Amino

biotech | April 20, 2017

Cancer cells have an unnatural appetite for certain amino acids—nonessential amino acids that healthy cells produce themselves, usually in amounts sufficient for ordinary metabolism. If cancer cells are denied these amino acids, they are weakened....

Phys.org | August 03, 2018

Proteins the molecular machines that drive the processes underlying biology are made from just 20 canonical building blocks called amino acids. For nearly two decades, scientists have sought methods to engineer new amino acids to build proteins. A team of Boston College chemists has developed a technology to precisely incorporate a range of useful non-canonical amino acids into proteins made in eukaryotes, the broad class of higher organisms that includes humans, the team reported in the journal...

Phys.org | January 16, 2019

Fruit flies fed antibiotics to suppress their gut microbiome are forced to avoid the best food patches if they lack vital amino acids, according to a study by Boaz Yuval from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and Chang-Ying Nui from Huazhong Agricultural University in China, publishing January 16, 2019, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. Symbiotic gut bacteria have been found to influence insect metabolism, immunity, and reproduction, but the mechanisms underpinning these connection...

Phys.org | March 25, 2019

A machine-learning model from MIT researchers computationally breaks down how segments of amino acid chains determine a protein's function, which could help researchers design and test new proteins for drug development or biological research. Proteins are linear chains of amino acids, connected by peptide bonds, that fold into exceedingly complex three-dimensional structures, depending on the sequence and physical interactions within the chain. That structure, in turn, determines the protein...