/ en-us Â鶹ŇůÔş internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ŇůÔşics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and Japan's Okayama and Toho universities have conducted a first-of-its-kind study to understand how chitons, mollusks that feed on algae growing on intertidal rocks, develop such hard, wear-resistant and magnetic teeth. What they learned is inspiring new ways to produce advanced materials for a variety of applications. /news/2025-08-nature-hardest-teeth-chitons-blueprint.html Materials Science Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:00:04 EDT news673714375 When phones or computers are recycled, small amounts of important materials get discarded. Those minute amounts of cobalt, nickel and lithium add up quickly, and separating and recovering these "critical materials" for reuse is a dirty, energy intensive job. /news/2025-06-ferritin-protein-critical-metals-electronic.html Materials Science Thu, 26 Jun 2025 13:23:54 EDT news670163028 Natural enzymes are remarkable molecular machines that enable all sorts of essential biochemical reactions. For decades, scientists have sought to create artificial versions of these catalysts for industrial and biomedical applications. However, they have struggled to match nature's efficiency and simplicity. This, in turn, has hindered the development of environmentally friendly catalysts for sustainable chemistry. /news/2025-05-efficient-artificial-enzymes-protein-cages.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Mon, 19 May 2025 12:43:04 EDT news666877382 A new study led by Profs. Fan Kelong and Yan Xiyun from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences introduces a novel ferritin-based delivery system for small interfering RNA (siRNA) targeting glioblastoma (GBM), a breakthrough that could enhance RNA interference (RNAi) therapies for cancer treatment. /news/2025-02-ferritin-based-sirna-delivery-glioblastoma.html Bio & Medicine Fri, 28 Feb 2025 10:07:03 EST news659959622 Novel protein cage systems can control and visualize orientational changes in aromatic side chains upon ligand binding, as reported by researchers at the Institute of Science, Tokyo. By inducing coordinated molecular changes, this approach enables precise control over protein dynamics while also enhancing fluorescence properties. /news/2025-02-protein-cage-conformational-aromatic-side.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Thu, 27 Feb 2025 11:10:06 EST news659877001 A collaborative study published on January 21 in Nature Communications presents a novel strategy to improve the effectiveness of radiotherapy for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). /news/2025-02-nanozyme-hypoxic-lesions-radiosensitivity-nasopharyngeal.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 13 Feb 2025 07:22:04 EST news658653722 Microscopy has been making leaps and bounds in recent years. Science that was inconceivable a few years ago has become a matter of programming state-of-the-art microscopes to process reams of data. Dr. Gabriel Frank quickly realized the potential of cryo-electron microscopy to discover the molecular structures at levels heretofore unobservable. /news/2024-08-scientist-state-art-microscopy-drug.html Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 05 Aug 2024 10:17:14 EDT news642071831 A new way to deliver drugs using a common protein could be used to develop mosaic vaccines, which are vaccines effective against multiple strains of a virus like COVID-19, among other medicines in a global first. /news/2024-05-scientists-drug-delivery-technology-breakthrough.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 21 May 2024 10:57:04 EDT news635507822 Chattering squirrels, charming coypus, and tail-slapping beavers—along with some other rodents—have orange-brown front teeth. Researchers have published high-resolution images of rodent incisors in ACS Nano, providing an atomic-level view of the teeth's ingenious enamel and its coating. They discovered tiny pockets of iron-rich materials in the enamel that form a protective shield for the teeth but, importantly, don't contribute to the orange-brown hue—new insights that could improve human dentistry. /news/2024-04-iron-rich-enamel-doesnt-rodents.html Nanomaterials Wed, 17 Apr 2024 08:00:01 EDT news632488144 Cells rely on complex molecular machines composed of protein assemblies to perform essential functions such as energy production, gene expression, and protein synthesis. To better understand how these machines work, scientists capture snapshots of them by isolating proteins from cells and using various methods to determine their structures. However, this process also removes them from the context of their native environment, including protein interaction partners and cellular location. /news/2024-03-software-scientists-shapeshifting-proteins-native.