Their highly specialized roles of immune cells also mean they have molecular machineries that are a bit different from those in other cells, Find out here how researchers are using chemistry to advance our knowledge of one of such components, the immunoproteasome.
The COVID-19 pandemic is consuming our news feed at the moment – while you’re self-isolating read about some of the great science research going on to combat our newest virus.
The development of chemotherapy revolutionised the treatment of cancer in the 20th century, however, side effects have remained problematic. Immunotherapy, using the body’s natural immune system to fight cancer, may be a safer and more effective alternative.
Thermochemical degradation of plant matter can create a great plant fertilizer called hydrochar. But what effect does this hydrochar have on the soil ecosystem?
Ever wondered how scientists know what is going on inside a cell, or how you could design a chemical probe to tell you more? There’s a lot of things to consider, find out more here.
Could vanillin, the flavoring molecule extracted from vanilla bean, increase our body’s ability to absorb ingested drugs?
New technology developed to build larger proteins
Antibodies in your body help fight disease by specifically targeting a viral or bacterial strain. This specificity makes antibodies useful for disease detection, but how do scientists reduce the chance of false positives and false negatives?
With a renewed interest in psilocybin — the psychedelic substance present in magic mushrooms — by the medical community, the Weng group at MIT sets up to study one of the enzymes that makes it.
As nanotechnology is developed into drugs for human health, scientists need to study nanoparticle clearance rates from the body.
Researchers develop an easy to use method to identify the chirality of the amino acids, amines and alcohols.
Studying membrane-bound proteins requires stabilizing their structure outside of the membrane – otherwise they fall apart. But our analytical techniques have not risen to the challenge. Sadaf et al. pushes us forward by developing novel detergents for stabilizing membrane proteins.
A group from the University of Tübingen obtained single-cell proteins with circular resources and renewable energy.
DNA is the instruction manual for how to produce an organism, one gene at a time. But our heart cells, liver cells, and brain cells are different, despite having the same DNA, thanks in part to the “epigenetic” modifications that control which genes are expressed.
When it comes to milk, preventing bacterial contamination on dairy equipment is key. Researchers in Israel developed a biological coating to prevent biofilm formation and keep their moo-juice fresh and clean.
Scientists from UCSD and Compultense University developed non-invasive tools to measure gastrointestinal distress, monitoring chemical markers in real-time.
DNA can be more than just the genetic code. Can four specially designed strands of DNA destroy cancer cells?
Nothing compares to a well-trained dog’s nose for smelling out faint odors. But a new artificial nose made with living cells may come close!
Changes in our DNA can cause a host of health issues. However, we can mitigatge a lot of those if we can identify and catalogue these changes, potentially developing novel treatments.
Scientists genetically modify bacteria to overproduce uncommon antibiotics, revealing information on how bacteria regulate and modify its metabolites.
What happens when you bring DNA strands, gold nanoparticles, conformation-induced color changes, and a highly-intrusive bacterium together? A field-portable, inexpensive test for the world’s greatest bacterial threats.
Microbial systems can be a great way to make complicated products that are useful to humans. However, because the pathways to make these products involve multiple steps and can be very complex, sometimes it’s just too difficult for one species to accomplish on its own. But working as a team with another species of microbe can have its own problems. How can researchers decide which way is best?
Amino acids were found in the Atlantis Massif, under the ocean floor. Is their non-biological synthesis the origin of life?
Four billion years ago the Earth cooled, cyanobacteria gave us our oxygen-rich atmosphere, and your ribosomes started synthesizing proteins!
Proteins bear a staggering collection of small chemical modifications that have large effects on their function. This research provides an elegant method to study cysteine sulfinylation, a chemical mark that has proven to be pretty elusive.