Artificial metabolism turns waste CO2 into useful chemicals
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 17-Jun-2026 10:15 ET (17-Jun-2026 14:15 GMT/UTC)
New system successfully transforms simple carbon molecules into acetyl-CoA. A building block of life, acetyl-CoA can be used to make a variety of materials. To build the system, scientists screened 66 enzymes and 3,000 enzyme variants. Enzyme screening and system use molecular machinery outside of living cells.
For the first time, researchers have created a map which explains how the genome gives rise to different cell types in the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. It's the first genome regulation atlas for a non-model species and lays the foundation for studying how animal cell types evolved on Earth, including the cnidocyte, which give jellyfish and anemones their characteristic sting.
Ribosomes—the tiny factories that build proteins in our cells—don’t all work with the same efficiency. Researchers from Japan have discovered that ribosomes actually compete with one another, and those that perform poorly are selectively broken down when more efficient ones are present. This built-in “survival of the fittest” mechanism keeps protein synthesis accurate and efficient, shedding new light on how cells maintain quality control and prevent ribosome-related diseases.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), in collaboration with the Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), has launched the world's first Deep Ocean Omics (DOO) database (https://DeepOceanOmics.org/). As the largest platform of its kind, DOO integrates and analyzes multi-omics data from organisms thriving in the ocean's most extreme environments, alongside customized analytical tools to support cross-species comparative and evolutionary studies. By facilitating the utilization of deep-sea biological resources, the platform aims to advance scientific understanding of deep-sea biodiversity and ecosystems, and to foster global research and applications related to biological adaptation in extreme environments.