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The structure of one of the basic members of the cell-membrane water-channel family, a protein called aquaporin 1 (AQP1), has been determined to a resolution of 2.2 angstroms (22 billionths of a meter).
The structure reveals the elegantly simple means by which AQP1 can transport water through the cell membrane at a high rate while effectively blocking everything else, even individual protons, the nuclei of hydrogen atoms.
Biophysicist Bing Jap led a team from Lawrence Berkeley Nat
A spectacular phenomenon
This theme issue of Philosophical Transactions A (a Royal Society journal) deals with the phenomenon of ball lightning, a rarely seen and slow-moving luminous phenomenon usually associated with thunderstorms. A collection of previously unpublished sightings is presented, including close-up encounters describing the detailed internal structure of the balls. Many of these observations are from scientifically or technically trained people, probably doubling the n
A fast, sensitive laboratory test that measures the molecular components involved during the critical moment when HIV infects a normal cell has been developed.
The advance was made by researchers in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and VA San Diego Healthcare System.
Described in the December 2001 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC), the test makes it possible to study and design new compounds to block the action of these molecular componen
A solar slump may have chilled the Northern Hemisphere.
The flickering sun may cause rapid climate change, according to a new comparison of climate records. A 200-year cold snap 10, 300 years ago seems to have coincided with a passing slump in the sun’s activity 1 .
Svante Bjorck of Lund University in Sweden and colleagues looked at sediments in Lake Starvatn on the Faroe Islands and in the Norwegian Sea, the width of growth rings in ancient German pine trees
New techniques that might allow magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to be used to give doctors subtle information about a tumour’s physiology and how it reacts to drug therapy are being developed.
The work is being carried out by doctors and medical physicists at the University of Aberdeen, with funding from the Swindon based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Doctors treating cancerous tumours with drugs need to know quickly if the drug is having the desired effect t
Sloshing proteins help bacteria find their waists.
Chemical waves may help a bacterium to divide by pinpointing its middle, according to a new model of protein interactions 1 .
Bacteria such as Escherichia coli multiply by dividing. Bacterial division (called binary fission) is simpler than human cell division (mitosis). Human cells erect scaffolding to transport components to the two nascent daughter cells at either end; bacteria just pinch in two.