
Molecules Against Cancer or for Long-Term Memory Storage
For cancer diagnosis and therapy, we are developing activatable cell-penetrating peptides (ACPPs), synthetic molecules with a novel amplifying mechanism for homing to diseased tissues. ACPPs are polycationic cell-penetrating peptides whose cellular ....
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A Personal View of the History of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine
In 1952, Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for the description of the phenomenon of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Over the years, NMR has been used in a wide range of fundamental studies in physics, and in the....
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Aquaporin Water Channels _ From Atomic Structure to Malaria
Aquaporin (AQP) water channel proteins enable high water permeability in certain biological membranes. Discovered in human red cells but expressed in multiple tissues, AQP1 has been thoroughly characterized and its atomic structure is known. Expres....
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Synthetic Biology for Genetic Engineering in the 21st Century
Synthetic biologists seek to design, build, and test novel biological systems. We have chemically synthesized a bacterial genome (Mycoplsama mycoides, 1078Kb) and brought it to life by transplantation into the cytoplasm of a related species. We are....
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You can see a lot by observing: Optical Microscopy 2.0
Biological research and medicine were transformed by the invention and improvement of the optical microscope. Since the early 1990s, there has been another revolution in optical imaging, and manipulation of individual biological molecules and bio-mo....
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The Revolution of Personalized Medicine: Are We Going to Cure All Diseases and at What Price?
Many important drugs such as penicillin, aspirin, or digitalis, were discovered by serendipity - some by curious researchers who accidentally noted a "strange" phenomenon, and some by isolation of active ingredients form plants known for centuries to....
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From the Structure of the Ribosome to New Antibiotics
Structural studies of the ribosome exemplify the evolution of structural studies in cell biology from the early negatively stained images of macromolecular assemblies in whole cells, to a detailed atomic understanding of the mechanisms of action of a....
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Infections Linked to Human Cancers: Mechanisms and Synergisms
Slightly more than 20% of the global cancer incidence is presently being linked to viral, bacterial, or parasitic infections. The mechanisms by which these agents mediate malignant transformation differ substantially. Some contribute directly, freq....
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Why Do We Not Have a Vaccine Against HIV or Tuberculosis?
Analysis of the immune system is fascinating and progressing rapidly. As a field of medical enquiry, it has however, drifted and turned purely academic. This is because interest and appreciation of protective immunity in infectious disease medicine....
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On The Road Toward an HIV Cure
Since the first cases of AIDS in 1981 and the identification of its etiological agent in 1983, much progress has been made in both the development of tools to prevent and treat HIV infection and the access to these tools. In particular, the wide arr....
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Inheritance from Teratomas
The techniques and concepts that have resulted in the identification and isolation of embryonic stem cells have come from studies with mouse teratocarcinomas. Embryonic stem cells isolated from normal mouse embryos may be grown in tissue culture and....
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Forging a Genetic Paradigm for Cancer
It is now axiomatic that, no matter what its causes, cancer ultimately arises from the malfunction of genes. A number of clues prefigured this paradigm: the persistence of the malignant phenotype through countless cell divisions; the mutagenicity of....
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