Latest Biophysics Stories

For the first time, experimental evidence shows that hidden protein structures are essential for catalysisAn important Brandeis study appearing in the December 3 issue of Nature raises the curtain on the hidden lives of proteins at the atomic level. The study reports that for the first time, researchers used x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to directly visualize protein structures essential for catalysis at the rare high-energy state. The study also showed...

U.S. scientists say they've developed a system that uses sound as tiny tweezers to manipulate objects such as single cells or nanosized beads. Current methods for moving individual cells or tiny beads include such devices as optical tweezers, which require a lot of energy and could damage or even kill live cells, said Penn State Assistant Professor Tony Jun Huang. Acoustic tweezers are much smaller than optical tweezers and use 500,000 times less energy. While optical tweezers are large and...

Manipulating tiny objects like single cells or nanosized beads often requires relatively large, unwieldy equipment, but now a system that uses sound as a tiny tweezers can be small enough to place on a chip, according to Penn State engineers."Current methods for moving individual cells or tiny beads include such devices as optical tweezers, which require a lot of energy and could damage or even kill live cells," said Tony Jun Huang, assistant professor of engineering science and...

UCSF researchers have identified the two key circuits that control a cell's ability to adapt to changes in its environment, a finding that could have applications ranging from diabetes and autoimmune research to targeted drug development for complex diseases.The new findings are featured as the cover story in the August 21, 2009 issue of the journal Cell.The limited number of circuits that can achieve adaptation represents a fundamental shift in our understanding of this important biological...

Biomolecular computers, made of DNA and other biological molecules, only exist today in a few specialized labs, remote from the regular computer user. Nonetheless, Tom Ran and Shai Kaplan, research students in the lab of Prof. Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute's Biological Chemistry, and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Departments have found a way to make these microscopic computing devices "˜user friendly,' even while performing complex computations and answering complicated...

Applying biological molecules from cell membranes to the surfaces of artificial materials is opening peepholes on the very basics of cell-to-cell interaction.Two recently published papers by a University of Oregon biophysicist and colleagues suggest that putting lipids and other cell membrane components on manufactured surfaces could lead to new classes of self-assembling materials for use in precision optics, nanotechnology, electronics and pharmaceuticals.Though the findings are basic,...

Berkeley Lab scientists have shown how thousands of bacterial membrane proteins are able to assemble into clusters that direct cell movement to select chemicals in their environment.Self-assembling and self-organizing systems are the Holy Grails of nanotechnology, but nature has been producing such systems for millions of years. A team of scientists has taken a unique look at how thousands of bacterial membrane proteins are able to assemble into clusters that direct cell movement to select...

A new three-dimensional computer protein map is helping researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) unravel the biological pathways that control brain-cell death after a stroke.The new map will help identify new drug targets and test compounds to slow brain-cell death, halt brain cancer and improve pain control, the study authors said. The findings are published online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.Starting with known cell coordinates, biological structures and other...

Decoded structure of secretion system, essential for infection, could lead to new drugsNew details of the composition and structure of a needlelike protein complex on the surface of certain bacteria may help scientists develop new strategies to thwart infection. The research, conducted in part at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, will be published April 26, 2009, in the advance online edition of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.The scientists were...

Physicists at Brown University have developed a novel procedure to map a person's genome. They report in the journal Nanotechnology the first experiment to move a DNA chain through a nanopore using magnets. The approach is promising because it allows multiple segments of a DNA strand to be read simultaneously and accurately.Since the human genome was sequenced six years ago, the cost of producing a high-quality genome sequence has dropped precipitously. More recently, the National Institutes...