Swiss Nobel laureate, Kurt Wüthrich, has been challenged over claims that he had experienced ‘male discrimination’ at the annual Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. During his five-minute address to delegates on the future of structural biology, the topic of the meeting, Wüthrich drew attention to a newspaper interview with Germany’s only female Nobel laureate, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. […]

A Chinese researcher at one of the largest public research organisations in Japan has been accused of leaking sensitive technological information to a Chinese company. Quan Hengdao, who is a 59-year-old senior scientist researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), was arrested in Tokyo on 15 June for allegedly disclosing […]

An artificial intelligence (AI) model has identified potential antiviral molecules that inhibit the Sars-CoV-2 virus, from only the sequence information of target proteins – without any knowledge of the proteins’ 3D structure or known binding sites. Researchers from IBM and the University of Oxford, UK, trained a generative AI called CogMol, part of IBM’s MolFormer-XL […]

Despite tighter safety rules at the University of California (UC) following the death of UC Los Angeles (UCLA) research assistant Sheri Sangji in January 2009, there has been no significant decline in research output at chemistry labs there. That’s the finding of a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research that debunks […]

A new point-of-care assay to detect human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA requires just six user steps, gives results in under 45 minutes and costs less than $5 (£3.90) per test. Its developers hope it can fill a critical gap in resource-limited settings where the HPV rates are highest. Despite the existence of a highly effective HPV […]

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has recently started tests on new facilities for discharging treated radioactive wastewater into the sea for decades to come. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) plans to start discharging it this summer, a controversial move which is opposed by local fishing communities, environmental groups and neighbouring countries […]

The National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) is winding down after 22 years of operation. In a letter sent on 26 June 2023, NCRI chair Fiona Driscoll said that the board of trustees had decided that the ‘risk of operational failure was too great to continue’ and the board was now working on the ‘required steps’ […]

A ‘one pot’ process for manufacturing oligonucleotides – short 20–30 base pair DNA or RNA molecules – has been developed. Oligonucleotides are of interest as they can be used to treat a range of medical conditions, but mass producing them is still difficult. The biocatalytic process to produce oligonucleotides was developed by Sarah Lovelock at […]

French biotechnology start-up Carbios has developed an enzymatic process for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET) back into its constituent monomers, from which new plastic can be produced with the same properties as virgin material. ‘Everybody believes PET is easily recyclable because bottles are easily recyclable in a mechanical way,’ says chief executive Emmanuel Ladent. ‘But food trays, for the […]

Materials scientist John Goodenough, the inventor of the lithium–ion battery, died on 25 June – just a month shy of his 101st birthday. His pioneering work on the now ubiquitous lithium-ion battery led to him receiving the 2019 Nobel prize in chemistry. His work helped to spawn the wireless revolution and put electronic devices in […]