Scientists in China have synthesized spider silk from genetically modified silkworms, producing fibers six times tougher than the Kevlar used in bulletproof vests. The study, published September 20 in the journal Matter, is the first to successfully produce full-length spider silk proteins using silkworms. The findings demonstrate a technique that could be used to manufacture …
Credit: CSIRO Jumping spiders (Salticidae) are a recently evolved family of spiders. They are known for their distinctive large eyes and ability to jump long distances relative to their small size. Australia has about 1,200 to 1,500 species of this spider family. Only 500 have scientific names. Fossil jumping spiders are rare. The majority that …
A research team at the University of Basel and the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics uncovered a treasure trove of uncharacterised proteins. Embracing the recent deep learning revolution, they discovered hundreds of new protein families and even a novel predicted protein fold. The study has now been published in Nature. In the past years, AlphaFold …
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Why can’t we stop anthropomorphizing our animal friends and foes? Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz / Orca image from Christopher Michel via Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY 2.0 / Bird and dolphin via Pixabay It’s not the most urgent news story that’s gripped the world since 2020, but it might be the weirdest: The last three years …
Nano-sized bubbles allow macrophages to stand out from their fellow cells in ultrasound imagery. Credit: Jennifer M. McCann/Materials Research Institute Macrophages are cells vital to the immune system and could possibly inform cell-based therapies for a variety of medical conditions. However, realizing the full potential of macrophage therapies relies on being able to see what …
Today’s crocodilians (including crocodiles and alligators) all grow slowly, taking years to reach maximum size. In contrast, birds are crocodilian’s closest living relatives, and they can reach adult size in less than a year (~150 days for a chicken!). When, how, and why crocodilians evolved to grow so slowly has eluded researchers for years. A …
Valuable chemicals are selectively produced from mixed plastic waste by an ORNL-developed plastic deconstruction process. Credit: Tomonori Saito, Md Arifuzzaman and Adam Malin, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy Valuable chemicals are selectively produced from mixed plastic waste by an ORNL-developed plastic deconstruction process. Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or …
An international research team led by Assistant Professor Takuya Hashimoto (University of Tsukuba, Japan) and Researcher Javier Álvarez-Márquez (El Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, CSIC-INTA), Spain) has used the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array to observe the most distant galaxy protocluster to date, 13.14 billion light-years away. The team has successfully …
Sewage fungus on a wood stick collected in the downstream area of a river characterized by the presence of sewage discharge. Image credit: Dania Albini. Credit: Dania Albini. Ahead of World Rivers Day (24 September), new research by the University of Oxford reveals that sewage discharge into rivers has a greater impact on water quality, …
Among available immunotherapies, the use of “CAR-T” cells is proving extremely effective against certain blood cancers, but only in half of patients. A main reason for this is the premature dysfunction of these immune cells, which have been artificially modified in vitro. A team from the Universities of Geneva (UNIGE), Lausanne (UNIL), the Geneva University …