Biotech

Imagine trying to design a key for a lock that is constantly changing its shape. That is the exact challenge we face in modern drug discovery when dealing with intrinsically disordered proteins.This article was originally […]

In 2013, farmers in the highlands of Ethiopia began to notice something unsettling: a familiar variety of wheat was failing in an unfamiliar way. Stems weakened, plants collapsed, and fields that had once held firm […]

Plants have an immune system, like people, and when it is triggered by threats like disease or pests, a plant’s defenses are activated. But there’s a downside to this protective mechanism: the plant’s growth is […]

Kombu (Saccharina japonica) is a brown seaweed extensively cultivated and consumed in Japan, Korea and China. Despite its nutritional value, its strong fishy and grassy odor can deter some consumers. Additionally, many of kombu’s nutrients […]

The Baltic Sea is one of the world’s most oxygen-depleted major bodies of water. The reason is excessive concentrations of phosphorus, an element essential for life—and an important ingredient in fertilizer. New research shows a […]

The laser you see in the photo above may one day enhance images taken by the most powerful microscopes in biology. This advancement, detailed in a paper published in eLife from scientists at Columbia’s Zuckerman […]

When you step outside on a winter morning or pop a mint into your mouth, a tiny molecular sensor in your body springs into action, alerting your brain to the sensation of cold. Scientists have […]

Inspired by the simple mechanism of a seesaw—when one side goes up, the other side goes down—researchers asked an intriguing question: Could a single molecule switch between two different roles like a seesaw? This idea […]

Ribonucleotide reductases (RNR) are indispensable enzymes that convert ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides (dNTPs), the precursors to make up DNA. Because DNA synthesis is fundamental to cell survival, RNR activity must be tightly controlled. In bacteria, this […]

The search space for protein engineering grows exponentially with complexity. A protein of just 100 amino acids has 20100 possible variants—more combinations than atoms in the observable universe. Traditional engineering methods might test hundreds of […]