The complex inner workings of cells, from their architecture to their signaling, underlie much of multicellular organic life. How are they built? How do their proteins interact? And most crucially, how can understanding these ...
Biochemistry
Apr 26, 2019
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7
Many viruses, including that perennial winter affliction, the influenza virus, are protected by a lipid membrane on loan from the host cell. The fusion proteins on the surface of the membrane are tasked with merging the lipid ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 5, 2019
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5
For the first time ever, scientists have imaged the process by which an individual immune system molecule is switched on in response to a signal from the environment, leading to the critical discovery that the activation ...
Biochemistry
Apr 1, 2019
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172
Every step you take, you're likely walking on a world of unseen and undescribed microbial diversity. And you don't need to head out into nature to find these usually unnoticed microscopic organisms.
Evolution
Mar 1, 2019
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3
The Argonaute (Ago) enzyme complex plays a critical role in DNA and RNA target cleavage for a process known as RNA silencing in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, making them a target for future gene-editing technology. The ...
Biotechnology
Feb 26, 2019
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7
To perform the task for which they have been synthesized, proteins must first assemble to form effective cellular "machines." But how do they recognize their partners at the right time? Researchers at the University of Geneva ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 28, 2019
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17
Forty-two years after Carl Woese defined archaea as the third domain of life, scientists at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are still learning about ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 24, 2019
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93
The recent discovery of a new lineage of microbes has overturned biologists' understanding of the evolution of complex life on Earth. Genomic studies of Asgard archaea revealed that they carry many genes previously thought ...
Evolution
Jan 15, 2019
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7
Why do distinct species have different proteins? Is there a key that allows eukaryotic cells to produce proteins involved in multicellularity that are mostly absent in prokaryotes? These are some of the questions addressed ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 14, 2019
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5
To trace which proteins are produced and when, researchers say, just follow the ribosome "footprints."
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 16, 2018
0
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