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Integrin Phosphorylation as an Off Switch for Integrin Activation
An individual cell inside the human body is in a dynamic environment: it not only has to anchor itself to its surroundings but also be able to communicate with them and respond as appropriate. One...
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An Integrin Is Identified as a Co-Receptor for HIV
The New York Times reported yesterday that “scientists find new receptor for HIV,” referring to a paper published online in Nature Immunology on Sunday by Arthos et al. This is basically correct,...
View ArticleDo You Want to Be Able to Crap Gold?
Molecule of the Day has a post up about isotopically-enriched food that caught my eye for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the idea is wildly outrageous, and, secondly, this is something that actually...
View Article2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: GFP
Earlier today, the Nobel committee announced that the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien “for the discovery and development of the...
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Fine-Tuning Cell Adhesiveness
Cells in higher organisms exist in a dynamic environment, requiring the ability to alternately grasp and disengage from the three-dimensional web of their surroundings. One family of proteins in...
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Why Swine Flu Is Resistant to Adamantane Drugs
On Wednesday, the CDC reported that influenza A H1N1 viruses from 13 patients with confirmed diagnoses of swine flu had been tested for resistance to a variety of antiviral drugs. The good news was...
View Article2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: The Ribosome
The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry have been announced, and the prize will be shared equally between Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz, and Ada Yonath “for studies of the...
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Two New Papers on Integrin Activation
Just as I was in the process of finishing my doctorate in August, I found out that my first first-author paper had been accepted for publication by The EMBO Journal. This was good news, because we were...
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On Mimicking Phosphotyrosine
When doing science, there’s generally one totally optimal way of performing an experiment. But, there may also be several other less optimal means of gathering similar data, and one of those may be...
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More on the M2 Channel Structure Controversy
Last year, I wrote about a scientific controversy over the structure of the influenza M2 proton channel, particularly over the protein’s binding site for adamantane type anti-flu drugs. The...
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