Molecular Awards

  Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Delft University of Technology and the IMP Vienna Biocenter discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes . While six years ago they found that these so-called SMC motor proteins make long loops in our DNA, they now discovered that these motors also put significant twists into the loops that they form. These findings help us better understand the structure and function of our chromosomes . They also provide insight into how disruption of twisted DNA looping can affect health-;for instance, in developmental diseases like 'cohesinopathies'. The scientists published their findings in   Science Advances . The struggle of our cells Imagine trying to fit two meters of rope into a space much smaller than the tip of a needle-;that's the challenge every cell in your body faces when packing its DNA into its tiny nucleus . To achieve this, nature employs ingenious strategies, like twisting the DNA into coils ...

An international research collaboration has shed new light on the molecular basis of gene expression, the fundamental biological process that underpins how all organisms use their genetic information.  The team used an advanced microscopy technique to capture in unprecedented detail a critical moment as genetic information is translated into the proteins that form nature's structures and biochemical processes.  "Our research reveals how these molecules work like intricate machines. I am always amazed that it is possible to reconstitute such an intricate and biologically fundamental process in a tube in the laboratory," said Dr. Michael Webster, a group leader at the John Innes Centre and one of the authors of the study which appears in Science.  It is particularly exciting to have the opportunity to use powerful imaging techniques to answer questions that researchers have been interested in for a long time," he added.  The findings present opportunities for the...

  As electronic devices continue to get smaller and smaller, physical size limitations are beginning to disrupt the trend of doubling transistor density on silicon-based microchips approximately every two years, according to Moore's law. Molecular electronics—the use of single molecules as the building blocks for electronic components—offers a potential pathway for the continued miniaturization of small-scale electronic devices. Devices that utilize molecular electronics require precise control over the flow of electrical current. However, the dynamic nature of these single molecule components affects device performance and impacts reproducibility. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report a unique strategy for controlling molecular conductance by using molecules with rigid backbones—such as ladder-type molecules , known as being shape-persistent. Further, they have demonstrated a straightforward "one-pot" method for synthesizing such molecules. Th...

  The body can naturally produce vitamin D when skin is exposed to sunlight, but this process declines significantly in winter. There also aren't many food sources of vitamin D. But vitamin D is very important to the body. The  vitamin D receptor  can be found in many different tissues, and while the vitamin's roles in bone health and calcium level maintenance are  well known , less is understood about its other functions, such as how it relates to immunity. Several immune cells have vitamin D receptors and gene activity in those cells can be affected by the vitamin. Low levels of vitamin D have also been associated with a variety of autoimmune disorders including inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis vulgaris, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes. Studies  have also shown  that vitamin D supplements can help lower the risk of autoimmune disease. A new study  reported in  Science Advances  has provided new insights in...

  As a structural biologist , he is studying this process on the smallest scale: the trillions of atoms that must synchronize their work to make it happen. “I don’t see a big difference between solving a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle and the research we are doing in my lab,” says Farming, an assistant professor of cell biology in the Blavat Nik Institute at Harvard Medical School. “We are trying to figure out what this process looks like visually, and from there we can form ideas about how it works.” Get more HMS news here Nearly all cells in the human body contain the same genetic material , but what tissue types those cells become during development — whether they become liver or skin, for example — is largely driven by gene expression, which dictates which genes are turned on and off. Gene expression is regulated by a process called transcription — the focus of Farming's work. During transcription, molecular machines read instructions contained in the genetic blueprint stored insid...

The Stach Group in Penn Engineering has led a collaborative team identifying how chemical catalysts drive the creation of liquid fuels from sunlight, paving the way for more efficient removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Imagine standing in a desert under a clear, starlit sky," says Eric Stach, Robert D. Bent Professor of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. "With just your naked eye, you might spot the shimmering band of the Milky Way or the fuzzy glow of Andromeda. But without a telescope and other sophisticated tools, it's nearly impossible to distinguish individual stars or truly understand their arrangement in the cosmos. Stach likens this experience to the challenge the team faced in trying to visualize molecular catalysts , the microscopic structures key to chemical reactions like converting carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into usable fuels, on surfaces of semiconductor materials. These catalysts, which contain heavy metal atoms, are scattered across s...

  In their natural environment, molecules behave like the balls in a lottery machine. They spin, tumble and crash into each other many millions of times per second. Just like an airstream agitates the balls in a lottery machine, ubiquitous thermal radiatio also gives molecules energy that keeps them bouncing around and spinning chaotically. So, as you can imagine, it’s quite challenging to study squirmy molecules in their restless chaos! Imagine how much more we can learn if we can keep an individual molecule in one place. We need to isolate it from the bustle of the crowd and hold onto it tightly to counteract the thermal radiation that attempts to rotate it. This is like overcoming the airstream agitation in the lottery machine by holding onto a single ball with a firm grip, so it becomes easy to read its number. Manipulating a lottery machine will likely get you in trouble, but luckily, our team is only studying how to apply this conceptual idea to molecules in our...

  LVMH Recherche, the LVMH Beauty R&D Division, and Integrated Biosciences today announced a strategic research partnership to discover novel chemical entities that target aging at the molecular level. This multi-year partnership will leverage Integrated Biosciences’ synthetic biology and artificial intelligence (AI)-based platform for science-backed skin youth and beauty products. Integrated Biosciences, a proprietary AI and optogenetics platforms, can train state-of-the-art deep learning models to virtually screen hundreds of thousands of molecules , identifying the most promising first-in-class chemical compounds that potently modulate age-related biological phenotypes. The company has consistently reported on its drug discovery engine in leading scientific journals, including Nature Aging, Nature and Cell Systems . Founded by scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and the University of California Santa Barbara and having recently announced a fundraise led by Sutter Hill ...

Drawing inspiration from nature, synthetic biology offers exciting opportunities to transform the future of medicine. Bringing together engineers, physicists and molecular biologists , the field of synthetic biology uses engineering principles to model, design and build synthetic gene circuits and other molecular components that don’t exist in the natural world. Researchers can then piece together these biological parts to rewire and reprogram living cells – or build cell-free systems – with novel functions for a variety of applications. “For me, the most exciting thing about synthetic biology is finding or seeing unique ways that living organisms can solve a problem,” says David Riglar, Sir Henry Dale research fellow at Imperial College London. “This offers us opportunities to do things that would otherwise be impossible with non-living alternatives.” Scientists are harnessing the power of synthetic biology to develop a variety of medical applications – from powerful drug p...