For months, these researchers had been periodically doing similar genomic surveillance work to keep tabs on the dozens of strains of SARS-CoV-2 that were circulating around the country, looking for any problematic mutations in the virus’s spike protein.

On July 20, two vaccine candidates published preliminary results from Phase I and II trials showing they induced an immune response and didn’t trigger any major safety concerns, marking a positive step forward.

Like all antibodies, the nanobodies that Owens and his team developed have the ability to recognize and attach to a specific spot on a specific protein—in this case, the so-called spike proteins that cover the surface of the novel coronavirus.

ACE2, which stands for angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, is a protein that sits on the surface of many types of cells in the human body, including in the heart, gut, lungs, and inside the nose.

Having already acquired safety data from human trials of similar vaccines for the related coronavirus that causes MERS , Oxford researchers convinced British regulators to push forward with a large Phase II study involving 6,000 people while the outbreak in the UK is still raging.

Around 20 species of the 7,000 known grasshopper varieties transform into what’s known as a gregarious phenotype, which means their bodies actually change as they socialize into swarms.But why does the desert locust go gregarious, when the vast majority of grasshopper species remain solitarious?

The favorable results in cells and mice were a pleasant surprise; he’d expected the AI-generated molecules would require more tweaks and rounds of computations before they found one with potential.“It’s cool to see AI trained to think a little bit like how a medicinal chemist thinks,” says Adam Renslo, a professor of chemical biology at the University of California-San Francisco who also wasn’t involved in the research.

In some cases, there are still some very scary side effects .Dietary supplements are a more than $45 billion industry, and they got that way by promising outsize results in nearly every aspect of your physical well-being, from bigger muscles to better heart health.

Just like small-molecule drugs, protein-degraders will impact not just receptors in, say, tumors, but anywhere cells are displaying them, including in healthy tissues.

“So we needed to start to tell the people again that we still have insects we can use to fight the malnutrition problem.” Oddly enough, powder made from this particular cricket looks, smells, and tastes like chocolate.

Best case: insects that eat something people don’t , or can’t —solving a recycling problem while freeing up land to grow food for humans instead of human prey.