SOF4 is a gas that was discovered over a hundred years ago but is rarely used because it is difficult to prepare and highly reactive. Now a collaboration of chemists including Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor John E. Moses, Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless and Associate Professor Peng Wu, both of Scripps Research, and Han Zuilhof of Wageningen University found a way to use the molecule safely as building blocks for new products. In a paper in Nature Chemistry, they describe a new set of modifiable…

Ice is omnipresent and profoundly impacts our daily life, influencing areas such as climate change, transportation, and energy consumption. Understanding the process of ice formation can decelerate the rate at which glaciers melt and sea levels rise and alleviate other major environmental concerns. Since ice formation is mainly governed by ice nucleation followed by the growth of the nuclei, scientists have put in a great effort to understand the thermodynamics and kinetics behind the nucleation processes. Ice nucleation can occur…

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are emerging assistive devices that may one day help people with brain or spinal injuries to move or communicate. BCI systems depend on implantable sensors that record electrical signals in the brain and use those signals to drive external devices like computers or robotic prosthetics. Most current BCI systems use one or two sensors to sample up to a few hundred neurons, but neuroscientists are interested in systems that are able to gather data from much larger…

A study of microbial populations under a prolonged period of starvation by Indiana University professor Jay T. Lennon and his laboratory could help researchers answer questions pertaining to chronic infections, the functioning of bacteria in the environment and the persistence of life itself. In a paper published online Aug. 12 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Lennon and his colleagues explain their study of about 100 populations of different bacteria in closed systems, which had…

Advanced imaging technique shows how cholesterol regulates production of Alzheimer’s-associated amyloid beta protein in a type of brain cell. A team co-led by scientists at Scripps Research has used advanced imaging methods to reveal how the production of the Alzheimer’s-associated protein amyloid beta (Aβ) in the brain is tightly regulated by cholesterol. Appearing on line Thursday ahead of print in the Aug. 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the scientists’ work advances understanding of…

Despite tremendous advances in medicine, tumors are challenging to cure because they are made up of heterogeneous cells. Like human families, the individual cells of a tumor share some common traits and characteristics, but as the tumor expands, the cells also develop their own identities. And, as a result, some cells are more resistant to therapy than others and quicker to adapt and change. A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin developed a new way to…

There is an urgent need for reporting of biomedical research on mammalian cells to be more standardized and detailed and for greater control and measurement of the environmental conditions of cell cultures. This will make the modeling of human physiology more precise and contribute to the reproducibility of the research. A team of KAUST scientists and colleagues in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. analyzed 810 randomly selected papers on mammalian cell lines. Fewer than 700 of those, involving 1,749 individual…

As COVID-19 vaccinations are well underway, people await a return to normal life. However, fears also grow due to unforeseen side effects like the rare thrombosis. In the body, life is maintained by the movement of substances or energy. Chemical reactions are regulated by the presence of organelles or core structures of cells that accommodate specific enzymes or cofactors. A nanoreactor with both the activity of a synthetic catalyst, such as an artificial organelle that mimics a cell, and the…

Additional NIH studies underway will build on encouraging early results. One dose of a new monoclonal antibody discovered and developed at the National Institutes of Health safely prevented malaria for up to nine months in people who were exposed to the malaria parasite. The small, carefully monitored clinical trial is the first to demonstrate that a monoclonal antibody can prevent malaria in people. The trial was sponsored and conducted by scientists from the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National…

Alzheimer’s research… Small aggregates of proteins known as Aβ oligomers are suspected as the main cause for the development of Alzheimer’s disease. However, it is not yet clear where and under what conditions these toxic aggregates form. Researchers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and Forschungszentrum Jülich, together with partners from the University and University Hospital Cologne, have now found that a slightly acidic milieu is conducive to this development. In this environment, the oligomers form around 8,000 times quicker than…

The dining time of different insects impacts a plant’s defenses and nutritional quality—a complexity uncovered in new research with implications for pest management strategies. A piercing-sucking, virus-carrying aphid has long worried pea plant farmers, but a more innocuous-seeming weevil that only takes tiny bites from leaves was found to also play a significant role in plant health. Depending if the weevils eat before, or after, the aphids, they can increase or decrease the plant’s ability to fend off the virus….

Researchers identify two sugar-binding proteins that impede the viral entry of circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants. The team, spearheaded by researchers at IMBA – Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences – may have found the “Achilles’ heel” of the virus, with potential for pan-variant therapeutic interventions. The findings are now published in the EMBO Journal. Amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it is paramount to find new ways to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2. To this end, the Spike…

Impedance analyzer connected to DNA biosensor that can be used to detect genetic sequence from SARS-CoV-2. The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have stimulated innovation on several fronts. One is the development of low-cost methods of clinical diagnosis. Genosensors are a case in point. Based on nucleic acids that detect simple complementary DNA or RNA sequences, genosensors are biosensors that make possible mass testing for immediate and sensitive testing of genetic material. A device of this kind, already shown…

Cilia are filamentous, hair-like structures that can be found on nearly all cells of the human body. Depending on the tissue, they fulfill a plethora of essential tasks, such as the transport of mucus in trachea, providing access to nutrients and inducing the left-right asymmetry during embryonic development. In their role as controllers of large-scale fluid transport, motile cilia undergo cyclic beating strokes. By this, they communicate mechanical signals to neighboring cilia and collectively create so-called metachronal waves. Typically, thousands…

Bacterial infections relating to medical implants place a huge burden on healthcare and cause great suffering to patients worldwide. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have developed a new method to prevent such infections, by covering a graphene-based material with bactericidal molecules. “Through our research, we have succeeded in binding water-insoluble antibacterial molecules to the graphene, and having the molecules release in a controlled, continuous manner from the material” says Santosh Pandit, researcher at the Department of Biology…

Holocentric plant species such as Cyperus papyrus were already of great importance to the ancient Egyptians. “This fibre plant was used to make one of the first papers back then,” says Prof. Dr. Andreas Houben, head of the Chromosome Structure and Function research group at the IPK Leibniz Institute. What all these species have in common is an evolutionary advantage. If a piece of the chromosome breaks off due to mutagenesis, the corresponding fragment is lost in monocentric species. “This…