New Nano-Scale Device Can Weigh Individual Molecules
A gold particle five nanometers in width weighs just a few megadaltons, a tiny unit of measure used in biochemistry that is equivalent to the…
Biochemistry News
Molecular Code for How PPR Proteins Recognize their RNA Targets Discovered
A team of scientists has cracked a code underlying recognition of RNA molecules by a superfamily of RNA-binding proteins called pentatricopeptide repeat (PPR) proteins, providing…
Amino Acid Organocatalyst Halves Synthesis of Prostaglandin-Class Drugs
Prostaglandin class drugs are a class of hormone-like chemicals that influence processes including blood circulation and inflammation. Their use offers a way to churn out…
A Step Toward Developing Sight-Saving Gene Therapy
Using exome sequencing, a team of scientists has discovered the human gene that causes a relatively rare but devastating type of early-onset blindness, providing an…
DNA Sequencing Technologies Help Characterized the Mutational Landscape of Melanoma
Using DNA sequencing technologies to examine 147 melanomas originating from both sun-exposed and sun-shielded sites, a team of scientists at the Yale Cancer Center has…
New Drug Candidate Kills Cancer Cells Better Than Cisplatin
A newly published report describes the new drug candidate known as phenanthriplatin, a compound that showed a different pattern of activity than that of cisplatin…
“Acoustic Tweezers” Use Sound Waves to Control Items
Scientists have developed “acoustic tweezers” that use sound waves to control items regardless of their optical, electrical or magnetic properties, making them noninvasive and very…
p65 Protein and Its Interaction With Telomerase RNA
Using both X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, UCLA biochemists have examined the structure of p65 protein and its interaction with telomerase RNA. University…
Carbon Increases Oil Production From Algae
By feeding algae more carbon, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory increased the microbes’ overall metabolism, resulting in increased oil production as the organisms continued…
Insight on the Evolution of Cocaine Biosynthesis
With little known about how plants produce cocaine, biochemists at the Max Planck institute set out to better understand the process, finding that an enzyme…
Nanoscale Molecular Cages May Aid in Drug and Vaccine Delivery
Biochemists at UCLA used computer models to identify proteins that could be combined to form tiny molecular cages that are hundreds of times smaller than…
Cryptogamic Covers Take Up Huge Amounts of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
New research from the Max Planck Institute examines the role of cryptogamic covers in the global exchange of oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Covering approximately 30%…
Comprehensive Analysis of Cell Membrane Reveals Independent Domains
Biochemists at the Max Planck Institute used advanced imaging technologies to successfully perform the first comprehensive analysis of the molecular structure of a yeast cell…
Working to Recycle Greenhouse Gases
Scientists around the world continue to study greenhouse gas emissions and researchers at the Fritz Haber Institute discovered findings that could lead to the recycling…
Cost-Effective 3-D RNA Modeling Technique
RNA cataloging may take a big leap forward. A new study from the University of North Carolina describes a cost-effective technique that will help scientists…
Scientists Create Brain Cells from Skin Cells
For the first time, scientists from the University of Cambridge have created cerebral cortex cells from a sample of human skin. The scientists were able…
Foldit Players Remodel Catalyst Enzyme for Diels-Alder Reactions
The online community of Foldit has helped produce solutions that have evaded scientists for years. Initially funded by DARPA, this community consists of roughly 240,000…
Chemists Work on Synthetic Cell Creation
Chemists Neal Devaraj and Itay Budin are working on the creation of a “synthetic cell.” Their goal is to create a living organism from non-living…
