Improving safety assessment of nanoparticles

How safe are the nanoparticles in transparent sunscreen, anti-odor socks and bacteria-resistant plasters? Although microbes are present on all organisms, the tools that estimate the safety of nanomaterials still hardly take ...

Researchers crack 30-year-old mystery of odor switching in worms

Soil-dwelling nematodes depend on their sophisticated sense of smell for survival, able to distinguish between more than a thousand different scents—but the molecular mechanism behind their olfaction has baffled scientists ...

Reverse optogenetic tool developed

A new optogenetic tool, a protein that can be controlled by light, has been characterized by researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB). They used an opsin—a protein that occurs in the brain and eyes—from zebrafish ...

Researchers light cells using nanosheets for cancer treatment

Scientists in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University are developing new ways to advance the field of regenerative medicine and cancer treatment. They are developing a 2-D nanosheet that is 1,000 ...

A light-activated remote control for cells

What if doctors had a remote control that they could use to steer a patient's own cells to a wound to speed up the healing process? Although such a device is still far from reality, researchers reporting in the ACS journal ...

Velcro for human cells

The ability of cells to adhere to each other and to their environment is the basis for multicellular life. Adhesion occurs via diverse receptors at the surface of cells that bind to specific ligands in their surroundings. ...

Intoxicatingly light-sensitive

ETH chemists have synthesised several variants of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. Its structure can be altered with light, and the researchers have used this to create a new tool that can be used to more effectively ...

page 1 from 3