Lipid droplets play crucial roles beyond fat storage

Lipid droplets: they were long thought of merely as the formless blobs of fat out of which spare tires and muffin tops were made. But these days, they're "a really hot area of research," says Michael Welte, professor and ...

New insights into the fuctions of fat metabolism

What happens when the body's fat stores are activated? With the support of the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the biochemist Ruth Birner-Grünberger investigated the complex interaction of activation and regulation in fat breakdown, ...

Protein anchors help keep embryonic development 'just right'

The "Goldilocks effect" in fruit fly embryos may be more intricate than previously thought. It's been known that specific proteins, called histones, must exist within a certain range—if there are too few, a fruit fly's ...

Novel technique enables air-stable water droplet networks

(Phys.org) —A simple new technique to form interlocking beads of water in ambient conditions could prove valuable for applications in biological sensing, membrane research and harvesting water from fog.

Toxic substances in banana plants kill root pests

Bananas are a major food staple for about 400 million people in the tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, banana yields worldwide are severely threatened by pests.

Conversion from bad fat to good fat

Scientists from ETH Zurich in Switzerland have shown for the first time that brown and white fat cells in a living organism can be converted from one cell type to the other. Their work, using mice as a model organism, provides ...

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