Science Magazine’s Post

This week in Science: Researchers have fabricated MXene films at room temperature using bacterial cellulose and liquid metal to sequentially bridge the nanosheets. The results provide a path for assembling other 2D nanosheets into high-performance materials. https://scim.ag/7yW

"The best way to nurture new scientists is to allow students to be themselves."

Don't miss this week's new issue of #ScienceTranslationalMedicine! An imaging study of Long Covid patients reveals viral RNA and activated T cells can persist for years after infection, an injectable ionic liquid safely ablates prostate tissue in mice, and more. https://scim.ag/7ym

Atrophy in the brain due to schizophrenia originates in a frontal lobe region closely tied to language processing, according to a new neuroimaging study in #ScienceAdvances. Read more: https://scim.ag/7y8

With x-ray microtomography, researchers created a full 3D model of a half-billion-year-old trilobite. Learn more: https://scim.ag/7y2 #NewsfromScience

Don’t miss this week’s new issue of #ScienceSignaling! A counterintuitive study reveals that the known tumor-promoter YAP can also suppress kidney cancer, researchers show that mini-G proteins can confound experimental results about GPCR signaling, and more. https://scim.ag/7xA

Leonard Rome’s lab discovered an odd, abundant component of cells in the 1980s—and he’s still trying to figure out what it does.⁠ ⁠ Vaults, as they are called, are the most massive particles made naturally by human cells and among the most abundant. Most of our cells have roughly 10,000 of the structures, with the number rising to perhaps 100,000 in certain immune cells. Many other animals make them, too. Their abundance—and the resources cells must pour into making them—suggests vaults have some essential function. But despite decades of work by Rome and other “vaulters,” their purpose is unknown.⁠ ⁠ Over the decades various hypotheses have been proposed, including that vaults help ferry things around inside cells or clear toxins. And one by one, promising ideas were dismissed or lost momentum as supporting evidence failed to materialize. Initially enthusiastic about the discovery, NIH lost interest in funding basic research on vaults as the years wore on without answers. ⁠ Yet Rome’s fascination with vaults hasn’t faded, even as other researchers moved on. And now, with help from other funders and labs, he has turned from basic research on vaults to studies of how they might be exploited in medicine and other fields, as nanoscale vessels for delivering therapies and more.⁠ ⁠ Read more: https://scim.ag/7xm