Caterpillar venom study reveals toxins borrowed from bacteria
Researchers at The University of Queensland have discovered the venom of a notorious caterpillar has a surprising ancestry and could be key to the delivery of lifesaving drugs.
Researchers at The University of Queensland have discovered the venom of a notorious caterpillar has a surprising ancestry and could be key to the delivery of lifesaving drugs.
Plants & Animals
Jul 10, 2023
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342
An expedition into the jungle of New Guinea has resulted in the discovery of two new species of poisonous birds by researchers from the University of Copenhagen. Genetic changes in these bird species have allowed them to ...
Ecology
Mar 31, 2023
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788
Antimicrobial resistance represents one of the top 10 global public health threats according to the World Health Organization, and scientists have been scrambling to find new tools to cure the most deadly drug-resistant infections.
Cell & Microbiology
Feb 13, 2023
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101
Venomous snakes cause an estimated 120,000 deaths and 400,000 disabling injuries worldwide each year, with approximately 8,000 snake bite cases in the United States alone.
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 13, 2023
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157
Since they were first discovered in the 1980s, retrons have puzzled researchers who simply wanted to know what these bacterial DNA sequences actually did. Now, EMBL scientists have identified that some retrons encode toxin ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 18, 2022
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151
The painful toxins wielded by a giant Australian stinging tree are surprisingly similar to the venom found in spiders and cone snails, University of Queensland researchers have found.
Plants & Animals
Sep 16, 2020
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578
Scientists can now precisely edit the genes inside mitochondria, the tiny energy factories inside of cells.
Biotechnology
Jul 8, 2020
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294
In the animal kingdom, survival essentially boils down to eat or be eaten. How organisms accomplish the former and avoid the latter reveals a clever array of defense mechanisms. Maybe you can outrun your prey. Perhaps you ...
Evolution
Feb 24, 2020
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981
An international research collaboration has discovered a new bacteria-killing toxin that shows promise of impacting superbug infectious diseases.
Cell & Microbiology
Nov 6, 2019
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275
Humans' guts are a dangerous place.
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 30, 2019
0
785
A toxin (Greek: τοξικόν, toxikon) is a poisonous substance produced by living cells or organisms. (Although technically man is a living organism, man-made substances created by artificial processes usually aren't considered toxins by this definition.)
For a toxic substance not produced by living organisms, "toxicant" is the more appropriate term, and "toxics" is an acceptable plural.
Toxins can be small molecules, peptides, or proteins that are capable of causing disease on contact with or absorption by body tissues interacting with biological macromolecules such as enzymes or cellular receptors. Toxins vary greatly in their severity, ranging from usually minor and acute (as in a bee sting) to almost immediately deadly (as in botulinum toxin).
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