A single-cell map of corn’s root reveals a regulator of cellular diversity. In assembling cellular jigsaw puzzle, researchers uncover genetic instructions for cell types that help crops tolerate drought and flooding. A new study uses novel single-cell profiling techniques to reveal how plants add new cell layers that help them resist climate stressors like drought or flooding. The research focuses on corn—a critically important crop around the world—in an effort to create a cell-by-cell map of the plant’s root system,…

Engineers at Rice lead study of how polystyrene contributes to crisis. The Styrofoam container that holds your takeout cheeseburger may contribute to the population’s growing resistance to antibiotics. According to scientists at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, discarded polystyrene broken down into microplastics provides a cozy home not only for microbes and chemical contaminants but also for the free-floating genetic materials that deliver to bacteria the gift of resistance. A study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials describes how the ultraviolet aging…

A neural network trained exclusively to predict protein shapes can also generate new ones. Just as convincing images of cats can be created using artificial intelligence, new proteins can now be made using similar tools. In a report in Nature, researchers describe the development of a neural network that “hallucinates” proteins with new, stable structures. Proteins, which are string-like molecules found in every cell, spontaneously fold into intricate three-dimensional shapes. These folded shapes are key to nearly every biological process,…

In Science Advances, scientists report successfully freeze-drying specialized liposomes that could be developed for use in future vaccines. Things that are freeze-dried: Astronaut food. Emergency rations. And, just maybe, some future COVID-19 vaccines. Freeze-drying is a method for removing water from a product. First, you freeze the item you’re trying to dehydrate, causing any water in it to become ice. Then, you remove the ice through a process called sublimation, in which ice turns directly into vapor under low pressure….

An enzyme system frees sulfur from small organic compounds to make a surprising gaseous side product. The Science Researchers often observe ethylene gas in oxygen-poor environments such as certain types of soil. For decades, scientists have known that ethylene comes from microbes. But the only known natural microbial processes that produce ethylene require oxygen. So how do oxygen-poor environments contain ethylene? A team of scientists have discovered an enzyme system from bacteria that produces ethylene without oxygen, shedding light on…

Erratic, involuntary movements often emerge as a side effect of the primary medication used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Texas Biomed researchers and collaborators have shown a compound can substantially reduce those movements in animal studies. A new study from Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) and collaborators has identified a promising drug candidate to minimize uncontrolled, erratic muscle movements, called dyskinesia, associated with Parkinson’s disease. The small molecule, called PD13R, reduced dyskinesia by more than 85% in the marmoset animal…

Scientists from McGill University develop new biomaterial for wound repair. Combining knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering, scientists from McGill University develop a biomaterial tough enough to repair the heart, muscles, and vocal cords, representing a major advance in regenerative medicine. “People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was…

Research team led by Göttingen University use genomic data to discover five species hidden in rare alga. All land plants originated from a single evolutionary event when freshwater algae got a foothold on land, giving rise to an astonishing biodiversity of plants on earth. However, the group of algae that would later give rise to land plants had already been living and evolving in both freshwater and terrestrial habitats for over one billion years. There is a tiny group of…

The involvement between electron transfer (ET) and catalytic reaction at electrocatalyst surface makes electrochemical process challenging to understand and control. How to experimentally determine ET process occurring at nanoscale is important to understand the overall electrochemical reaction process at active sites. Recently, a research group led by Prof. LI Can and Prof. FAN Fengtao from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) captured the electron transfer imaging in electrocatalysis process. This study was published in Nano…

Furtwangen University study suggests for the first time a link between Parkinson’s disease and the eukaryotic microbiota in the gut. Parkinson’s disease is characterised by a slow, progressive loss of nerve cells in certain brain areas. The disease is still incurable and the exact causes are unclear. The dopamine deficiency in the brain can only be controlled to some extent in the initial phase of the disease. Basic research is being conducted in an attempt to unravel the mystery of…

World Soil Day… Soils are the basis of life and climate protectors at the same time – but things are not good for them. Due to overfertilization, deforestation, salinization and overgrazing, nearly two billion hectares of arable and pasture land worldwide are affected by moderate to severe soil degradation.* The result: declining yields, lower biodiversity, declining groundwater quality, less carbon dioxide sequestration. According to IPCC reports, a critical situation has already been reached by 2030. On the occasion of World…

International Study… Viruses are survivors! Desert heat and desiccation can’t harm some of them. „We find viruses and microbes in the driest and most radiation-intensive, non-polar region on Earth, which is really amazing,“ says Prof. Dr. Alexander J. Probst from the Environmental Biology and Biotechnology Department at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). An international team led by Probst discovered the viruses and microorganisms in the Atacama Desert. This has been published in the journals „mSystems“ * and „Microbiome“ **. The…

A type of cell transformation known as EMT enables cancer cells to break away from the tumor and form metastases elsewhere. However, this process does not always take place in full. Researchers at the University of Basel have now been able to show that tumor cells contribute differently to the formation of metastases and the development of therapy resistance, depending on whether they have undergone full or only partial transformation. Most cancer patients do not die as a result of…

A multi-institutional team of investigators led by bioengineer Ankur Singh has developed research tools that shed new light on a virtually untreatable form of prostate cancer, opening a pathway that may lead to novel therapeutics and a glimmer of hope for patients. Androgen receptor pathway inhibitors can prolong survival for patients with advanced prostate cancer. But about 20% of patients develop more advanced-stage neuroendocrine prostate cancer in response to this type of hormone therapy, and so far, researchers haven’t had effective ways…

An experimental compound reduced complications of type 1 and type 2 diabetes in mice – not by lowering blood sugar – but by countering its consequences: cell death, inflammation, and organ damage. Published online in Science Translational Medicine on November 24, the study reported that a new class of compounds blocked the ability of a protein called RAGE to pass on inflammatory signals that injure the heart and kidneys in diabetes, and that slow the healing of diabetic wounds. The…

The coronavirus’s tangled strands of RNA could offer new ways to treat people who get infected. To the untrained eye, the loops, kinks and folds in the single strand of RNA that makes up the coronavirus genome look like a jumble of spaghetti or tangled yarn. But to researchers like Amanda Hargrove, a chemistry professor at Duke University, the complex shapes that RNA takes on as it folds upon itself could have untapped therapeutic potential in the fight against COVID-19….