Category archives: Biochemistry

Asteroids and planetesimals regularly bombarded Earth between about 4.6 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, during the Hadean and Archean eons. Because few rocks today are more than 4 billion years old, our understanding of the planet’s environment during that time is limited. However, samples from the moon and its cratered surface hint at the […]

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are highly potent and broad-spectrum antibiotics, found as components of the innate immune system in almost all forms of life. AMPs are short proteins, tiny compared with conventional antibiotics but extraordinarily effective: they bind to and disrupt bacterial membranes, which quickly incapacitates or kills a cell. For decades, the picture many scientists […]

In September 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft brought home a remarkable gift: the first pristine sample ever collected from a carbon-rich asteroid called Bennu. After two years of careful study in laboratories worldwide, scientists have confirmed that Bennu’s dust and pebbles contain many of the very same small molecules life on Earth relies on as its […]

Order on a molecular scale is difficult to control. The systems with highest possible order are crystals, formed by long arrays of repeating constituent components in all directions. The most familiar examples of crystals encountered in daily life are table salt and sucrose, the sugar in our kitchens. Every grain of table salt is a […]

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), a rare but aggressive cancer of the bile ducts, poses a major challenge for doctors and patients. It’s tough to treat, with limited options beyond surgery, and systemic drugs like chemotherapy often fall short. Cisplatin, a classic platinum-based chemo drug, works against many solid tumours but has only modest effects in CCA. Worse […]

Authors: Fernando López-Gallego, Principal Investigator, Ikerbasque Professor and group leader at the Heterogeneous Biocatalysis Laboratory at CIC biomaGUNE; Ainhoa Oliden-Sánchez, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Heterogeneous Biocatalysis Laboratory at CIC biomaGUNE; Clara García-Gorro, Science Communication Manager at CIC biomaGUNE. Self-sufficient heterogeneous biocatalysts are emerging as powerful tools for greener, more efficient chemical manufacturing. By cleverly combining […]

When you hear the word nanoparticle, it might sound like something futuristic or abstract. In reality, nanoparticles—tiny structures tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair—are already part of modern medicine. Some are used to deliver drugs more effectively, while others help doctors see inside the body by acting as […]

Nanoparticles, those minuscule marvels measured in billionths of a metre, hold immense promise for revolutionizing cancer treatment. Their ability to deliver drugs directly to tumours could transform therapies, but only if they can navigate the dense, complex environment of tumour tissue. A new review , that includes a new experimental data set, explores this challenge […]

The light of someone’s life might not be just another person, but light in the literal sense. According to a recent study , every living system emits light without requiring external excitation due to a biological phenomenon known as ultraweak photon emission (UPE). In mice, UPE was linked to vitality as live mice emitted significantly […]

Imagine peering through a microscope, marvelling at the intricate dance of cells, proteins, or tiny structures within a living organism. These images, known as bioimages, are a treasure trove of information for scientists studying life’s mysteries, from how cells divide to how diseases disrupt tissues. But analysing these images is no small feat. The sheer […]