Where did the first sugars come from?

Two prominent origin-of-life chemists have published a new hypothesis for how the first sugars—which were necessary for life to evolve—arose on the early Earth.

Research into a means of in-body transport for cancer medicines

In a study, Bayreuth junior professor Dr. Meike Leiske has demonstrated which properties polymers should have in order to reach only certain cells. In the future, this should enable active substances to reach cancer cells ...

Engineers introduce a new approach for recycling plastics

Each human being uses, on average, 30 kg of plastic per year. Given that global life expectancy currently stands at approximately 70 years, each person will discard some two metric tons of plastic in his or her lifetime. ...

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 ...

Listening in to how proteins talk and learning their language

Synthetic biologists have taken evolution of proteins into their own hands by changing some that occur in nature or even by synthesizing them from scratch. Such engineered proteins are used as highly efficacious drugs, components ...

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