https://phys.org/biology-news/molecular-computational/ en-us Medical Xpress provides the latest news on molecular and Computational biology South Africa's malaria elimination teams could soon have backup from millions of decoy mosquitoes specially bred at Africa's first mosquito factory. These insects are part of South Africa's pioneering Sterile Insect Technique (SIT), developed through a joint partnership between the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) and Wits University. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-future-malaria-mosquitoes.html Ecology Tue, 08 Sep 2026 15:20:05 EDT news708088364 Bacteria can survive antibiotics in several ways, including by pumping the drugs out of their cells before they can take effect. Researchers at the University of Osaka have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that allows the bacterium responsible for many cases of pneumonia and meningitis to export the antibiotic fosfomycin. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-antibiotics-route-bacterial-drug-resistance.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 08 Sep 2026 11:40:04 EDT news708080161 The human genome is about two meters (6.6 feet) long, yet it is folded inside a cell nucleus only about 10 micrometers in diameter. To fit into this tiny space, DNA is wrapped around histone proteins to form nucleosomes, which are further organized into chromatin. For decades, chromatin has often been described in two simple forms: euchromatin, which is active, open and accessible, and heterochromatin, which is more compact and repressed. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-super-resolution-imaging-reveals-cohesin.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 08 Sep 2026 05:00:09 EDT news708012662 As an embryo develops from a small cluster of stem cells, those once "blank slate" cells begin to take on more specialized roles like brain, liver or muscle cells and organize themselves into three-dimensional structures such as tissues and organs. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ai-decodes-cell-fingerprints-diverse.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 08 Sep 2026 05:00:03 EDT news707993406 Nearly a century ago, a single colony of Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) helped launch the antibiotic age. In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned to his London lab to find that a stray mold had wiped out the Staphylococcus growing on one of his plates. The accident gave the world penicillin, ushering in the age of biomedicine and ensuring that an infected cut or scrape would not be fatal. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-antibiotic-playbook-eskape-artist.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 21:40:01 EDT news707988868 The findings of a new study led by the Leibniz-IZW on Namibian free-ranging cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus jubatus) demonstrate that epigenetic mechanisms might play an important role in how animals develop different phenotypes despite their low genetic diversity. The work is published in the journal Molecular Ecology. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-strays-territory-bosses-epigenetics-cheetahs.html Ecology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 16:40:05 EDT news708009301 The immune system is a highly sophisticated defense network designed to protect against pathogens. A research team from the Universities of Würzburg and Jena and the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) has shown that certain components of the immune system can actually help the yeast Candida albicans evade immune attack. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-neutrophil-vesicles-candida-albicans-evade.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:20:08 EDT news707998895 New in JNeurosci, Ning Liu, from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, explored whether brain structures for self-processing are conserved across primates, including humans, chimpanzees and macaques. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-brain-primates.html Evolution Mon, 07 Sep 2026 13:00:07 EDT news707742061 How do related proteins develop different functions? This is the question investigated by a research team involving Kiel University, DESY and the Center for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB). Led by Holger Sondermann, professor at Kiel University and head of the Structural Microbiology group at DESY, the researchers reconstructed the common ancestor of two bacterial enzymes and produced the long-extinct protein in the laboratory. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-reconstructed-ancient-protein-bacterial-enzymes.html Evolution Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:40:04 EDT news707992561 Conformational changes in proteins are vital to their function yet remain challenging for state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, such as AlphaFold3, to predict. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI introduced a repulsive force between predicted structures, allowing AlphaFold3 to sample the multiple conformational states that its default settings rarely capture. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-alphafold-limits-proteins.html Biotechnology Sat, 05 Sep 2026 17:00:05 EDT news707472556 Here's a novel idea for countering the painful side effects of chemotherapy: Beforehand, take the hallucinogenic drug found in magic mushrooms. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-psilocybin-cancer-side-effects.html Molecular & Computational biology Sat, 05 Sep 2026 13:30:01 EDT news707716019 Autophagy is an intracellular degradation mechanism in eukaryotes. The autophagosome, which encloses damaged or excess cellular material for degradation, is constructed from lipids supplied by the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) via the lipid transfer protein Atg2. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-underlying-mechanism-atg2-lipid-autophagy.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:40:01 EDT news707745962 Revealing how proteins and end products of biological activity (metabolites) change within specific tissue functional units during development or in response to environmental factors is beneficial for understanding localized biological processes and the biological roles of molecules. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-capturing-localized-protein-metabolic-tissue.html Biotechnology Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:40:01 EDT news707728981 Proteins are vital to living systems. They build and repair tissues, act as enzymes to speed chemical reactions, regulate hormones and transport nutrients—all of which are important for developing next-generation bioproducts and advancing bioengineering and biotechnology. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-based-probe-library-protein-function.html Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:20:03 EDT news707723882 Gram-negative bacteria are responsible for several infections that are hard to treat because of their high resistance to antibiotics. These bacteria possess an outermost layer called the outer membrane that acts as a protective barrier. Serving as the cell's interface with the outside world, the outer membrane contains specialized proteins that perform multiple functions, such as nutrient transport and environmental sensing. The localization of these outer membrane proteins is achieved through the combined action of several key players, including the SurA chaperone and the β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM) complex. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-molecular-snapshots-reveal-bacteria-outer.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 04 Sep 2026 05:00:03 EDT news707653216 When a patient's DNA is read, it is compared with a reference version of the human genome. This allows geneticists and rare disease experts to look at a list of places where the patient's DNA differs. Most variations will be harmless and shared with millions of other people, but some can cause illness. