Researchers have discovered how the tongue detects high concentrations of salt, the first step in a salt-avoiding behavior common to most mammals. The findings could serve as a springboard for the development of taste modulators to help control the appetite for a high-salt diet and reduce the ill effects of too much sodium. The findings were published today online in Nature.
Many medically minded researchers are in hot pursuit of designs that will allow drug-carrying nanoparticles to navigate tissues and the interiors of cells, but University of Michigan engineers have discovered that these particles have another hurdle to overcome: escaping the bloodstream.
Researchers using a century-old technique have determined the precise configuration of substances from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor. That could lead to formulation of new pharmaceuticals to treat diabetes, some cancers and other ailments.
Scientists at ASU are celebrating their recent success on the path to understanding what makes the fiber that spiders spin – weight for weight – at least five times as strong as piano wire.
After years of experimentation, researchers at the University of Arkansas have solved a complex, decades-old problem in membrane biochemistry.
Scientists at SUNY-ESF are developing a way to disrupt the process by which bacteria become virulent. The work could have widespread implications for human health.
New research appearing online today in Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, shows that a handheld mobile device can check patients’ HIV status with just a finger prick, and synchronize the results in real time with electronic health records. This technology takes a step toward providing remote areas of the world with diagnostic services traditionally available only in centralized healthcare settings.
A nanoscale coating that's at least 95 percent air repels the broadest range of liquids of any material in its class, causing them to bounce off the treated surface, according to the University of Michigan engineering researchers who developed it.
A research team led by Arkady Mustaev, PhD, of the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School, has published a study posted online by the Journal of Biological Chemistry, that describes an effort by the investigators to understand the underlying mechanisms of high precision (fidelity) of RNA synthesis by RNA polymerase, the major enzyme that promotes the transcription process. They attempted to influence the role of active center tuning (ACT) –- a mechanism they first identified -- in the process of transcription fidelity, which is the accurate copying of genetic information.
The University of South Carolina's Chuanbing Tang is a research leader in the move to fabricate microelectronics with a "bottom-up" approach.
One enzyme, RagA, has been found to regulate the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway in cells according to glucose and amino acid availability. When this regulation breaks down in fasting newborn mice, the animals suffer a nutritional crisis and die.
With natural gas production rising, engineers and scientists are seeking ways to convert methane into useful chemicals. A Nature Chemistry study suggests a pathway.
Chemical engineer Gary Koenig is researching how to make better, cheaper and lighter batteries for the transportation sector.
One of the great mysteries of life is how it began. What physical process transformed a nonliving mix of chemicals into something as complex as a living cell? An article by ASU researchers Paul Davies and Sara Walker proposes a re-shaping of the conceptual landscape to examine "software" and rather han "hardware" to explain life's origins, and perhaps, even the leap from single cells to multi-cellularity.
Two Santa Fe Institute researchers offer a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, arose. Their paper offers new insights into the likelihood of life emerging and evolving as it did on Earth, and the chances of it arising elsewhere in the universe.
An international team of scientists, using the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, has revealed the three dimensional structure of a key enzyme that enables the single-celled parasite that causes African trypanosomiasis (or sleeping sickness) in humans.
Buildings and statues constructed of limestone can be protected from pollution by applying a thin, single layer of a water-resistant coating, according to a University of Iowa researcher and her colleagues from Cardiff University, U.K.
Turning lignin, a plant’s structural “glue” and a byproduct of the paper and pulp industry, into something considerably more valuable is driving a research effort headed by Amit Naskar of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Chromatin remodeling—the packaging and unpackaging of genomic DNA and its associated proteins—regulates a host of fundamental cellular processes including gene transcription, DNA repair, programmed cell death as well as cell fate. In their latest study, scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research are continuing to unravel the finicky details of how these architectural alterations are controlled.
Chemists at New York University have discovered a family of anti-freeze molecules that prevent ice formation when water temperatures drop below 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Their findings, which are reported in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may lead to new methods for improving food storage and industrial products.
Research at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences will be featured as a top paper in next week’s issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry for its groundbreaking discovery of a new regulator of the blood coagulation cascade.
People with diabetes often develop clogged arteries that cause heart disease. New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that when vitamin D levels are adequate in people with diabetes, blood vessels are less likely to clog. But in patients with insufficient vitamin D, immune cells bind to blood vessels near the heart, then trap cholesterol to block those blood vessels.
Artem R. Oganov, PhD, finds novel compounds in search for the keys to the paradox of missing xenon in Earth’s atmosphere; findings may pave the way for new advances in the theory of chemical bonding.
Based on a new discovery, the world’s multi-billion dollar foundry industry may soon develop a sweet tooth. Scientists have identified a compound that can replace some of the toxic chemicals now used to produce the molds this industry depends upon. The compound is called sugar.
Corals under attack by toxic seaweed do what anyone might do when threatened – they call for help. A study reported this week in the journal Science shows that threatened corals send signals to fish “bodyguards” that quickly respond to trim back the harmful seaweed.
Rensselaer researchers develop tool to detect low levels of sugars produced by living organisms.
Tennessee Tech students are testing a series of chemical compounds that show promise of stopping cancer in its tracks. TTU is collaborating with cancer centers, including the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, for further studies and possible testing on patients, especially women with breast cancer. Breast cancer cells over-express a certain enzyme called Topoisomerase II for DNA replication, which is specifically targeted by these new agents.
