SBC

Every day, enough sunlight hits the Earth to power the planet many times over — if only we could more efficiently capture all the energy. So scientists have looked at nature for inspiration to do it better. By solving the heart of photosynthesis in a sun-loving, soil-dwelling bacterium, a team of scientists working at two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national research facilities has gained the most fundamental understanding of the inner workings of photosynthesis, and how this vital process differs between plants systems.

About half of all drugs, ranging from morphine to penicillin, come from compounds that are from—or have been derived from—nature. This includes many cancer drugs, which are toxic enough to kill cancer cells. So how do the organisms that make these toxic substances protect themselves from the harmful effects? A team of researchers led by scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute in collaboration with Argonne researchers from the Midwest Center for Structural Genomics used extreme-brightness synchrotron x-rays from the U.S.

Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle led a team that employed high-brightness x-rays from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) to show that a potent antibody from a COVID-19 survivor interferes with a key feature on the surface of the coronavirus’s distinctive spikes and induces critical pieces of those spikes to break off in the process.

SEPTEMBER 3, 2020 — UTSA researchers have discovered how 3-hydroxyanthranilate-3,4-dioxygenase, an enzyme known as HAO that is involved in the breakdown of tryptophan and the biosynthesis of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, prevents the overproduction of quinolinic acid, which is associated with neurodegenerative diseases.