Flipping and reversing mini-proteins could improve disease treatment
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-Jun-2026 05:16 ET (18-Jun-2026 09:16 GMT/UTC)
Antibiotic treatments are losing effectiveness against a range of common bacterial pathogens, including E. coli, K. pneumoniae, Salmonella and Acinetobacter, according to a warning issued by the World Health Organization last October. For the microbe that gives rise to tuberculosis, a team of researchers from Penn State and The University of Minnesota Medical School found that a potential solution may be chemically changing the structure of a naturally occurring peptide — a building block of proteins — to make it a more stable and effective antimicrobial agent, while reducing potential toxicity to human cells.
For people living with Parkinson’s disease, there has been a gap between laboratory research and real-world behavior that has limited efforts to improve gait symptoms outside of the clinic. Now, researchers from UC San Francisco have taken an important step toward closing that gap by successfully moving the laboratory into the living room. In a new study published February 13 in Science Advances, the team demonstrated that brain activity recorded from fully implanted devices while patients are at home can be used to reliably determine whether a person is walking or not. By analyzing synchronized neural and movement data collected during more than 80 hours of unsupervised daily activity, researchers identified individualized patterns of brain activity associated with walking. These neural signatures allowed an implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) device to classify movement states using signals generated during natural, at-home activities.
In a must-see topical lecture called “From Discovery to Impact: A Framework for Research That Strengthens Communities,” Morton draws on Arizona State University’s pioneering model of use-inspired research — where excellence is measured by the overall economic, social, cultural, and overall health of the communities ASU serves.
When couples attend relationship counseling, it benefits not only their partnership but also their individual well-being. But which aspects of the training are most influential in this respect? A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines how a popular intervention program affected individual outcomes such as mental health, sleep, and substance use