Watching Molecular Machines at Work

15-Aug-2016 - An international team of scientists from Austria, Germany and the US has combined newly developed techniques in electron microscopy and protein assembly to elucidate how cells regulate one of the most important steps in cell division. When one cell divides into two - that is how all forms of life ...

Artificial skin tests for stopping sun damage

12-Aug-2016 - Sun rays damage unprotected skin. Substances in medications or lotions applied to the skin can be chemically modified by sun rays to have a toxic effect on the body. An accredited in-vitro test method at Fraunhofer IGB in Stuttgart measures the phototoxic potential of substances or cosmetics. The ...

DNA dominos on a chip

Carriers of genetic information packed together on a biochip like in nature

11-Aug-2016 - Normally, individual molecules of genetic material repel each other. However, when space is limited DNA molecules must be packed together more tightly. This case arises in sperm, cell nuclei and the protein shells of viruses. An international team of physicists has now succeeded in artificially ...

Scientists count microscopic particles without microscope

11-Aug-2016 - Scientists from Russia and Australia have put forward a simple new way of counting microscopic particles in optical materials by means of a laser. A light beam passing through such a material splits and forms a characteristic pattern consisting of numerous bright spots on a projection screen. The ...

New X-Ray microscopy technique images nanoscale workings of rechargeable batteries

Method developed at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source could help researchers improve battery performance

09-Aug-2016 - There's a new tool in the push to engineer rechargeable batteries that last longer and charge more quickly. An X-ray microscopy technique recently developed at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has given scientists the ability to image nanoscale ...

Detailed structure of cell’s garbage disposal unit reveals surprise in how it is targeted by cancer drugs

Every atom counts

08-Aug-2016 - Malignant cancer cells not only proliferate faster than most healthy cells in our bodies. They also generate more “junk”, such as faulty and damaged proteins. This makes cancer cells inherently more dependent on the most important cellular garbage disposal unit, the proteasome, which degrades ...

Anthrax, rabbit fever and brucellosis

How can the population be better protected from highly pathogenic bacteria in food?

08-Aug-2016 - Infectious diseases such as anthrax, tularaemia (rabbit fever) and brucellosis only occur rarely in Germany. However, these pathogens can do great harm if they are allowed, deliberately or by mistake, to enter the food chain. The reasons for such dissemination can be natural catastrophes such as ...

Better Contrast Agents Based on Nanoparticles

05-Aug-2016 - Scientists at the University of Basel have developed nanoparticles which can serve as efficient contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging. This new type of nanoparticles produce around ten times more contrast than the actual contrast agents and are responsive to specific environments. ...

Beating the heat a challenge at the nanoscale

03-Aug-2016 - Rice University scientists who analyze the properties of materials as small as a single molecule have encountered a challenge that appears at very low temperatures. In trying to measure the plasmonic properties of gold nanowires, the Rice lab of condensed matter physicist Douglas Natelson ...

Novel 'repair system' discovered in algae may yield new tools for biotechnology

02-Aug-2016 - A new way of fixing inactive proteins has been discovered in an algae, which uses chloroplast extracts and light to release an interrupting sequence from a protein. Research specialist Stephen Campbell and Professor David Stern at the Boyce Thompson Institute report the discovery. This repair ...