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A Tiny Peptide Can Freeze Parkinson’s Proteins Before They Turn Toxic

As Parkinson’s disease progresses, harmful protein clumps build up in the brain, blocking communications between neurons and killing them off – but what if we could prevent these clusters from forming?

Researchers led by a team from the University of Bath in the UK have achieved just that in a basic worm model of Parkinson’s. They engineered a peptide, a small amino acid chain, to essentially keep a protein called alpha-synuclein locked in its healthy shape. This prevented the misfolding that leads to clumps.

The potential treatment checks several important boxes: it’s durable, and it can survive inside cells without causing any toxic side effects.

NVIDIA Embraces the ‘Made in USA’ Narrative, As Jensen Huang Unveils the First Blackwell Chip Wafer Produced by TSMC Arizona

NVIDIA’s CEO has revealed that TSMC has produced the first Blackwell chip wafer in America, a massive development towards the future of manufacturing in the nation.

Since the Trump administration took office, efforts to bring manufacturing back to the US have influenced almost every tech giant, with NVIDIA leading the way. The firm announced plans to invest $500 billion in American manufacturing, prompting suppliers like Foxconn and Quanta to set up manufacturing facilities in the US. In a blog post shared by Team Green, it is revealed that TSMC Arizona has begun manufacturing Blackwell on American soil, and Jensen Huang himself paid a visit to Phoenix to celebrate this massive achievement.

Sean Carroll: Can we ever escape the logic of a clockwork universe?

What if the universe is a machine, and every moment in our past, present, and future is already encoded in the positions of its particles?

Physicist Sean Carroll explores the unsettling implications of classical mechanics, from Newton’s laws to Laplace’s thought experiment, showing how determinism challenges the very idea of free will.

Leukemia cells evade treatment by reshaping their mitochondria, researchers discover

Researchers from Rutgers Health and other institutions have discovered why a powerful leukemia drug eventually fails in most patients—and found a potential way to overcome that resistance.

Team members identified a protein that lets reshape their energy-producing mitochondria in ways that protect them from venetoclax (brand name, Venclexta), a for acute myeloid leukemia that often loses effectiveness after prolonged use.

Blocking that protein with experimental compounds in mice with human acute myeloid leukemia restored the drug’s effectiveness and prolonged survival.

Lab-grown brains with all major cell types support next-generation therapy research

A new 3D human brain tissue platform developed by MIT researchers is the first to integrate all major brain cell types, including neurons, glial cells and the vasculature into a single culture. Grown from individual donors’ induced pluripotent stem cells, these models—dubbed Multicellular Integrated Brains (miBrains)—replicate key features and functions of human brain tissue, are readily customizable through gene editing, and can be produced in quantities that support large-scale research.

Although each unit is smaller than a dime, miBrains may be worth a great deal to researchers and drug developers who need more complex living lab models to better understand brain biology and treat diseases.

“The miBrain is the only in vitro system that contains all six major cell types that are present in the human brain,” said Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor, director of The Picower Professor of Learning and Memory, and senior author of the study describing miBrains, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fano interference of photon pairs from a metasurface

Two-photon interference, a quantum phenomenon arising from the principle of indistinguishability, is a powerful tool for quantum state engineering and plays a fundamental role in various quantum technologies. These technologies demand robust and efficient sources of quantum light, as well as scalable, integrable, and multifunctional platforms. In this regard, quantum optical metasurfaces (QOMs) are emerging as promising platforms for the generation and engineering of quantum light, in particular pairs of entangled photons (biphotons) via spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). Due to the relaxation of the phase-matching condition, SPDC in QOMs allows different channels of biphoton generation, such as those supported by overlapping resonances, to occur simultaneously. In previously reported QOMs, however, SPDC was too weak to observe such effects.

New antivirals could help prevent cold sores by changing cell structures

A class of antivirals called Pin1 inhibitors could reduce or stop outbreaks of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), the common infection behind oral herpes, according to new research published in Antiviral Research.

HSV-1 causes sores around the mouth, commonly called cold sores or fever blisters. Most people are infected with HSV-1 in childhood, and between 50% and 90% of people worldwide have HSV-1. After the , HSV-1 remains in the body and can reactivate throughout a person’s life. While HSV-1 infections are usually mild, they can be serious and even deadly for people with suppressed immune systems. Finding new, more effective antivirals for this common illness is essential.

Researchers focused on an enzyme called peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase NIMA-interacting 1, or Pin1, that regulates protein stability, function, and cellular structure. When this is dysregulated, it can play a role in a variety of conditions, including obesity, cancer, , and more. Viruses, such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) and SARS-CoV-2, are known to affect Pin1, and Pin1 have been developed to reduce the impact of these viruses.

Role of hypoxia in cancer therapy by regulating the tumor microenvironment

Clinical resistance is a complex phenomenon in major human cancers involving multifactorial mechanisms, and hypoxia is one of the key components that affect the cellular expression program and lead to therapy resistance. The present study aimed to summarize the role of hypoxia in cancer therapy by regulating the tumor microenvironment (TME) and to highlight the potential of hypoxia-targeted therapy.

Algorithm precisely quantifies flow of information in complex networks

Networks are systems comprised of two or more connected devices, biological organisms or other components, which typically share information with each other. Understanding how information moves between these connected components, also known as nodes, could help to advance research focusing on numerous topics, ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) to neuroscience.

To measure the directional flow of information in systems, scientists typically rely on a mathematical construct known as transfer entropy, which essentially quantifies the rate at which information is transmitted from one node to another. Yet most strategies for calculating transfer entropy developed so far rely on approximations, which significantly limits their accuracy and reliability.

Researchers at AMOLF, a institute in the Netherlands, recently developed a computational algorithm that can precisely quantify transfer entropy in a wide range of complex networks. Their algorithm, introduced in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, opens new exciting possibilities for the study of information transfer in both biological and engineered networks.

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