Designing new drugs based on the body's own molecules will be the focus of a new Center for Biopharmaceuticals that was launched at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences on 1 November. The Center will help solve the pharmaceutical challenges of the future in the field of biological drugs.
Entrepreneurial scientists in the synthetic biology space can benefit from a new GBP 10M investment fund that opens for business today. The new fund will help companies in the early stages of their journey towards sustainability, through investment, strategic support and leveraging private capital.
Riboswitches are RNA segments that switch genes on and off, either during DNA transcription or during protein translation, but little is known about the precise workings of this process. A study at SISSA uncovers some of the basic steps in this complex mechanism and paves the way for future research.
Scientists looking to create a potent blend of enzymes to transform materials like corn stalks and wood chips into fuels have developed a test that should turbocharge their efforts. The work revolves around the fungus Trichoderma reesei, which introduced itself to US troops during World War II by chewing through their tents in the Pacific theater. Now the fungus is a star in the world of biofuels.
For 10 years, Patrick Cramer and his colleagues at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have probed the structure of RNA polymerase I, a crucial cog in the machinery of all cells. Now they unveil the full three-dimensional conformation of the enzyme - at atomic resolution.
The molecular machine that makes essential components of ribosomes - the cell's protein factories - is like a Swiss-army knife, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Centro de Investigaciones Biolˇgicas in Madrid, Spain, have found.
Researchers from Rice University's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics have deciphered the operating principles of a genetic circuit that allows cancer to metastasize. The study revealed that the decision circuit has three settings, an oddity that could open the door to cancer treatments that disrupt the circuit.