Toni Boucher threw up the first time she saw the charred remains of her home and neighborhood after this month’s deadly Los Angeles-area wildfires. Now she wonders if it’s worth it to go back to sift through the ashes and try to find her grandmother’s wedding ring. Toni Boucher threw up the first time she saw…

In biology, the binding of cellular proteins to molecules called ligands produces myriad functions essential for life, including cell signaling and enzymatic action. In biotechnology and medicine, the ability of researchers to alter proteins to refine control over binding affinity and specificity can create tailored therapeutics with reduced side effects, highly sensitive diagnostic tools, efficient…

DNA replication is happening continuously throughout the body, as many as trillions of times per day. Whenever a cell divides—whether to repair damaged tissue, replace old cells, or simply to help the body grow—DNA is copied to ensure the new cells carry the same genetic instructions. DNA replication is happening continuously throughout the body, as many…

Researchers have identified peptides that can help remove microplastics from the environment by combining biophysical modeling, molecular dynamics, quantum computing, and reinforcement learning. The ultimate goal of the work is peptide-based technologies that can find, capture, and destroy microscopically tiny plastic particles. The work is published in PNAS Nexus. Researchers have identified peptides that can help…

Researchers at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine and the UF Health Cancer Center have identified a crucial link between a gene mutation and immune system signaling in canine hemangiosarcoma, a discovery that could lead to better treatments for both dogs and humans with similar cancers. Researchers at the University of Florida College of…

Do speakers of different languages build sentence structure in the same way? In a neuroimaging study published in PLOS Biology, scientists from the Max Planck institute for Psycholinguistics, Donders Institute and Radboud University in Nijmegen recorded the brain activity of participants listening to Dutch stories. In contrast to English, sentence processing in Dutch was based…

Topological insulators (TIs) are among the hottest topics in condensed matter physics today. They’re a bit strange: Their surfaces conduct electricity, yet their interiors do not, instead acting as insulators. Physicists consider TIs the materials of the future because they host fascinating new quantum phases of matter and have promising technological applications in electronics and…