Chemists mimic natural molecular structures: New possibility for vaccine development

Fluorinated sugar molecules as vaccine leads against meningitis B and C

28-May-2024 - Meningococci (Neisseria meningitidis) are disease-causing bacteria that cause life-threatening meningitis, or blood poisoning (septicaemia). There are a number of meningococcal variants worldwide, known as serogroups, and in Germany the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) recommends ...

New Discovery: Toward sugar origami

Folded carbohydrates could open up completely new perspectives in biomedicine and materials science

06-Jul-2023 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) have designed a carbohydrate sequence capable of folding into a stable secondary structure. Until now, such self-folding biopolymers had only been developed for DNA and proteins, and sugars were previously considered too ...

Unlocking the different tempi of protein synthesis

07-Nov-2014 - Scientists of the Max Planck Institutes of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have developed a new method to determine the different codon-specific speeds of protein synthesis in living cells from in-vitro experiments. The proverb ‘life is motion’ ...

Cell growth regulates genetic circuits

Max Planck researchers discover an explanation for different growth rates of genetically identically cells

04-Feb-2010 - Genetic circuits control the activity of genes and thereby the function of cells and organisms. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam and the University of California at San Diego have shown how various genetic circuits in bacterial cells are influenced by ...

Progress toward Artificial Photosynthesis?

Direct activation with graphitic carbon nitride makes carbon dioxide accessible for chemical synthesis

13-Mar-2007 - Plants can do it: they simply grab carbon dioxide out of the air and covert it into biomass. In this process, known as photosynthesis, the plants use light as their energy source. Chemists would also like to be able to use CO2 as a carbon source for their synthetic reactions, but it doesn't work ...