A new study led by scientists at Penn State shows that proteins that contain a certain type of structure are more likely to misfold and be targeted for removal, yet nearly half still manage to evade the cellular maintenance crew. The misfolded proteins that persist could accumulate in cells, disrupting the balance of protein production and recycling and potentially contributing to aging and disease, according to the researchers.

Everything you eat passes one checkpoint before it enters your body: taste. In a fraction of a second, it decides what gets swallowed and what gets rejected, a judgment call critical to survival. Now, for the first time, researchers at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) and their collaborators have mapped the complete neural wiring behind this process in an animal, tracing taste signals from sensory neurons across the body all the way to the motor neurons that drive feeding, and revealing neural pathways that could explain how taste triggers anticipatory insulin release before a single calorie is absorbed.

A study in budding yeast suggests that changes in membrane lipids trigger a braking system that slows internal protein transport when the endoplasmic reticulum comes under stress, comparable to modern logistics networks where shipments are slowed when distribution hubs are under stress.

A study by Queen Mary University of London finds that young chimpanzees develop dialect, providing a new way of understanding ontogenetic evolution.    

Scientists from NTU Singapore have developed a new RNA-delivery platform based on liquid peptide microdroplets. In a preclinical study, these patent-pending microdroplets delivered siRNA into human immune cells and colorectal cancer cells, disrupting a “molecular handshake” between them from inside the cells. In mice with a hard-to-treat colorectal cancer model, the combined treatment reduced tumour growth by about 67 per cent, comparable with the gold-standard monoclonal antibody treatment used as the study benchmark. The new drug delivery platform can concentrate large RNA payloads and is being developed as a possible alternative to conventional lipid nanoparticles (LNPs). The researchers estimate that, if successfully scaled, such siRNA-based treatment could be up to 10 times cheaper to manufacture than monocloal antibodies, potentially leading to lower treatment costs.

The new method, as well as allowing study of individuals, also reduces the potential for louse faecal contamination. It allows collection of high-quality samples from a single louse per test, with substantial yields of secretory proteins per louse.

Geobacter sulfurreducens derives energy from elemental sulfur, but the molecular mechanism has remained unknown. Researchers at Ritsumeikan University identified MccSep, a novel selenium-containing multiheme enzyme that functions as a polysulfide reductase. Through genetic, structural, and biochemical analyses, they proposed a unique selenium–sulfur–heme catalytic mechanism underlying sulfur respiration. The findings advance understanding of microbial sulfur metabolism and may inspire environmental biocatalysts while revealing the potential of recoded bacterial stop codons to uncover novel enzymes.