Science Highlights

While scientists recognize that oxygen-free soil stores large amounts of carbon, knowledge about the processes that protect and preserve carbon-rich molecules in these environments is lacking. In oxygen-rich soil, microbes break down organic molecules through aerobic respiration, allowing carbon to escape the ground as carbon dioxide gas.

Famous for their role in the process of aging, telomeres are the regions of repetitive DNA sequences at the ends of our chromosomes. These repeats are critical for preserving the structure and function of our DNA in concert with numerous cellular factors.

An intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) stroke occurs when a blood vessel bursts inside the brain and blood leaks into brain tissue. Secondary damage is caused by hemoglobin iron making free radicals that cause oxidative damage to brain cells.  While prompt rehabilitative therapies have been shown to limit damage, the mechanism for this is unknown.

Coal-ash spills in Tennessee and North Carolina rivers have prompted concerns that toxic trace elements like arsenic could be concentrated in the food web to potentially affect humans. At the base of these freshwater food webs are periphyton biofilms, which contain a complex ecosystem of micro-organisms including bacteria, fungi, diatoms, and algae.

Microtubules (MTs) are sub-cellular structures made of the protein tubulin. They have important roles in moving organelles around the cell and in chromosome segregation before cell division. MTs can exist in two states, either a dynamic state of growing and shrinking MTs or a stable state. MTs can also form complex bundles that can be found in neuronal axons.

Lithium ion batteries are critical to many portable consumer electric devices, but they still do not have a high enough energy storage capacity for some applications, such as electric cars. Researchers and engineers are working to improve these batteries by changing the materials used.

The presence of the receptor tyrosine kinase Axl on tumor cells is correlated with disease severity and thus is an important oncology target.  Developing inhibitors to Axl has been met with limited success due to the tight affinity with which Axl binds its ligand, growth arrest-specific 6 (Gas6).

Over the past three years a collaboration between researchers from Korea, Australia, Germany and SLAC have worked to understand the thermodynamic transitions in the antiferromagnetic ferroelectric BiFeO₃ with La substitutions in relation to a new strategy for finding the ultimate magnetoelectric single phase material.

RNA molecules, often bound to protein in complexes, play essential roles in many basic cellular processes in all life. Like with proteins, often these roles depend on the distinct 3-dimensional shapes the RNA molecules adopt.