Proteins for DNA organisation can also defend against plasmids

10-Mar-2023

Research team from Kiel University describes unknown defence mechanism in bacteria that selectively wards off foreign and potentially harmful genetic information. Since the coronavirus pandemic, the particularly rapid evolutionary adaptability of microorganisms such as bacteria or viruses has ...

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Researchers have clarified the molecular structure of an enzyme class, enabling them to use bacteria to produce prodrugs

08-Mar-2023

Researchers from Bochum and Leipzig have successfully used a soil bacterium to specifically produce prodrugs. The key to this step was a detailed understanding of the metabolisation of indole. The natural compound is first activated in microorganisms. To do this, they need a monooxygenase, the ...

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Researchers from Freiburg and Strasbourg have discovered a strong immunological effect of the molecule LecB - and a way to prevent it

03-Mar-2023

Bacteria of the species Pseudomonas aeruginosa are antibiotic-resistant hospital germs that can enter blood, lungs and other tissues through wounds and cause life-threatening infections. In a joint project, researchers from the Universities of Freiburg and Strasbourg in France have discovered a ...

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Efficient disinfection of water with silver sulfide quantum dots in a peptide coat

02-Mar-2023

Water contaminated with bacteria is a large threat to global health. A Chinese research team has described a simple new method of disinfection in the journal Angewandte Chemie. It is based on tiny biocompatible assemblies of atoms, known as quantum dots, made of silver sulfide with caps made of a ...

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Recycling Rare Earths with biomass: Previously uninvestigated strains of cyanobacteria can adsorb metals

01-Mar-2023

Rare Earth metals are essential to countless high-tech applications. Working together with the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, a research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now succeeded in recycling these valuable metals from aqueous solutions using previously ...

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Natural language model jumpstarts protein design with creation of active enzymes

23-Feb-2023

Scientists have created an AI system capable of generating artificial enzymes from scratch. In laboratory tests, some of these enzymes worked as well as those found in nature, even when their artificially generated amino acid sequences diverged significantly from any known natural protein. The ...

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Research team develops approach that increases efficiency of genome editing

13-Feb-2023

Systematically attenuating DNA targeting activity can achieve CRISPR-driven editing in bacteria, greatly boosting colony counts and even increasing the frequency of precise genome editing. This was shown in a study of the Helmholtz Institute Würzburg (HIRI) in collaboration with the Helmholtz ...

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Implementation of a newly discovered metabolic pathway increases the CO2 efficiency of PET-utilizing bacteria

13-Feb-2023

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Marburg have developed a more efficient, carbon dioxide-conserving route to upcycle ethylene glycol, a constituent of the plastic PET. They enhanced the metabolism of the bacterium Pseudomonas putida with a novel route taken from marine microbes, ...

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Chemists develop a novel tool to decipher bacterial infections in real time

07-Feb-2023

A research team led by Professor Xiang David LI from the Department of Chemistry at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has developed a novel chemical tool to reveal how bacteria adapt to the host environment and control host cells. This tool can be used to investigate bacterial interactions with ...

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07-Feb-2023

Accelerated climate change is a major and acute threat to life on Earth. Rising temperatures are caused atmospheric methane which is 30-times more potent than CO2 at trapping heat. Microbes are responsible for generating half of this methane and elevated temperatures are also accelerating ...

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