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 12 Mar 2024 09:05:04 EDT news629453101 Using a virus-like delivery particle made from DNA, researchers from MIT and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard have created a vaccine that can induce a strong antibody response against SARS-CoV-2. /news/2024-01-dna-particles-mimic-viruses-vaccines.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 30 Jan 2024 05:00:01 EST news625744814 Protein cages found within microbes help its contents weather the harsh intracellular environment—an observation that has many bioengineering applications. Tokyo Tech researchers have recently developed an innovative bioengineering approach that uses genetically modified bacteria to incorporate protein cages around protein crystals. This in-cell biosynthesis method efficiently produces highly customized protein complexes, which could find applications as advanced solid catalysts and functionalized nanomaterials. /news/2023-11-bacteria-biosynthesize-intricate-protein-complexes.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Wed, 15 Nov 2023 09:39:44 EST news619263581 Cleveland Clinic researchers have used nanoparticles to develop a potential vaccine candidate against Dabie Bandavirus, formerly known as Severe Fever with Thrombocytopenia Syndrome Virus (SFTSV), a tick-borne virus that currently has no prevention, treatment or cure. /news/2023-09-nanoparticle-vaccine-candidate-emerging-tick-borne.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 21 Sep 2023 16:03:03 EDT news614530977 Electron tunneling associated with ferritin was proposed as early as 1988, but it is still viewed skeptically despite substantial evidence that it occurs. In our recent paper published in IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications, my co-authors and I review the evidence of electron tunneling in ferritin, as well as the evidence that such electron tunneling may be used by biological systems that include the retina, the cochlea, macrophages, glial cells, mitochondria and magnetosensory systems. /news/2023-06-electron-tunneling-ferritin-vivo-retina-1.html Quantum Â鶹ŇůÔşics Tue, 27 Jun 2023 10:49:53 EDT news607081755 A genetic analysis of the hadal snailfish, the deepest-dwelling known vertebrate species, has suggested a number of key adaptations that allow it to survive more than 6,000 meters under the sea. /news/2023-06-scientists-reveal-deepest-sea-dwellers.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 20 Jun 2023 14:32:04 EDT news606490321 Scientists have developed new technology which has made it possible to isolate and study how a single protein—10,000 times thinner than a human hair—behaves and changes over time. /news/2023-05-technology-isolate-protein-paves-disease.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 03 May 2023 11:09:55 EDT news602330992 "You're not dead till you're warm and dead." /news/2022-10-tiny-worm-trauma-patients-long-distance.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 14 Oct 2022 10:28:32 EDT news584962108 Metal-containing complexes have taken up center stage in the search for new cancer drugs that are as free of side effects as possible. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a research team has now described how a very low dose of a rhenium metal complex interferes with cellular metabolism to such an extent that it kills ovarian cancer cells. /news/2022-10-dose-rhenium-metal-complex-cellular.html Biochemistry Wed, 12 Oct 2022 08:50:55 EDT news584783453 A common building material, asbestos is the term used to describe a range of naturally growing minerals. Serious diseases, including mesothelioma and lung cancer, can arise decades after coming into contact with asbestos. /news/2022-02-interaction-lung-cells-asbestos-particles.html Biochemistry Thu, 24 Feb 2022 16:38:54 EST news564943130 A novel hybrid ferritin nanocage with histidine residues shows 1.5 times higher metal ion uptake and improved catalytic efficiency for alcohol production, according to researchers from Tokyo Tech in a new study. Their findings suggest that hybrid bio-nanocages could effectively catalyze reactions to yield industrially important products. /news/2022-01-cats-cage-hybrid-nanocages-faster.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 24 Jan 2022 07:04:31 EST news562230268 Researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University and Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University have developed a ferritin (Fn)-based nanomedicine for targeted delivery of arsenic (As) and efficient therapy against diverse leukemia types. /news/2021-10-ferritin-based-nanomedicine-leukemia-therapy.html Bio & Medicine Mon, 25 Oct 2021 11:00:01 EDT news554371137 Scientists have organized proteins—nature's most versatile building blocks—in desired 2D and 3D ordered arrays while maintaining their structural stability and biological activity. They built these designer functional protein arrays by using DNA as a programmable construction material. The team—representing the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and City University of New York (CUNY)—described their approach in the June 17 issue of Nature Communications. /news/2021-06-functional-proteins.