How a declining environment affects populations

Stable ecosystems occasionally experience events that cause widespread death—for example, bacteria in the human gut may be wiped out by antibiotics, or ocean life may be depleted by overfishing. A new study from MIT physicists ...

Biosynthesis of widespread pigments from bacteria revealed

Bacteria can protect themselves from the attack of free radicals using specific natural products in their membranes. The biosynthesis of one of the most common protective pigments that could also be of interest for the medical ...

How do protein tangles get so long in Alzheimer's?

Early in the course of Alzheimer's disease—long before future patients begin to notice symptoms—neurofibrillary tangles composed of tau protein aggregates begin to form in their brain cells. How toxic these aggregates ...

Petry finds missing ingredient to spark the fireworks of life

Most people can name at least a few bones of the human body, but not many know about the cytoskeleton within our cells, let alone the "microtubules" that give it its shape. Now, a group of Princeton researchers has resolved ...

Transforming fibrils into crystals

An international team of researchers have discovered a new type of transition in protein folding: amyloid crystals formed from amyloid fibrils by a decrease in energy. The crystals are even more stable than the fibrils, which ...

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