Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: chemistry

Bacteria reveal ‘glue’ protein that fastens antibiotic-resistant outer membrane to cell wall

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame and collaborators have discovered a key process in how the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria attaches to the cell wall, advancing the understanding of how these bacteria frequently develop resistance to antibiotics.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, was carried out in the laboratory of Shahriar Mobashery, Navari Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, with structural aspects of the study performed by Juan A. Hermoso of the Institute of Physical Chemistry “Blas Cabrera” in Madrid, Spain. The researchers discovered that the protein PA2854 performs the reaction that keeps the outside layers, or envelope, of gram-negative bacteria connected to each other.

Mobashery and collaborators studied the process in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), a ubiquitous antibiotic-resistant bacterium commonly affecting people with cystic fibrosis. P. aeruginosa, like other gram-negative bacteria including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Salmonella, is shielded by a three-layer biological envelope that prevents many antibiotics from penetrating and damaging the bacteria. Gram-positive bacteria do not have an outer membrane and are generally more susceptible to antibiotics.

Beyond frozen snapshots, protein ‘breathing’ comes into view with combined imaging methods

Advances in structural biology have allowed scientists to determine molecular structures with atomic-level detail, sometimes yielding static snapshots that do not reflect the dynamism of proteins. However, these motions are often crucial for biological function. Researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), together with international collaborators, have now combined several methods to shed light on how proteins “breathe” and how some experimental techniques freeze their motion. The findings—which could boost protein design approaches and improve AI-based structural prediction tools—are published in Nature Chemistry.

Despite serving as structural biology’s central pillar for more than half a century, protein crystallography has yielded static molecular structures—like still frames from a video—far from the buzzing life inside cells.

“How much can these ‘frozen snapshots’ of protein structures really tell us about their true biological functions and bustling molecular environments?” asks Lea Becker, the study’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Professor Paul Schanda’s group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA).

Unique chromium beam experiment unlocks cosmic ray origins and galactic chemistry

When a star dies, it generates an explosion of elemental nuclei and hurls them into space. Those elements, called cosmic rays, travel at nearly the speed of light, and eventually some of them encounter manmade detectors. Recording how many of each of these elements show up helps scientists better understand cosmic processes—but despite incredible research advances over the last century, uncertainty around how these elements transform as they travel across the light-years has left fundamental questions about our galaxy’s composition unanswered.

Priyarshini Ghosh, a UMBC nuclear physicist with the Center for Space Sciences and Technology, is at the forefront of research that could significantly improve our understanding of these cosmic phenomena.

Ghosh and her collaborators have just completed a pioneering experiment at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University, where they generated and then fragmented a beam of chromium-52 nuclei. Chromium-52 is of particular interest because it can shed light on different processes happening in our galaxy, and yet it has never been measured.

Reliable Detection of SGLT2 Protein by Knockout-Based Antibody Characterization

BACKGROUND: SGLT2 (sodium-glucose cotransporter 2) mediates renal glucose reabsorption, and its pharmacological inhibition exerts cardio-and renoprotective benefits. Despite widespread clinical interest, reliable detection of SGLT2 protein remains challenging due to concerns regarding antibody specificity. METHODS: Eight commercially available anti-SGLT2 antibodies were evaluated by immunohistochemistry and Western blotting using kidneys and hearts from genetically engineered Sglt2-deficient mice and rats. Human kidney tissues, including renal cell carcinoma samples, were also examined. RESULTS: Among the antibodies tested, ab306558 and HPA041603 showed specific immunostaining in rodent kidneys, with minimal background in wild-type tissues and complete absence of staining in Sglt2-deficient samples. However, ab306558 was unsuitable for human samples because of nonspecific staining.

A natural chemistry laboratory in protostar shockwaves

Life exists because elements combine to form complex organic molecules. Astrochemistry studies this process, trying to understand how nature creates carbon-based molecules critical for life. One source for these types of molecules is the outflows emitted by protostars.

Protostars grow by accreting gas, and while they do so, they also emit energy. Protostars haven’t begun fusing hydrogen yet, so their energy comes from shocks on its surface generated by in-falling gas. They can also emit high speed streams of gas as astrophysical jets. These jets carry away excess angular momentum, allowing the protostars to keep growing. These jets also create illuminated shocks in the interstellar medium (ISM).

Shock fronts like these are where energy and matter are concentrated, and that’s where Nature does its thing. They’re like a chaotic speed-dating event for chemicals. The heat and pressure splits some molecules apart and binds others together and it all happens quickly.

When less is more: Scaling law explains why ultrathin materials get stronger as they get thinner

One of the most fascinating aspects of physics is that nature often behaves in ways that seem completely counterintuitive. A good example comes from ultrathin materials. If I take a sheet of material and make it thinner and thinner, most people would expect it to become weaker. After all, there is less material left to bear a load.

