Untangling the quantum entanglement behind photosynthesis

From Physorg.com:

The future of clean green solar power may well hinge on scientists being able to unravel the mysteries of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy. To this end, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley have recorded the first observation and characterization of a critical physical phenomenon behind photosynthesis known as quantum entanglement.

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Scientists provide groundbreaking new understanding of stem cells

From PhysOrg.com:

Yanes shifted though the data on stem cells and identified an unexpected pattern: stem cell metabolites had highly unsaturated structures compared with mature cells, and levels of highly unsaturated molecules decreased as the stem cells matured. Highly unsaturated molecules, which contain little hydrogen, can easily react and change into many other different types of molecules.

"The study reveals an astounding cellular strategy," commented Yanes. "The capacity of embryonic stem cells to generate a whole spectrum of cell types characteristic of different tissues (a phenomenon referred to as plasticity) is mirrored at the metabolic level."

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Biology May Not Be so Complex Afterall

From PhysOrg.com:

Centuries ago, scientists began reducing the physics of the universe into a few, key laws described by a handful of parameters. Such simple descriptions have remained elusive for complex biological systems - until now.

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Scientists solve ageing puzzle

From PhysOrg.com:

Scientists from the University’s Institute for Ageing and Health have used state-of-the-art laboratory techniques and sophisticated mathematical modelling to help crack the problem of why cells age.

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Rules governing RNA's anatomy revealed

From PhysOrg.com:

"With these findings, it now should be possible to predict gross features of RNA 3-D shapes based only on their secondary structure, which is far easier to determine than is 3-D structure," Al-Hashimi said. "This will make it possible to gain insights into the 3-D shapes of RNA structures that are too large or complicated to be visualized by experimental techniques such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. The anatomical rules also provide a blueprint for rationally manipulating the structure and thus the activity of RNA, using small molecules in drug design efforts and also for engineering RNA sensors that change structure in user-prescribed ways."

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Researchers develop cheap, easy 'kitchen chemistry' to perform formerly complex synthesis

From PhysOrg.com:

A team at The Scripps Research Institute has made major strides in solving a problem that has been plaguing chemists for many years: how best to break carbon-hydrogen bonds and then to create new bonds to join molecules together. This problem is of great interest to the pharmaceutical industry, which currently relies on a method to accomplish this feat that is relatively inefficient and sometimes difficult to perform.

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Powerhouses in the cell dismantled

From PhysOrg.com:

Kris Gevaert from VIB/Ghent University (Belgium) and colleagues from the universities of Freiburg and Bochum have achieved a breakthrough in protein research. Using yeast, they have succeeded in making virtually the complete inventory of all the proteins in the mitochondria, the energy producers found in every cell. Their research findings are being published in Cell.

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New images capture cell's ribosomes at work, could aid in molecular war against disease

From PhysOrg.com:

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have for the first time captured elusive nanoscale movements of ribosomes at work, shedding light on how these cellular factories take in genetic instructions and amino acids to churn out proteins.

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Chemists make liquid protein

From PhysOrg.com:

The first known example of a liquid protein has been made by chemists at the University of Bristol opening up the possibility of a number of medical and industrial applications including high-potency pharmaceuticals and protein-based coolants and lubricants.

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Do 68 molecules hold the key to understanding disease?

Do 68 molecules hold the key to understanding disease? from PhysOrg.com

Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer.

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