The Sun’s fiery surface, a tattooed tardigrade, rare red lightning and more.

The German government has committed half a billion euros for research on long COVID and other post-infection syndromes.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and the resulting coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) have afflicted tens of millions of people in a worldwide pandemic. Safe ...

Targeting viral proteases is a well-established antiviral strategy and a promising approach that has been actively explored against SARS-CoV-2. The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) is essential for viral replication and functions as a homodimer, making its dimerization interface an attractive therapeutic target. In this study, we report the rational design of HB3-Core25, a miniprotein computationally engineered to disrupt Mpro dimerization and inhibit its catalytic activity. In vitro production followed by biophysical characterization showed that HB3-Core25 folds into a compact trimeric helical bundle, exhibiting high solubility and thermal stability. Biophysical assays confirmed binding to Mpro with a dissociation constant (KD) of 0.567 μM and the lowest IC50 reported to date for the dimer interface. Functional assays further demonstrated inhibition of Mpro catalytic activity, with 51.1%. These findings highlight HB3-Core25 as a stable inhibitor of Mpro activity by interfering with its dimerization, offering a complementary strategy to classical active-site inhibition in antiviral drug development.

Despite advances in de novo enzyme design, success has been largely limited to low energy barrier model reactions. Amide bonds such as those linking amino acids along the peptide backbone are stable f...

Photobleaching of fluorescent proteins often limits the acquisition of high-quality images in microscopy. StayGold, a novel dimeric GFP recently monomerized through sequence engineering, addresses thi...

This randomized clinical trial compares the effects of enlicitide, an oral proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 (PCSK9) inhibitor, vs placebo on lowering low-density lipoprotein cholesterol i...

This Perspective discusses how elevated-temperature crystallography uncovers hidden dynamic states of protein, ligand and water molecules, expanding insights into the protein conformational landscape ...

Bacteria can be engineered as biosensors for the detection and analysis of DNA in unpurified samples. This Review examines the engineering of bacterial DNA biosensors, highlighting performance metrics...

Nature Biotechnology - FDA go-ahead for HPV immunotherapy

Reviewers Behaving Badly

Recent advances in deep learning have enabled accurate design of static protein structures, but the de novo design of protein functions controlled by programmable, intramolecular conformational change...

Mapping protein sequence-function landscapes has either been limited to small steps (only few mutations) or to sequences similar to those already explored by evolution to maintain activity. Here, we o...

Peptide biochemistry is rapidly evolving, with significant advancements reshaping our understanding and application of peptides in therapeutic applications. In this TrendsTalk, authors from three arti...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes COVID-19, a highly transmissible acute respiratory infection that can result in severe pneumonia and death. Many details of SARS-CoV...

Deep learning has advanced the design of static protein structures, but the controlled conformational changes that are hallmarks of natural signaling proteins have remained inaccessible to de novo des...

New research uses firefly flashing patterns to identify species and what they’re communicating.