Yet over the last decade, experiments and simulations have repeatedly shown something surprising: when certain materials become extremely thin—only a few nanometers or even a few atomic layers thick—they can become dramatically more resistant under extreme mechanical loading.

This phenomenon has been observed in systems as different as graphene, graphene oxide, and ultrathin polymer films. The effect was clear, but the reason behind it remained unclear. Why should materials with completely different chemistry and structure all exhibit a similar trend?

Nanoparticles from tattoos circulate inside the body, study finds

The elements that make up the ink in tattoos travel inside the body in micro and nanoparticle forms and reach the lymph nodes, according to a study published in Scientific Reports on 12 September by scientists from Germany and the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, Grenoble (France). It is the first time researchers have found analytical evidence of the transport of organic and inorganic pigments and toxic element impurities as well as in depth characterization of the pigments ex vivo in tattooed tissues. Two ESRF beamlines were crucial in this breakthrough.

“When someone wants to get a tattoo, they are often very careful in choosing a parlour where they use sterile needles that haven’t been used previously. No one checks the chemical composition of the colours, but our study shows that maybe they should,” explains Hiram Castillo, one of the authors of the study and scientist at the ESRF.

The reality is that little is known about the potential impurities in the colour mixture applied to the skin. Most tattoo inks contain organic pigments, but also include preservatives and contaminants like nickel, chromium, manganese or cobalt. Besides carbon black, the second most common ingredient used in tattoo inks is (TiO2), a white usually applied to create certain shades when mixed with colorants. TiO2 is also commonly used in food additives, sunscreens and paints. Delayed healing, along with skin elevation and itching, are often associated with white tattoos, and by consequence with the use of TiO2.

Is extracting oxygen from lunar soil the future of space exploration?

A new race to the moon is emerging between the United States and China. Unlike fifty years ago, the goal is no longer just about landing and leaving, but establishing a base that allows for a sustainable presence and extended stays on the surface of our natural satellite. The objective is now to use the moon as a testing ground for technologies that will enable us to travel further, particularly to Mars.

One of these key technologies is in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), which involves using available resources on-site to produce the consumables necessary for human activities: oxygen, water, rocket fuels, or construction materials. By producing these essentials directly on the moon, it will be possible to significantly reduce the mass of cargo sent from Earth, thereby reducing the logistical and financial costs of space exploration. Instead of importing these resources from Earth, the goal is to learn how to live on the moon.

Breaking down lunar dust to extract oxygen At the dawn of humanity’s sustainable return to the moon, ISRU is emerging as a strategic pivot. One of the major challenges is producing oxygen from regolith, the layer of soil covering the moon, primarily composed of small rock fragments and dust. The composition of regolith is complex, mainly consisting of several minerals (plagioclase, pyroxene, olivine) themselves made up of a mixture of metal oxides—chemical compounds that combine oxygen with another element such as silicon, iron, or calcium.

AI-guided catalyst turns CO₂ and waste into fertilizer at industrially relevant rates

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a computation-guided strategy to produce urea more efficiently from carbon dioxide and nitrate. By combining large language models, density functional theory calculations and experiments, the approach identified a cadmium-modified iron oxide catalyst that maintains high urea selectivity at practical current densities.

Urea is one of the world’s most widely used fertilizers, but its conventional production comes at a heavy environmental cost. The industrial process accounts for more than two percent of global energy consumption and releases over 200 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

A cleaner alternative is to produce urea electrochemically, using low-carbon electricity to convert carbon dioxide and nitrate into a useful product. However, this approach has been difficult to scale up. At the high current densities needed for practical production, the catalysts often favor competing side reactions, such as hydrogen gas formation or carbon dioxide reduction to other products.

Faster biological aging consistently linked to poverty and discrimination

The study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrates that social inequality, such as poverty and racism, is related to biological aging measured in the epigenome, also known as “epigenetic clocks.” Epigenetic clocks analyze patterns of chemical marks on DNA to estimate a person’s biological age or the rate at which their body is aging. These tools are increasingly used by scientists to study how environmental exposures, lifestyle and social conditions affect health across the life course.

Previous individual studies have shown that epigenetic clocks are sensitive to socioeconomic and racial or ethnic disparities. However, because multiple types of epigenetic clocks exist, it has remained unclear which measures best capture the effects of social determinants of health, at which stages of life socioeconomic exposures most affect epigenetic aging, and whether associations differ by sex or by technical factors such as the tissue in which epigenetic data are collected. This study integrates findings across many independent studies, offering a comprehensive test of whether these associations are consistent and robust.

/* */