Climate change is threatening modern life in ways we are still finding, from food security to the economy to everyday living. It has been labeled a "threat multiplier" for its potential to complicate geopolitical relationships. Our efforts to adapt as a global society face obstacles brought on by inequality.
For years, a protein inside our cells has quietly powered billions of dollars' worth of cancer drugs. Now a team of researchers have discovered that this workhorse protein, called cereblon, in addition to its known functions, can also fine-tune which proteins live and which are sent to the cellular trash.
AI has designed candidate drugs for antibiotic-resistant infections and genetic diseases. But efforts to incorporate AI into the design of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the revolutionary delivery vehicles behind mRNA therapies like the COVID-19 vaccines, have been much more limited.
When Sandia scientists Ryan Davis and Nathan Bays set out to find a better way to absorb and degrade PFAS in water sources, they kept running into the same issue: Detecting the chemicals in samples took too long. So, they came up with their own solution. They've developed a faster, cheaper way to test for PFAS. The research is published in the journal ACS Omega.
Even when the idea of terraforming Mars was originally put forward, the idea was daunting. Changing the environment of an entire planet is not something to do easily. Over the following decades, plenty of scientists and engineers have looked at the problem, and most have come to the same conclusion—we're not going to be able to make Mars anything like Earth anytime soon. A new paper available in pre-print on arXiv from Slava Turyshev of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a good explainer as to why.
Long before humans cultivated crops or sailed between continents, a group of plant viruses was already evolving among wild plants in Eurasia. According to a new international study published in Plant Disease, the ancestors of modern tymoviruses likely emerged before the last Ice Age, reshaping scientists' understanding of the vast evolutionary history of plant disease.
Scientists usually study the molecular machinery that controls gene expression from the perspective of a linear, two-dimensional genome—even though DNA and its bound proteins function in three dimensions (3D). To better understand how key components of this machinery, such as super-enhancers, regulate genes in this 3D reality, scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have developed a new algorithm called BOUQUET.
Deep-sea waters are warming due to heat waves and climate change, and it could spell trouble for the oceans' delicate chemical and biological balance. However, a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that the microbe Nitrosopumilus maritimus may already be adapting well to warmer, nutrient-poor waters. Researchers predict that these surprisingly adaptable iron-dependent ammonia-oxidizing archaea will play an important role in reshaping ocean-nutrient distribution in a changing climate.
Most plants allow fungal microorganisms to enter their root cells and provide them with carbohydrates in exchange for a better supply of nutrients and water. Only leguminous plants like peas, beans, and clover enter into an additional, mutually beneficial symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria. The alliance with so-called rhizobia enables them to supply themselves with the nitrogen they need for their growth from the air.
Researchers from Germany, Japan and India, led by scientists from DESY and the Universities of Kiel and Hamburg, have found a way to collectively make molecules on a flat surface rotate by exposing them to light using ultrafast light pulses from DESY's free-electron laser FLASH and a high-harmonic generation source. However, making those molecules dance is not the ultimate goal: this result could have an impact on next-generation quantum and energy materials for electronics, data storage and energy conversion.