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 25 Jun 2021 10:24:37 EDT news543835473 A fast, low-cost technique to see and count viruses or proteins from a sample in real time, without any chemicals or dyes, could underpin a new class of devices for rapid diagnostics and viral load monitoring, including HIV and the virus that causes COVID-19. /news/2021-03-microscope-individual-viruses-power-rapid.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 22 Mar 2021 09:36:59 EDT news535624616 Biochemists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have used a standard electron cryo-microscope to achieve surprisingly good images that are on par with those taken by far more sophisticated equipment. They have succeeded in determining the structure of ferritin almost at the atomic level. Their results were published in the journal PLOS ONE. /news/2020-07-electron-cryo-microscopy-inexpensive-technology-high-resolution.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 13 Jul 2020 11:46:03 EDT news513859555 If scientists could give living cells magnetic properties, they could perhaps manipulate cellular activities with external magnetic fields. But previous attempts to magnetize cells by producing iron-containing proteins inside them have resulted in only weak magnetic forces. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have engineered genetically encoded protein crystals that can generate magnetic forces many times stronger than those already reported. /news/2019-09-protein-crystals-cells-magnetic.html Nanomaterials Wed, 25 Sep 2019 08:43:28 EDT news488619800 In life sciences, the ability to measure the distribution of biomolecules inside a cell in situ is an important investigative goal. Among a variety of techniques, scientists have used magnetic imaging (MI) based on the nitrogen vacancy center (NV) in diamonds as a powerful tool in biomolecular research. However, nanoscale imaging of intracellular proteins has remained a challenge thus far. In a recent study now published in Science Advances, Pengfei Wang and colleagues at the interdisciplinary departments of physics, biomacromolecules, quantum information and life sciences in China, used ferritin proteins to demonstrate the MI realization of endogenous proteins in a single cell, using the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center as the sensor. They imaged intracellular ferritins and ferritin-containing organelles using MI and correlative electron microscopy to pave the way for nanoscale magnetic imaging (MI) of intracellular proteins. /news/2019-04-nanoscale-magnetic-imaging-ferritin-cell.html Bio & Medicine Nanophysics Thu, 18 Apr 2019 09:30:02 EDT news474617535 Although magnetic nanoparticles are being used more and more in cell imaging and tissue bioengineering, what happens to them within stem cells in the long term remained undocumented. Researchers from CNRS, the Sorbonne UniversitĂ©, and universities Paris Diderot and Paris 13, have shown substantial degradation of these nanoparticles, followed in certain cases by the cells "re-magnetizing." This phenomenon is the sign of biosynthesis of new magnetic nanoparticles from iron released in the intracellular medium by the degradation of the first nanoparticles. Published in PNAS on February 11, 2019, this work may explain the presence of "natural" magnetism in human cells, and help to envisage new tools for nanomedicine, thanks to this magnetism produced by the cells themselves. /news/2019-02-magnetic-nanoparticles-cells.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Wed, 13 Feb 2019 08:58:43 EST news469270716 A mollusk with teeth that can grind down rock may hold the key to making next generation abrasion-resistant materials and nanoscale materials for energy. /news/2019-02-magnetic-teeth-materials-energy.html Materials Science Fri, 01 Feb 2019 14:38:02 EST news468254271 A new study led by Danforth Center principal investigator Nigel Taylor and research scientist Narayanan Narayanan, shows that field-grown cassava plants overexpressing a combination of plant genes can accumulate significantly higher concentrations of iron and zinc. /news/2019-01-cassava-high-iron-zinc-diets.html Biotechnology Mon, 28 Jan 2019 12:27:01 EST news467900809 An ocean-dwelling bacterium has provided fresh insights into how cells protect themselves from the toxic effects of metal ions such as iron and copper, in research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). /news/2019-01-marine-bacterium-toxic-metals.html Biochemistry Mon, 14 Jan 2019 15:00:05 EST news466669402