Researchers create virus-resistant, safely restrained E. coli for medical, industrial applications. In a step forward for genetic engineering and synthetic biology, researchers have modified a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria to be immune to natural viral infections while also minimizing the potential for the bacteria or their modified genes to escape into the wild. The work promises to reduce the threats of viral contamination when harnessing bacteria to produce medicines such as insulin as well as other useful substances, such as biofuels….
The behavior of microorganisms is crucial to understand the effects of carbon dioxide input in the oceans. Researchers at Constructor University in Bremen, Germany, in collaboration with colleagues from Australia, the United States and Switzerland, have now gained new insights into the metabolic exchanges between microorganisms. The research results were recently published in the renowned journal Nature Microbiology. Microorganisms are central components of marine ecosystems; among other things, they produce oxygen and bind carbon dioxide. “Until now, it was assumed…
From steering a car to swinging a tennis racket, we learn to execute all kinds of skilled movements during our lives. You might think this learning is only implemented by neurons, but a new study by researchers at The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT shows the essential role of another brain cell type: astrocytes. Just as teams of elite athletes train alongside staffs of coaches, ensembles of neurons in the brain’s motor cortex depend on nearby astrocytes…
Despite recent advancements, many highly sensitive diagnostic tests for viral diseases still require complicated techniques to prepare a sample or interpret a result, making them impractical for point-of-care settings or areas with few resources. But now, a team reporting in ACS Central Science has developed a sensitive method that analyzes viral nucleic acids in as little as 20 minutes and can be completed in one step with “glow-in-the-dark” proteins. The firefly’s flash, the anglerfish’s glowing lure and the ghostly blue…
… for antibiotic properties. Bacteriophages could hold the key to combatting antibiotic resistance. Working with them just got a lot easier. As conventional antibiotics continue to lose effectiveness against evolving pathogens, scientists are keen to employ the bacteria-killing techniques perfected by bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. One major challenge standing in their way is the difficulty of studying individual bacteriophage (phage) proteins and determining precisely how the virus wields these tools to kill their host bacteria. New research from…
New mouse model may inform potential therapeutic options for Down syndrome. National Institutes of Health researchers compared a new genetic animal model of Down syndrome to the standard model and found the updated version to be enhanced. The new mouse model shows milder cognitive traits compared to a previously studied Down syndrome mouse model. The results of this study, published in Biological Psychiatry, may help researchers develop more precise treatments to improve cognition in people with Down syndrome. Scientists found…
Clinical trials are a milestone in the development of safe and effective drugs and therapies. An antibody developed by Helmholtz Munich is now entering a phase 1 clinical trial. Together with the radiopharmaceutical company ITM Isotope Technologies Munich and Münster University Hospital, researchers hope to improve the treatment of patients with brain tumors. Glioblastomas are the most common and aggressive malignant brain tumors. Surgical removal of the tumor and additional radiation and chemotherapy usually do not result in a complete…
… or treating vancomycin-resistant bacterial infections. Antimicrobials with the potential to act as immune stimulators and overcome bacterial resistance are emerging as important alternative approaches to fighting antimicrobial resistance The novel combination therapy pairs Mitoxantrone (MTX) and vancomycin to target both antibiotic-resistant pathogens and the host immune system to combat vancomycin resistance MTX is a promising compound to enhance the host immune system, enabling it to clear bacterial infections more effectively and improve infected wound healing Researchers from the Antimicrobial…
A USC-led team of scientists has made a drool-worthy discovery about how tendons and salivary glands develop in the jaw. Their results are published in a new study in Developmental Cell. In order for our jaws to function, they require not only a precisely patterned skeleton, but also tendons that connect the jaw skeleton to muscles and salivary glands that lubricate the mouth. Remarkably, the skeleton, tendons, and glands all derive from the same population of stem cells, which arise from…
… opening door to new therapeutic targets. The activity of ATE1, which flags misfolded proteins for destruction, is enhanced by binding iron-sulfur clusters. It’s also highly sensitive to oxygen, which may indicate it moderates the cell’s response to oxidative stress. A new paper in Nature Communications illuminates how a previously poorly understood enzyme works in the cell. Many diseases are tied to chronic cellular stress, and UMBC’s Aaron T. Smith and colleagues discovered that this enzyme plays an important role…
Deep down in the ocean at tectonic plate boundaries, hot fluids rise from so-called hydrothermal vents. The fluids are devoid of oxygen and contain large amounts of metals such as iron, manganese or copper. Some may also transport sulfides, methane and hydrogen. When the hot water mixes with the cold and oxygenated surrounding seawater, so-called hydrothermal plumes develop containing smoke-like particles of metal sulfide. These plumes rise hundreds of meters off the seafloor and disperse thousands of kilometers away from…
People with a third copy of chromosome 21, known as trisomy 21, are at high risk of developing Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of blood cancer. Scientists led by the Department of Paediatrics at University Hospital Frankfurt have now identified the cause: although the additional chromosome 21 leads to increased gene dosage of many genes, it is above all the perturbation of the RUNX1 gene – a gene that regulates many other genes – that seems to be…
Fluorescence is a fascinating natural phenomenon. It is based on the fact that certain materials can absorb light of a certain wavelength and then emit light of a different wavelength. Fluorescent materials play an important role in our everyday lives, for example in modern screens. Due to the high demand for applications, science is constantly striving to produce new and easily accessible molecules with high fluorescence efficiency. Chemist Professor Evamarie Hey-Hawkins from Leipzig University and her colleagues have specialised in…
… a further advance in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Scientists led by Nobel Laureate Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have developed a super-resolution microscope with a spatio-temporal precision of one nanometer per millisecond. An improved version of their recently introduced MINFLUX super-resolution microscopy allowed tiny movements of single proteins to be observed at an unprecedented level of detail: the stepping motion of the motor protein kinesin-1 as it walks along microtubules while consuming ATP….
The first-ever molecular catalyst specifically tailored for mechanochemical reaction conditions enables high-efficiency transformations at near room temperature. Chemists at Hokkaido University and the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD) have developed the first high-performance catalyst specifically designed and optimized for solid-state, mechanochemical synthesis. The team found that by attaching long polymer molecules to a metal catalyst, they could trap the catalyst in a fluid-phase, which enabled efficient reactivity at near room temperature. This approach, reported in the Journal…
The accumulation of the metabolite fumarate in the mitochondrion, the powerhouse of a cell, can cause inflammation associated with diseases such as cancer and autoimmune diseases / Publication in Nature. A new study shows for the first time a connection between a mitochondrial metabolite and the activation of an inflammatory response. Mitochondria are functional units of our cells that fulfil important tasks, i.e. chemical reactions, for the functioning of the cell. One of these tasks is the production of energy…
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