Small peptides as potential antibiotics

Small peptides attack bacteria in many different ways and may well become a new generation of antibiotics. Biologists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have been researching how such peptides kill bacterial cells. "It ...

New cell component important to tea and wine-making

Scientists have discovered where plants build tannins, complex chemicals used by plants for defence and protection. The source is the tannosome, a newly discovered organelle that is found in most land plants.

DNA damage: The dark side of respiration

(Phys.org) —Adventitious changes in cellular DNA can endanger the whole organism, as they may lead to life-threatening illnesses like cancer. Researchers at LMU now report how byproducts of respiration cause mispairing ...

Unexpected allies help bacteria clean uranium from groundwater

(Phys.org) —Since 2009, SLAC scientist John Bargar has led a team using synchrotron-based X-ray techniques to study bacteria that help clean uranium from groundwater in a process called bioremediation. Their initial goal ...

'Super' enzyme protects against dangers of oxygen

(Phys.org)—Just like a comic book super hero, you could say that the enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD1) has a secret identity. Since its discovery in 1969, scientists believed SOD1's only role was to protect living cells ...

Cellular metabolism self-adapts to protect against free radicals

Oxygen-consuming organisms obtain energy through cellular respiration, which is the transformation of carbohydrates and oxygen into carbon dioxide and water. This process also produces toxic oxygen radicals which must be ...

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