Culture
Curtin University researchers have helped uncover the four billion year old story of a lunar sample brought from the Moon to Earth, by the manned Apollo 17 mission more than 50 years ago.
The global research collaboration, involving scientists from the UK, Canada, Sweden and Australia, aimed to analyse the ancient rock sample through a modern lens to find out its age, which crater it came from and its geological trajectory.
Cell viability require that a variety of functions at the cell membrane are maintained properly. P-type ATPases translocate substrates across the membrane, and they have evolved into different types taking care of specific substrates within a diverse range. Now, key structural aspects have been described on how two different types of P-type ATPases - a Ca2+ transporting Ca2+ -ATPase and a lipid transporting P4-ATPase - have adapted to different substrates and physical environments.
Researchers from Tel Aviv University took part in a new international study proposing an amendment to the widely accepted theory on the extinction of animal species - by moving the focus from the animal's body size to its reproductive capacity. The researchers found gaps and incompatibilities between mammals and amphibians in the relation between body size and extinction risk: Whereas large mammals bear a smaller number of offspring per birth, leading to higher risk of extinction, larger amphibian females lay more eggs, reducing the threat to the species.
Even on a good day, DNA is constantly getting damaged.
Nicks, scratches, breaks: the delicate strands that carry life's genetic code take a beating as they jumble about in the course of their work. If left untreated, errors accumulate, with fatal consequences -- such as cancerous tumors -- for the cell and the organism.
This is where two key proteins come to the rescue: PARP -- or poly ADP ribose polymerase -- acts as a marker for a trouble spot, allowing XRCC1 -- or X-ray repair cross-complementing protein 1 -- to zoom in and begin a repair.
LA JOLLA--(June 10, 2021) In order for cancer to grow and spread, it has to evade detection by our immune cells, particularly specialized "killer" T cells. Salk researchers led by Professor Susan Kaech have found that the environment inside tumors (the tumor microenvironment) contains an abundance of oxidized fat molecules, which, when ingested by the killer T cells, suppresses their ability to kill cancer cells.
Scientists are hoping the RNA of an obscure infection can one day be used like a Trojan horse to deliver life-saving treatments to citrus trees.
The infection, citrus yellow vein disease, was discovered 64 years ago in Riverside and has never been seen elsewhere in the world. Decades later, UC Riverside researchers have finally unraveled the associated pathogen's genetic codes -- a significant step toward harnessing its unique properties.
This targeted control of phages provides entirely new biotechnological and therapeutic approaches, e.g. for phage therapies. The results produced in the context of an ERC grant have been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Recently, a research group led by CHU Yannan and HUANG Chaoqun from the Institute of Health & Medical Technology of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) developed an effective method for on-site detection of methamphetamine (MA) in the presence of nicotine by a homemade ion mobility spectrometry. Relevant results were published in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.
Lack of water, floods, or crop losses: As a result of climate change, pronounced periods of drought and rainfall are occurring more frequently and more intensively all around the world, causing human suffering and major economic damage. The more precise seasonal forecasts for the coming months are, the more effectively these consequences can be mitigated. A research team from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has now been able to improve global forecasts using statistical methods so that they can be used on the regional level.
The annual number of new HIV infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) in England is likely to have fallen dramatically, from 2,770 in 2013 to 854 in 2018, showing elimination of HIV transmission by 2030 to be within reach - suggests work by researchers from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge and Public Health England (PHE), published in The Lancet HIV.
Plants use numerous mechanisms for their pollination. Now botanists have discovered a particularly sophisticated system among pipevines that is based purely on deception.
It eventually became a Nobel prize-winning revolution when researchers first engineered CRISPR as a gene editing technology for bacterial, plant, animal and human cells. The potential of the technology is great and span from curing genetically disposed diseases to applications in agricultural and industrial biotechnology, but there are challenges.
One such challenge consists of selecting a so-called gRNA molecule which should be designed to guide the Cas9 protein to the right location in the DNA where it will make a cut in relation to the gene editing.
Using a new 3D printing process, University of Nottingham researchers have discovered how to tailor-make artificial body parts and other medical devices with built-in functionality that offers better shape and durability, while cutting the risk of bacterial infection at the same time.
RUDN and Shahid Beheshti University(SBU) chemist proposed an eco-friendly method for the synthesis of pyrrole and pyrazole derivatives with a wide range of applications in medicine: from antidepressants to anticancer. Moreover, the synthesized compounds possess interesting fluorescence features, and the bioactive scaffolds might attract great interest in the fields of clinical diagnostics and biomedical research in the future. The results are published in the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry.
With the start of the United Nations' Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs through 2030, a tremendous amount of money and effort will be put into re-growing forests, making over-exploited farmland productive, and reviving damaged marine environments. This is a good, and vital, initiative. Without quick action to clean up the fallout of humanity's scorched-earth economic systems, goals on hunger, biodiversity and climate will be unattainable.