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tools-rare-mutations-dangerous.html Biotechnology Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:20:07 EDT news707660881 Potassium (K) is one of the three essential nutrients for plants. It plays a critical role in a wide range of processes, including cell growth, photosynthesis and regulation of water balance. Plants take up K from the soil and circulate it throughout their bodies via molecules called K+ channels. The function of one such K+ channel (called AKT5) in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana has remained a mystery, despite more than 30 years of study. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-green-thumb-molecule-leaf-stalks.html Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:00:06 EDT news707660821 Every movement we make, from blinking to sprinting, depends on the ability of muscle fibers to contract in a rapid and coordinated way. Achieving this precision requires an intricate internal membrane network known as the transverse tubule, or T-tubule, system. These narrow membrane invaginations carry electrical signals from the cell surface deep into the muscle fiber, where they trigger the release of calcium needed for contraction. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-molecular-muscle-architecture.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news707665993 The enzymes found in modern organisms are complex proteins, often with multiple folded substructures and specialized catalytic sites. Proteins are encoded by genes. Tracing the history of enzymes across all living organisms through gene comparisons leads to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), a hypothetical organism that existed around 4 billion years ago and is believed to be the ancestor of life forms on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-metabolic-networks-clues-earliest-stages.html Evolution Thu, 03 Sep 2026 13:40:03 EDT news707652681 Cells synthesize proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and these proteins are transported to the Golgi apparatus for distribution to their ultimate destinations inside and outside the cell. The structures that transport proteins from the ER to the Golgi apparatus are called COPII vesicles; the processes that regulate the formation of COPII vesicles are only partially understood. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-stressed-cells-protein-shipping.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:07:27 EDT news707656021 When researchers at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus set out to create a map of all the neurons in the fruit fly brain in 2008, many in the scientific community thought they were out of their minds. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-connectome-pursuing-fly-brain-rewired.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:00:01 EDT news707563056 Scientists at UMass Chan Medical School and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole have shown that the four core clock genes responsible for maintaining circadian rhythms in animals—Per, Cry2, Bmal1 and Clk—also regulate circatidal behavior in the crustacean P. hawaiensis. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-crustacean-scientists-genes-circatidal.html Plants & Animals Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:40:01 EDT news707646781 As proteins are made in a cell, they are folded into the 3D structure that allows them to work, but sometimes this process can go wrong. When it does, the misfolded proteins lose some or all of their function and usually get tagged by the cell's quality assurance and maintenance crews, which try to repair the proteins or, if they can't, strip them to recycle their parts. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-cellular-maintenance-crew-misfolded-proteins.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 19:20:03 EDT news707583482 Bacterial promoters are DNA sequences that recruit RNA polymerase to initiate transcription, primarily through two elements called −10 and −35. However, the contributions of these elements to promoter evolution and regulation have remained unclear. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-bacterial-elements-gene.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:20:06 EDT news707581201 Researchers at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures have, for the first time, identified a model cell line for a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). "The KOPM-88 cell line is, to date, the first and only known cell line worldwide to carry the KMT2A::SEPTIN6 fusion gene," explains Dr. Stefan Nagel, head of the Molecular Genetics research group in the Department of Human and Animal Cell Cultures at the DSMZ. "Thus, cancer research now has an urgently needed model system to specifically investigate this aggressive subtype of leukemia and develop novel therapeutic approaches." The work is published in the journal Cells. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-world-cell-line-kmt2aseptin6-fusion.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:20:07 EDT news707573654 A new study led by Francesca Storici, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and faculty member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, has uncovered an unexpected feature of human DNA linked to gene activity and the physical organization of DNA. The findings, published in Cell, could change how scientists think about DNA organization, transcription and genome function. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-layer-human-genome-embedded-rna.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 14:20:02 EDT news707571601 Why do some groups of organisms contain thousands of species while others have only a handful? Evolutionary biologists have spent decades trying to answer this question using mathematical models that estimate how biological traits and environmental factors influence the formation and extinction of species. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-biology-mathematics-hidden-symmetries-widely.html Evolution Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:00:05 EDT news707565841 Scientists have long wondered how cells organized into sheets begin to move together to form organs, especially when the sheets form closed, sphere-like surfaces and tissues with no edges to direct motion. Researchers at the University of Chicago and UC San Diego used a combination of live imaging, genetic experiments and mathematical modeling to understand how cells in the fruit fly egg chamber synchronize their movement. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-cells.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:01 EDT news707561930 For decades, scientists have understood that each of the roughly 20,000 genes in the human body carries instructions for a single kind of protein. Now, researchers at Harvard Medical School have discovered that instructions from different genes—even those on different chromosomes—can combine to create chimeric mRNAs that produce previously unknown, functional proteins. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-mammalian-genes-combine-previously-unknown.html Biotechnology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:00:04 EDT news707559061 All known life on Earth uses the same genetic alphabet, consisting of four letters. Now, researchers at the University of California San Diego have demonstrated that one of biology's most essential enzymes can accurately read and transcribe an expanded, eight-letter genetic alphabet. The findings provide important evidence that cells can process synthetic genetic information using their natural molecular machinery, advancing a long-standing goal in synthetic biology to expand the language of DNA. It could also allow scientists to custom-engineer biological systems that perform functions or produce compounds not found in nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-letter-dna-alphabet-accurately-natural.html Biotechnology Wed, 02 Sep 2026 05:00:04 EDT news707401165