News by Subject Biology

Many companies are working on materials that would be as light and resistant as plastic but at the same time fully biodegradable. What if they could be made from.....rubbish? A modern, ecological (waste-free -- the conversion of raw material to product reaches 100%) and economical (does not require high temperatures or expensive catalysts) method of obtaining organic monomers is coming into being at the IPC PAS.

With billions of years of practice, nature has created the most energy efficient machines. One, [Ne-Fi] hydrogenase, is the oldest in microorganisms and is used for hydrogen metabolism. Using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, researchers at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) reveal the proton transfer pathway of this enzyme, a discovery expected to contribute to new biofuel cells.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have successfully created personalized digital replicas of the upper chambers of the heart and used them to guide the precise treatment of patients suffering from persistent irregular heartbeats. These simulations accurately identified where clinicians need to destroy tissue to restore the heart's normal rhythm.

Researchers at McMaster University who rush in after storms to study the behaviour of spiders have found that extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones may have an evolutionary impact on populations living in storm-prone regions, where aggressive spiders have the best odds of survival.

Harvard researchers have developed a new DNA-nanotechnology-based approach called Immuno-SABER, that combines the protein targeting specificity of commonly available antibodies with a DNA-based signal-amplification strategy that enables the highly multiplexed visualization of many proteins in the same sample with pre-programmable and tunable fluorescence signals at each target site.