Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has a narrow host range, mainly infecting hominoids. A new study led by researchers from Japan reveals the structural differences in the liver cell receptor (NTCP) between humans and monkeys, explaining why HBV infects humans but not monkeys. This marks a significant medical breakthrough, by identifying new molecular targets for anti-HBV drug development for treating hepatitis B, a disease that places a tremendous burden on the global economy.

IBEC’s Principal Investigator César Rodriguez-Emmenegger has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. This prestigious European funding supports scientists in the consolidation phase of their research teams, allowing them to pursue innovative scientific ideas. The €2 million over five years will allow Rodriguez-Emmenegger and his team to develop Phagocytic Synthetic Cells (PSCs) to fight antibiotic-resistant pathogens.

Six-year-olds who were exposed prenatally to common antiseizure medications had normal verbal and cognitive abilities, a large, multisite study has found.

A groundbreaking Rice University study sheds light on the extraordinary evolution of anglerfish, a group of deep-sea dwellers whose bizarre adaptations have captivated scientists and the public alike. The research, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution , uncovers how these enigmatic creatures defied the odds to diversify in the harsh, resource-poor environment of the bathypelagic zone — part of the open ocean that extends from 3,300 to 13,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.

In a first-of-its-kind breakthrough, a team of UBC Okanagan researchers has developed an artificial adhesion system that closely mimics natural biological interactions.

Dr. Isaac Li and his team in the Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science study biophysics at the single-molecule and single-cell levels. Their research focuses on understanding how cells physically interact with each other and their environment, with the ultimate goal of developing innovative tools for disease diagnosis and therapy.

Today, the Polymathic AI team released two of its open-source training dataset collections to the public — a colossal 115 terabytes in total from dozens of sources — for the scientific community to use to train AI models and enable new scientific discoveries. The datasets include data from dozens of sources, including astrophysics, biology, fluid dynamics, acoustics and chemistry. The Polymathic AI team provides further information about the datasets in two papers accepted for presentation at the leading machine learning conference, NeurIPS, to be held in December in Vancouver, Canada.

Ketone bodies are not just about energy. These metabolites are powerful signaling molecules that have profound effects on the proteome and protein quality control in the brain.  Publishing in Cell Chemical Biology Buck Institute scientists, working in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease and aging, and in the nematode C. elegans, reveal the ketone body β-hydroxybutyrate interacts directly with misfolded proteins, altering their solubility and structure so they can be cleared from the brain through the process of autophagy. The work hints at a tantalizing possibility – ketone bodies as a global treatment to restore the integrity of the proteome, addressing one of the key hallmarks of aging.