As politics in America become more polarized and each voting cycle seems more fraught than the last, a common narrative in the media is that each election is unique and increasingly unpredictable. But new research shows that congressional elections follow strong statistical patterns, even when individual races produce surprises.
Many of the most potent antibiotics originate from bacteria. A large proportion belong to a class of compounds known as nonribosomal peptides (NRP). They are produced by large bacterial enzyme machineries—the nonribosomal peptide synthetases, or NRPS for short. These function like molecular assembly lines: Similar to the stations in a car factory, where new parts are added to the car at each step, several specialized modules string together amino acid by amino acid to build a peptide.
How can the identity of pluripotent stem cells be determined more reliably during their differentiation? Researchers from the IUF—Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine and Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf have systematically validated marker genes for this purpose and developed a web-based application for the automated classification of early cell fates. The study has been published in Stem Cell Reports.
What if we could predict early in drug development which antibiotics bacteria are most likely to become resistant to? In a review published in Nature Reviews Microbiology, researchers from the HUN-REN Biological Research Centre, Szeged (HUN-REN BRC Szeged) and the Hungarian Centre of Excellence for Molecular Medicine (HCEMM) in Szeged propose a five-step decision-making framework that could help identify resistance risks early, refine promising drug candidates and prevent costly failures.
Potatoes could hold the key to making better gluten-free plant-based meat, according to a new study.
Establishing a long-term presence on the moon will require solving challenges that are easy to overlook on Earth. Lunar temperatures, for instance, can vary from hundreds of degrees below zero to boiling, making effective insulation essential for lunar habitats.
Research shows that crises do more than cause financial market volatility and falling share prices—they lead to markets becoming far more interconnected.
The Orion Nebula is a large star-forming region visible to the naked eye. Some of the young stars in the nebula are surrounded by disks of gas and dust in which planets form. Radiation from the massive central star, 1 Ori C1 (Theta-1 Orionis C1), gradually strips material from these disks, giving them shapes that resemble tadpoles.
Mitochondria are the tiny powerpacks that supply most of the energy our cells need. Their ability to generate this energy relies on a distinctive architecture: two membranes, one tucked inside the other, separated by a narrow gap called the intermembrane space (IMS). This tiny space helps sustain the chemistry of energy production, making its organization critical to how these cellular powerpacks function.
When DNA is damaged, cellular processes respond and repair the DNA. Inhibiting DNA damage repair can be therapeutically beneficial in cancers with genetic vulnerabilities related to DNA damage response. Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have uncovered a mechanism behind how this process works, which may have implications for cancer treatment. The results were published today in Molecular Cell.
