UiT The Arctic University of Norway Imagine a country with a billion people, where every individual has different interests and different goals. You will never know their interests and goals until you ask them, but asking a billion people is not an easy task. This is the same complex scenario that scientists face when we...
Category: <span>biological sciences</span>
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Turning brain cells on using the power of light: Researchers refine noninvasive method of bioluminescent optogenetics
(A) Schematic illustration of the LMO7 molecule. (B) Representative histological images showing fluorescence expression in the left SI of a mouse. (C) Illustration of the timeline of events within a single day of imaging. (D) Schematic of the experimental setup used to image bioluminescence in the mouse. Credit: NeuroImage (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120882 University of Rochester researchers have...
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Mechanism behind autophagy trigger unveiled
News Release 24-Sep-2024 A research team led by Osaka University has uncovered a novel mechanism essential for initiating autophagy Peer-Reviewed PublicationOsaka University image: Upon autophagy induction, ZDHHC13 is recruited to autophagosome formation sites together with ATG9A. ULK1 is palmitoylated at Cys927 and Cys1003 residues by ZDHHC13, and the ULK1 complex are anchored to an autophagosome...
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AI tools help uncover enzyme mechanisms for lasso peptides
September 20, 2024 by Ananya Sen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Credit: Nature Chemical Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-024-01727-wLasso peptides are natural products made by bacteria. Their unusual lasso shape endows them with remarkable stability, protecting them from extreme conditions. In a new study, published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers have constructed and tested models for...
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Research IDs likely culprit that turns Klebsiella pneumoniae into a devastating, drug-resistant killer
September 19, 2024 by Ellen Goldbaum, University at Buffalo Relative contributions of genetic elements in hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae in vivo models of infection. Credit: eBioMedicine (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2024.105302More than a decade ago, physicians around the world began reporting cases due to a new hypervirulent strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae, which could infect and severely sicken otherwise...
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These Creatures Occupy ‘Third State’ Beyond Life And Death, Scientists Say
16 September 2024ByPeter A Noble & Alex Pozhitkov, The Conversation Biobots could one day be engineered to deliver drugs and clear up arterial plaque. (Kriegman et al. 2020/PNAS, CC BY-SA)Life and death are traditionally viewed as opposites. But the emergence of new multicellular life-forms from the cells of a dead organism introduces a “third state”...
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Cells that die during inflammation send wound-healing messages
News Release 11-Sep-2024 Peer-Reviewed PublicationVlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie A study by the team of Prof. Kodi Ravichandran (VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research) and colleagues found that pyroptosis, a form of programmed cell death traditionally thought to be purely inflammatory, also plays a crucial role in promoting healing and tissue repair. This research, published in Nature,...
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How context-specific factors control gene activity
September 9, 2024 by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public DomainEvery cell in our body contains the same DNA, yet liver cells are different from brain cells, and skin cells differ from muscle cells. What determines these differences? It all comes down to gene regulation; essentially how and when genes are turned on...
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Scientists use AI to unlock protein structures of hundreds of viruses for the first time
September 4, 2024 by University of Glasgow Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public DomainScientists are pioneering the use of machine-learning artificial intelligence software to investigate viruses, revealing never-before-seen viral mechanisms which yield immediate fundamental insights and pave the way for vaccine development. The research, led by the MRC-University of Glasgow Center for Virus Research (CVR) in collaboration with...
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Newly discovered viruses in parasitic nematodes could change our understanding of how they cause disease
News Release 4-Sep-2024 Peer-Reviewed PublicationLiverpool School of Tropical Medicine New research shows that parasitic nematodes, responsible for infecting more than a billion people globally, carry viruses that may solve the puzzle of why some cause serious diseases. A study led by Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) used cutting-edge bioinformatic data mining techniques to identify...