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Pneumonia vaccine for newborns

Hope for millions
Cleaning Water with Nature

Safer drinking water
Energy from Waste

A win-win solution
Higher Efficiency Solar Technology

Making solar energy more viable
Microscale Life Sciences

Worlds within a cell
Comparative genomics

New tools answer big questions
Tackling Tuberculosis

Strategies for new vaccine development
The Best Defense

Safeguarding public health from nerve toxins
Rare Energy Diseases that Affect Children

Broken metabolism
Environmental Sentinels

Sensors to sniff out exposure
Rapid Detection of Radiation Exposure

Smarter response
Doc in a Box

Making medicine more predictive
Conquering Cancer

A bold strategy
Solar-Powered Biofactory

Sun loving bacteria for biofuels and renewable products
Rapid Vaccine Discovery System

A need for speed
HIV/AIDS Research

Multi-pronged approach
Microbes, Spaceflight and Human Health

Germs in space
The Cheap Genome

Low cost DNA sequencing technologies

Top Stories

Research sheds new light on protein behavior

Proteins play an essential role in virtually every cellular process. They provide actin and myosin for muscles, form the cytoskeleton that maintains a cell’s shape, and carry out innumerable duties critical for immune response, cell signaling and other central functions. A better understanding of protein complexity would be a significant advance in life sciences research, particularly for the study of the mechanisms underlying disease.

Now, Dr. Sidney Hecht and his colleagues are pioneering new techniques to peer into the inner workings of proteins, hoping to learn how they perform their impressive feats. Hecht is a professor of chemistry and director of the Center for BioEnergetics at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. The group’s efforts may pave the way for more effective therapeutics for a host of major illnesses, among other advances.