News

Thanks to lucky snapshots taken by an amateur astronomer in Argentina, scientists have obtained their first view of the initial burst of light from the explosion of a massive star.

In a unique and potentially transformative drug delivery technique, PreveCeutical Medical is engineering the world's first nose-to-brain drug delivery platform.

Tandem mass spectrometry has revealed that Streptomyces chartreusis, an antibiotic-producing bacterium, releases more metabolites into the surrounding medium than scientists assumed based on the analysis of the genome. They might include molecules that are of interest as potential pharmaceutical agents.

The computer model integrates over 4,000 metabolites and 13,000 proteins.

Sepsis occurs when the body's response to the spread of bacteria or toxins to the bloodstream damages tissues and organs. The fight against sepsis could get a helping hand from a surprising source: gut bacteria. Researchers found that giving mice particular microbes increased blood levels of immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies, which protected against the kind of widespread bacterial invasion that leads to sepsis.

Research has shown that animals fed restricted-calorie diets are better able to regenerate numerous tissues after injury. Researchers have pinpointed the cell responsible for these improved regenerative abilities in the intestines.

'Origami' models of DNA nucleotides have been visualized in three dimensions, giving insight into how DNA is formed.

EPFL chemists have developed a new catalytic method for symmetry breaking. Published in Angewandte Chemie, the method can help synthesize important building blocks for bioactive compounds such as anticancer drugs.

Scientists have demonstrated that the new neurons produced in adults react preferentially to reward-related sensory stimuli and help speed up the association between sensory information and reward.

Mutations on a single gene, the huntingtin gene, are the cause of Huntington's disease. They lead to an incorrect form of the correspondent protein. With the help of cryo-electron microscopy, researchers have now decoded the three-dimensional, molecular structure of the healthy human huntingtin protein.