Many proteins produced by the cells are decorated with sugars and delivered out of the cells. In this secretory pathway, MCFD2 sorts and transports blood coagulation factors V and VIII as special cargos. The impairment of MCFD2 function results in a deficiency of these coagulation factors.
Life expectancy in the USA is no longer rising. This stagnation has long been largely attributed to increasing numbers of drug deaths due to the opioid crisis. But Mikko Myrskylä and colleagues have now shown that deaths due to cardiovascular diseases are in fact having a much larger impact on life expectancy.
Over each decade of the past century, life expectancy in the USA rose by two years. This is no longer the case. Since 2010, life expectancy has not improved. Until now, this fact has mainly been attributed to the rising number of drug deaths due to the opioid crisis.
Visualizing the structure of viruses, proteins and other small biomolecules can help scientists gain deeper insights into how these molecules function, potentially leading to new treatments for disease. In recent years, a powerful technology called cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), where flash-frozen samples are embedded in glass-like ice and probed by an electron beam, has revolutionized biomolecule imaging. However, the microscopes that the technique relies upon are prohibitively expensive and complicated to use, making them inaccessible to many researchers.
The laboratory directed by Arne Skerra, Professor of Biological Chemistry, has its focus on designing artificial binding proteins for therapeutic applications. The laboratory's current research findings are paving the way for the development of new types of binding proteins for biological sugar structures, which play a significant role in cancer as well as infectious diseases.
Recognizing biological sugar structures
The crystal structure at the surface of semiconductor materials can make them behave like metals and even like superconductors, a joint Swansea/Rostock research team has shown. The discovery potentially opens the door to advances like more energy-efficient electronic devices.
Semiconductors are the active parts of transistors, integrated circuits, sensors, and LEDs. These materials, mostly based on silicon, are at the heart of today's electronics industry.
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found in a retrospective study that African-American men are less likely to use a more targeted biopsy option for prostate cancer, despite an increased incidence in this group of patients.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Need to reduce high-pitched noises? Science may have an answer.
In a new study, theoretical physicists report that materials made from tapered chains of spherical beads could help dampen sounds that lie at the upper range of human hearing or just beyond.
The impacts of such noises on health are uncertain. But some research suggests that effects could include nausea, headaches, dizziness, impaired hearing or other symptoms.
LAWRENCE -- When a partial fossil specimen of a primordial marine worm was unearthed in Utah in 1969, scientists had a tough go identifying it. Usually, such worms are recognized and categorized by the arrangement of little knobs on their plates. But in this case, the worm's plates were oddly smooth, and important bits of the worm were missing altogether.
Discouraged, researchers placed the mystery worm in a "wastebasket" genus called Palaeoscolex, and interest in the lowly critter waned for the next 50 years.
Mysterious bone circles made from the remains of dozens of mammoths have revealed clues about how ancient communities survived Europe's ice age.
About 70 of these structures are known to exist in Ukraine and the west Russian Plain.
New analysis shows the bones at one site are more than 20,000 years old, making it the oldest such circular structure built by humans discovered in the region. The bones were likely sourced from animal graveyards, and the circle was then hidden by sediment and is now a foot below current surface level.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Chronic exposure to microplastic fibers causes aneurysms, erosion of surface layers and other serious damage to fish gills, and increases egg production in female fish, a sign that chemicals in the fibers may be acting as endocrine disruptors, a new study by U.S. and Chinese scientists finds.