Scientists have succeeded in creating near-atomically flat silicon, of the orientation used by the electronics industry, in a room temperature reaction. The flat silicon might one day serve as the base for new biological and chemical sensors.
The flame-retardant mixture known as “Firemaster 550” is an endocrine disruptor that causes extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects in lab animals, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University.
On October 23 at 1pm, top USDA and academic researchers will address agriculture and climate in a special session of the Soil Science Society of America’s annual meeting. And they’ll take on a third, largely new aspect of climate change and agriculture: how nitrogen pollution compounds climate change, and vice versa. The work draws from a new special report to the United States’ National Climate Assessment published in the journal Biogeochemistry.
A research team led by Iowa State University's Laura Jarboe is working to develop hungry, robust microbes that can ferment biofuels from the bio-oil produced by rapidly heating biomass such as corn stalks and sawdust.
A team of Weizmann Institute researchers combined two low-temperature supersonic beams to produce chemical reactions in quantum conditions, near absolute zero. The method, a first, confirms longstanding theories.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have determined how the hormone leptin, an important regulator of metabolism and body weight, interacts with a key receptor in the brain.
An international team of scientists led by Indiana University chemist Michael S. VanNieuwenhze and biologist Yves Brun has discovered a revolutionary new method for coloring the cell wall of bacterial cells to determine how they grow, in turn providing a new, much-needed tool for the development of new antibiotics.
Until recently, medical researchers had little hope of manipulating naïve T cells to study their crucial roles in immune function because they were largely impenetrable. Now, researchers have made a master key, able to get into naïve T cells to deliver bio-active cargo such as synthetic molecules.
A University of Michigan biophysical chemist and his colleagues have discovered the smallest and fastest-known molecular switches made of RNA, the chemical cousin of DNA. The researchers say these rare, fleeting structures are prime targets for the development of new antiviral and antibiotic drugs.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic chemical widely used in the making of plastic products ranging from bottles and food can linings to toys and water supply lines. When these plastics degrade, BPA is released into the environment and routinely ingested. New research from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests it’s the metabolic changes that take place once BPA is broken down inside the body that pose the greater health threat.
Global health researchers are working on cheap systems like a home-based pregnancy test that might work for malaria, diabetes or other diseases. A new chemical technique makes medically interesting molecules stick to regular paper -- a possible route to building such paper-based diagnostics from paper you could buy at an office-supply store.
Adah Almutairi, PhD, associate professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Department of NanoEngineering, and the Materials Science and Engineering Program at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues have developed the first degradable polymer that is extremely sensitive to low but biologically relevant concentrations of hydrogen peroxide.
Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have revealed a significant association between obesity and children and adolescents with higher concentrations of urinary bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical recently banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from sippy cups and baby bottles. Still, the chemical continues to be used in aluminum cans, such as those containing soda.
In the fight against cancer, knowing the enemy’s identity is crucial for diagnosis and treatment, especially in metastatic cancers that spread between organs and tissues. Now chemists have developed a rapid, sensitive way to detect microscopic levels of many metastatic cell types in living tissue.
In 2010 malaria caused an estimated 665,000 deaths, mostly among African children. Now, chemists at Indiana University have developed a new synthesis for the world's most useful antimalarial drug, artemisinin, giving hope that fully synthetic artemisinin might help reduce the cost of the live-saving drug in the future.
Art and science come together in a student photography exhibit at Keuka College.
University of Utah engineers mapped white blood cells called eonsinophils and showed an existing diagnostic method may overlook an elusive digestive disorder that causes swelling in the esophagus and painful swallowing.
Chemical residues in prehistoric Native American ceramic vessels are believed to offer the earliest known evidence for black drink consumption. Undergraduate students worked with chemists at Millsaps College's Keck Center, the only archaeometric laboratory in the United States devoted exclusively to undergraduate research and study, to conduct the chemical analysis for the study.
Scientists have restored the sense of smell in mice through gene therapy for the first time -- a hopeful sign for people who can’t smell anything from birth or lose it due to disease. The achievement in curing congenital anosmia may also aid research on other conditions that also stem from problems with the cilia.
Open an undergraduate biochemistry textbook and you will learn that enzymes are highly efficient and specific in catalyzing chemical reactions in living organisms, and that they evolved to this state from their “sloppy” and “promiscuous” ancestors to allow cells to grow more efficiently. This fundamental paradigm is being challenged in a new study by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego, who reported in the journal Science what a few enzymologists have suspected for years: many enzymes are still pretty sloppy and promiscuous, catalyzing multiple chemical reactions in living cells, for reasons that were previously not well understood.
A new “smart catheter” that senses the start of an infection, and automatically releases an anti-bacterial substance, is being developed to combat the problem of catheter-related blood and urinary tract infections, scientists reported here today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Rather than trying to kill bacteria outright with drugs, Université de Montréal researchers have discovered a way to disarm bacteria that may allow the body's own defense mechanisms to destroy them.
Like recruiters pitching military service to a throng of people, scientists are developing drugs to recruit disease-fighting proteins present naturally in everyone’s blood in medicine’s war on infections, cancer and a range of other diseases. They reported on the latest advances in this new approach here today at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.
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