News Bits

A menagerie of bacteria hiding in plain sight.

The bounty of the sea: A toxin to kill cancer, and a mitochondrial-marking protein to study diseases of neurodegeneration. And using a tool called FISH (fluorescent in situ hybridization) to spell out links between cancer, aging, and Werner's syndrome progeria. Okay, the last one was not really from the sea--just a pun--but still important.

Nanostructures from DNA, and how they can self-assemble, and using beta-amino acids to make peptides instead of nature's alpha-amino acid peptides, are just two fascinating looks into artificial molecular assembly that may pay off big in the long run...

Micro-nano hardware advances may lead to advanced optical computing, more rapid sorting of interesting proteins in biological fluids, and tiny gas flow sensors to detect early leaks of important and potentially dangerous gases.

Finally, an anti-obesity drug that has serendipitous anti-cancer activity.