Biochemists' discovery could lead to vaccine against 'flesh-eating' bacteria

Biochemists at the University of California San Diego have uncovered patterns in the outer protein coat of group A Streptococcus that could finally lead to a vaccine against this highly infectious bacteriaresponsible for ...

Using a unique computational approach to rapidly sample, in millisecond time intervals, proteins in their natural state of gyrating, bobbing, and weaving, a research team from UC San Diego and Monash University in Australia ...

When life on Earth began nearly 4 billion years ago, long before humans, dinosaurs or even the earliest single-celled forms of life roamed, it may have started as a hiccup rather than a roar: small, simple molecular building ...

In the beginning, there were simple chemicals. And they produced amino acids that eventually became the proteins necessary to create single cells. And the single cells became plants and animals. Recent research is revealing ...

Many of the drugs we take today to treat pain, fight cancer or thwart disease were originally identified in plants, some of which are endangered or hard to grow. In many cases, those plants are still the primary source of ...

Stanford scientists have discovered a surprising source for an organic molecule used as an indicator for life on early Earth.

Researchers have made the first-ever detailed, atomic-level images of a peroxiredoxin, which has revealed a peculiar characteristic of this protein and might form the foundation for a new approach to antibiotics.

How genes in our DNA are expressed into traits within a cell is a complicated mystery with many players, the main suspects being chemical. However, a new study by University of Illinois researchers and collaborators in China ...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Babraham Institute have found that a naturally occurring modified DNA base appears to be stably incorporated in the DNA of many mammalian tissues, possibly representing ...

Using a new, lightning-fast camera paired with an electron microscope, Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) scientists have captured images of one of the smallest proteins in our cells to be "seen" with a microscope.

(Phys.org)Diseases like mad cow disease or Alzheimer's are a result of protein mis-folding. Proteins are comprised of an amino acid chain that folds into a three-dimensional structure. According to the Anfinsen Principle, ...

The social wasp Polybia paulista protects itself against predators by producing venom known to contain a powerful cancer-fighting ingredient. A Biophysical Journal study published September 1 reveals exactly how the venom's ...

(Phys.org)Biopharmaceutical macromolecules are often functionalized with polyethylene glycol (PEG), an inert chain of -(CH2CH2O)- repeating units. PEG can help make a biomolecule more soluble in water, or increase its ...

An enzyme called telomerase plays a significant role in aging and most cancers, but until recently many aspects of the enzyme's structure could not be clearly seen.

Researchers have imaged in unprecedented detail the three-dimensional structure of supercoiled DNA, revealing that its shape is much more dynamic than the well-known double helix.

Collagen makes up the cartilage in our knee joints, the vessels that transport our blood, and is a crucial component in our bones. It is the most abundant protein found in the bodies of humans and many other animals. It is ...

The genome-editing system known as CRISPR allows scientists to delete or replace any target gene in a living cell. MIT researchers have now added an extra layer of control over when and where this gene editing occurs, by ...

An atomic level analysis has revealed how two classes of calcium channel blockers, widely prescribed for heart disease patients, produce separate therapeutic effects through their actions at different sites on the calcium ...

From hard to malleable, from transparent to opaque, from channeling electricity to blocking it: Materials come in all types. A number of their intriguing properties originate in the way a material's electrons "dance" with ...

A Swede who wrote a trilogy about collecting bugs, an Egyptian doctor who put pants on rats to study their sex lives and a British researcher who lived like an animal have been named winners of the Ig Nobels, the annual spoof ...

As solar cells produce a greater proportion of total electric power, a fundamental limitation remains:the dark of night when solar cells go to sleep. Lithium-ion batteries, the commonplace batteries used in everything ...

The universe is not spinning or stretched in any particular direction, according to the most stringent test yet.

The largest recorded earthquake in East Texas was triggered by the high-volume injections of wastewater from oil and gas activities deep underground, according to a study co-authored by Stanford geophysicist William Ellsworth.

Whales are the biggest animals to ever have existed on Earth, and yet some subsist on creatures the size of a paper clip. It's a relatively common factoid, but, in truth, how they do this is only just being uncovered, thanks ...

Two's company, but three might not always be a crowdat least in space.

An initial study by University of Texas at Arlington chemists of well water quality in the Eagle Ford Shale region found some abnormal chloride/bromide ratios, alongside evidence of dissolved gases and sporadic episodes of ...

An international research team from six universities, including Virginia Tech, works to better understand how trees one of Earth's most vital renewable resources adapt to changing climates.

If you chop a magnet in half, you end up with two smaller magnets. Both the original and the new magnets have "north" and "south" poles.

Yahoo said Thursday a massive attack on its network in 2014 allowed hackers to steal data from half a billion users and may have been "state sponsored."

An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has explored the same distant corner of the universe first revealed in the iconic image of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF).

By adding highly accurate radiocarbon dating of soil to standard Earth system models, environmental scientists from the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have learned a dirty little secret: The ground ...

A new mathematical model developed at the University of British Columbia integrates environmental and molecular sequence information to better explain how microbial networks drive nutrient and energy cycling in marine ecosystems.

Iconic dinosaur shapes were present for at least a hundred million years on our planet in animals before those dinosaurs themselves actually appeared.

Tiny ocean fossils distributed widely across rock surfaces in the Transantarctic Mountains point to the potential for a substantial rise in global sea levels under conditions of continued global warming, according to a new ...

(Phys.org)A team led by Michael Westaway, an anthropologist with Australia's Griffith University, has found evidence that suggests a skeleton found protruding from an Australian riverbank two years ago is the remains of ...

Using a simple membrane extract from spinach leaves, researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a bio-photo-electro-chemical (BPEC) cell that produces electricity and hydrogen from water using ...

300 million-year-old pre-mammalian reptiles knew that it was their beautiful smiles that made them sexy, so they evolved mouths full of teeth to attract mates.

A small group of Homo sapiens left Africa around 100,000 years ago in a series of astronomically paced slow migration waves and arrived for the first time in southern Europe around 80,000-90,000 years ago, according to a ...

Virginia Tech researchers have found a gene that can reduce female mosquitoes over many generations.

A new paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research shows that sea level rise in the northern Indian Ocean rose twice as fast as the global average since 2003. This represents a stark contrast to the previous decade,when ...

(Phys.org)A pair of researchers has found that a type of oceanic crab (Planes minutus) alters its mating habits based on the relative size of its refuge. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, Joseph ...

Red imported fire ants have earned a justifiably bad rap across the south and most Texans would be hard put to name a single redeeming quality the ants have.

Sound can now be structured in three dimensions. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart have found a way of generating acoustic holograms, which could improve ultrasound ...

Humans are remarkably good at moving species around: We unwittingly carry stowaway organisms in our luggage when we fly, in our cars when we take a road trip, and on our bodies when we're simply taking a stroll.

Double-stranded breaks in DNA can be detected with several technologies. Doing so in plants is exceptionally difficult, but GUIDE-Seq shows promise in new studies.

For children with speech and language disorders, early-childhood intervention can make a great difference in their later academic and social success. But many such childrenone study estimates 60 percentgo undiagnosed ...

Coral fish become stressed and lose weight if they are separated from each other, hampering their chances of survival, an Australian study revealed on Thursday.

(Phys.org)Quantum measurements are often inherently unpredictable, yet the usual way in which quantum theory accounts for unpredictability has long been viewed as somewhat unsatisfactory. In a new study, University of ...

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