New technology enables fast protein synthesis

Many proteins are useful as drugs for disorders such as diabetes, cancer, and arthritis. Synthesizing artificial versions of these proteins is a time-consuming process that requires genetically engineering microbes or other ...

Untangling a key step in photosynthetic oxygen production

Photosystem II is a protein complex in plants, algae and cyanobacteria that is responsible for splitting water and producing the oxygen we breathe. Over the past few years, an international collaboration between scientists ...

Technique could enable cheaper fertilizer production

Most of the world's fertilizer is produced in large manufacturing plants, which require huge amounts of energy to generate the high temperatures and pressures needed to combine nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia.

Biochemists trap and visualize an enzyme as it becomes active

How do you capture a cellular process that transpires in the blink of an eye? Biochemists at MIT have devised a way to trap and visualize a vital enzyme at the moment it becomes active—informing drug development and revealing ...

Strong signals show how proteins come and go

A novel system to amplify gene expression signals could be a game-changer for scientists who study the regulatory processes in cells that are central to all life.

New cages to trap molecules push boundaries of protein design

Protein design is a popular and rapidly growing field, with scientists engineering novel protein cages—capsule-like nanostructures for purposes such as gene therapy and targeted drug delivery. Many of these structures fashioned ...

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