Peroxisomes are cell organelles that carry out a number of functions, including the degradation of cytotoxins. For this purpose, they require enzymes that have to be transported into peroxisomes via complicated machinery. The team from the research group Biochemistry of Intracellular Transport Mechanisms at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) headed by Professor Harald Platta has detected an…
What changes in the brain are caused by Alzheimer’s disease? How do these changes differ from those observed in the normal ageing process? Researchers from the CNRS, the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE) and the University of Valencia (Spain) explored these questions by analysing over 4,000 MRI scans of healthy and diseased brains using…
Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have created a novel way to define individual protein associations in a quick, efficient, and informative way. These findings, published in the March 8, 2019, issue of Nature Communications, show how the topological scoring (TopS) algorithm, created by Stowers researchers, can — by combining data sets —…
“Microbial communities run the world,” says Jo Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “People always laugh when I say that,” she adds. “But it’s true.” Our rich new understanding of microbial communities and their influence on human health or crop productivity has led to the dream of changing…
Blue-blooded and armored with 10 spindly legs, horseshoe crabs have perhaps always seemed a bit out of place. First thought to be closely related to crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans, in 1881 evolutionary biologist E. Ray Lankester placed them solidly in a group more similar to spiders and scorpions. Horseshoe crabs have since been thought…
Precision cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors have a previously unknown ability to boost the immune system, and could help many more patients benefit from immunotherapy, a new study reveals. Scientists found that PARP inhibitors sparked a powerful immune response when used against cancer cells with weaknesses in repairing their DNA. The study changes our understanding…
For geoscientists, looking at how minerals react in different conditions can provide a great deal of information about the characteristics of the materials that make up our world. In some cases, merely exposing minerals to water-based environments can yield interesting properties and results. In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne…
A Cornell University team has found that the economic impact of the apple industry in New York State is 21 percent larger than traditional models suggest. Researchers used the apple industry as a case study to test a new — more precise — framework for economic impact analysis. Traditional economic impact analyses often rely on…
We can’t put the whole Milky Way on a scale, but astronomers have been able to come up with one of the most accurate measurements yet of our galaxy’s mass, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite. The Milky Way weighs in at about 1.5 trillion solar masses (one solar…
As long as democracy has existed, there have been democracy skeptics — from Plato warning of mass rule to contemporary critics claiming authoritarian regimes can fast-track economic programs. But a new study co-authored by an MIT economist shows that when it comes to growth, democracy significantly increases development. Indeed, countries switching to democratic rule experience…