Culture
Plant Protector: How plants strengthen their light-harvesting membranes against environmental stress
An international study led by Helmholtz Zentrum München has revealed the structure of a membrane-remodeling protein that builds and maintains photosynthetic membranes. These fundamental insights lay the groundwork for bioengineering efforts to strengthen plants against environmental stress, helping to sustaining human food supply and fight against climate change.
Men - more often than women - need passion to succeed at things. At the same time, boys are diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum four times as often as girls.
Both statistics may be related to dopamine, one of our body's neurotransmitters.
"This is interesting. Research shows a more active dopamine system in most men" than in women, says Hermundur Sigmundsson, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU)Department of Psychology.
Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have shown that adaptation to similar environments hardly involves similar genomic positions when species are distantly related. The team investigated recurrent adaptations of wildlife birds' mitochondria to high altitude, migration, diving, wintering, and flight. Repeatable substitutions are rather a coincidence than adaptation, which confirms the scientific opinion that distant species "choose" different ways of similar trait evolution. The paper was published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
Osaka, Japan - Scientists from the Department of Physics and the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) at Osaka University, in collaboration with Kyoto University, used alpha particle inelastic scattering to show that the theorized "5α condensed state" does exist in neon-20. This work may help us obtain a better understanding the low-density nucleon many-body systems.
When cancers metastasize, cells from the primary tumor break away, travel through the blood or lymph system,
and form new tumors in other body parts. Although metastasis are responsible for more than 90% of all cancer
deaths, limited progress has been made in treating cancers that have spread.
Discovering and engineering nanobodies with properties suitable for treating human diseases ranging from cancer to COVID-19 is a time-consuming, laborious process.
To that end, University of Michigan researchers found a simple method for identifying nanobodies with drug-like properties suitable for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infections. They demonstrated the approach by generating nanobodies that neutralized the SARS-CoV-2 virus more potently than an antibody isolated from an infected patient and a nanobody isolated from an immunized animal.
Many people don't realize that the trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi residing within the gastrointestinal tract--collectively called the gut microbiome-- are connected to overall health, and specifically to cancer.
Manipulating the gut microbiome to produce "beneficial" commensal microbes, which protect the host from pathogens and can boost immune responses, among other things, could potentially help patients respond better to cancer drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors, a type of immunotherapy.
A cluster of comet fragments believed to have hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago may have shaped the origins of human civilisation, research suggests.
Possibly the most devastating cosmic impact since the extinction of the dinosaurs, it appears to coincide with major shifts in how human societies organised themselves, researchers say.
Their analysis backs up claims that an impact occurred prior to start of the Neolithic period in the so-called Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia.
The Third Pole centered on the Tibetan Plateau is home to the headwaters of multiple rivers in Asia. Despite the importance of these rivers, scientists have not known exactly how much water flows out of the mountains of the Third Pole as river runoff.
Now, however, researchers from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have quantified the total river runoff of 13 major rivers in the region.
In a new study published in Circulation Research, Chen-Yu Zhang and Xiaohong Jiang's group from Nanjing University and Dongjin Wang's group from Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital reported a critical role of PGC1α in maintaining the contractile phenotype of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) and highlighted the therapeutic potential of PGC1α for atherosclerosis.
Somnambulism - otherwise known as sleepwalking - is a phenomenon which has fascinated the public and neurologists for decades, but a lot of what causes it remains a mystery.
Affecting up to 4% of adults, sleepwalking is a non-rapid-eye movement (NREM) sleep parasomnia that not only gives someone a poor night's sleep, but also puts them at serious risk of injury and, in some cases, lead to unintended violence against others.
The following day can also prove challenging as the sleepwalker will feel unrested and a strong desire to fall asleep (somnolence).
The cultivated planet is withstanding record-breaking pressure to ensure food security. To meet the rising demand of food, energy, and fiber, a 70%-100% increase in crop commodities will be needed globally by 2050. However, rapid urbanization and industrialization have caused dramatic loss of high-quality cropland and hence threatened food security. To stabilize cropland area, cropland expansion to marginal lands has become a widespread phenomenon worldwide.
The rarity of these syndromes, caused by damage to a gene named HUWE1, means very few children are affected. Of course, the low absolute numbers are little consolation for children who are born with a severe intellectual disability as a result of gene mutation.
Many affected children have distinctive facial features, some struggle to learn to walk, and many never learn to speak. Some have an abnormally small head and have stunted growth.
There is no cure. Parents mainly focus on learning enough about how to cope to make everyday life workable.
A study from the Centre for Nutraceuticals at the University of Westminster found that plant-based protein shakes may be potential viable alternatives to milk-based whey protein shakes, particularly in people with need of careful monitoring of glucose levels.
The study, published in the journal Nutrients, is the first to show potato and rice proteins can be just as effective at managing your appetite and can help better manage blood glucose levels and reduce spikes in insulin compared to whey protein.
New research has uncovered a novel trick employed by the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus to thwart the immune response, raising hopes that a vaccine that prevents deadly MRSA infections is a little closer on the horizon.
Immunologists from Trinity College Dublin, working with scientists at GSK - one of the world's largest vaccine manufacturers - discovered the new trick of the troublesome Staphylococcus aureus, which is the causative agent of the infamous "superbug" MRSA.