recent study by the research group of Principal Investigator Andreas Bergthaler at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the renowned journal Science Translational Medicine, makes an important contribution to this. The high quality of epidemiological data in Austria, together…
Rice scientists’ atomic resolution protein models reveal new details about protein binding. Knowing precisely where proteins are frustrated could go a long way toward making better drugs. That’s one result of a new study by Rice University scientists looking for the mechanisms that stabilize or destabilize key sections of biomolecules. Atom-scale models by Rice theorist Peter Wolynes, lead author and alumnus Mingchen Chen and their colleagues at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics show that not only are some specific…
Bioinformaticians at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany together with colleagues from Finland and the USA, have now developed a unique method with which all metabolites in a sample can be taken into account, thus considerably increasing the knowledge gained from examining such molecules. The team reports on its successful research in the renowned scientific journal “Nature Biotechnology”. Everything that lives has metabolites, produces metabolites and consumes metabolites. These molecules arise as intermediate and end products from chemical processes in an…
Some viruses can get inside cells via a mechanism that involves sulfur organic molecules. Chemists at UNIGE have discovered effective inhibitors and blocked the uptake of SARS-CoV-2. The cell membrane is impermeable to viruses: to get inside and infect a cell, they use a range of strategies to exploit the cellular and biochemical properties of the membranes. The thiol-mediated uptake of organic molecules similar to alcohols, where oxygen is replaced by a sulphur atom, is one of the entry mechanisms,…
Hydrogen can be produced with renewable energies in a climate neutral way and could make a major contribution to the energy system of the future. One of the options is to use sunlight for electrolytic water splitting, either indirectly by coupling a solar cell with an electrolyser or directly in a photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell. Light-absorbing semiconductors serve as photoelectrodes. They are immersed in an electrolyte solution of water mixed with strong acids or bases, which contains high concentration of protons…
A repetitive DNA sequence that causes health risks when it malfunctions can now be watched inside living cells using a synthetic tool. A new synthetic probe offers a safe and straightforward approach for visualizing chromosome tips in living cells. The probe was designed by scientists at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Science (iCeMS) and colleagues at Kyoto University, and could advance research into aging and a wide range of diseases, including cancers. The details were published in the Journal of…
– and preparation for “SARS-CoV3” For the first time, an international research alliance has observed the RNA folding structures of the SARS-CoV2 genome with which the virus controls the infection process. Since these structures are very similar among various beta corona viruses, the scientists not only laid the foundation for the targeted development of novel drugs for treating COVID-19, but also for future occurrences of infection with new corona viruses that may develop in the future. The genetic code of…
Scientists at Osaka University create seaweed-shaped sodium titanate mats made of nanofibers that can remove cobalt ions from water, which may help provide a source of safe, recycled drinking water by removal of heavy metals and radionuclides. A team of researchers at Osaka University has developed a nanopowder shaped like seaweed for a water filter to help remove toxic metal ions (Fig. 1). Made of layered sodium titanate, the randomly oriented nanofibers increase the efficacy of cobalt-II (Co2+) ion capture….
New study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The motion of magnetic particles as they pass through a magnetic field is called magnetophoresis. Until now, not much was known about the factors influencing these particles and their movement. Now, researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago describe several fundamental processes associated with the motion of magnetic particles through fluids as they are pulled by a magnetic field. Their findings are reported in the journal Proceedings of the…
High-resolution, 3D images of human chromosomes in single cells reveal how DNA structure might influence its function. In high school textbooks, human chromosomes are pictured as wonky Xs like two hotdogs jammed together. But those images are far from accurate. “For 90 percent of the time,” said Jun-Han Su, “chromosomes don’t exist like that.” Last year, before Su graduated with his Ph.D., he and three current Ph.D. candidates in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences–Pu Zheng, Seon Kinrot and…
One-step multicomponent reaction with interpretable machine learning innovation to develop chemical library for drug discovery. Machine learning has been used widely in the chemical sciences for drug design and other processes. The models that are prospectively tested for new reaction outcomes and used to enhance human understanding to interpret chemical reactivity decisions made by such models are extremely limited. Purdue University innovators have introduced chemical reactivity flowcharts to help chemists interpret reaction outcomes using statistically robust machine learning models trained…
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