Engineers examine chemo-mechanics of heart defect

Engineers examine chemo-mechanics of heart defect

Elastin and collagen serve as the body’s building blocks. Any genetic mutation short-circuiting their function can have a devastating, and often lethal, health impact. For the first time, new research led by engineers at Washington University in St. Louis takes a closer look at both genetic and mechanical attributes, to better understand a disorder that affects how elastin and collagen function.
Fat makes cells fat

Fat makes cells fat

Just as people endlessly calculate how to upsize or downsize, bacteria continually adjust their volume (their stuff) to fit inside their membrane (their space). But what limits their expansion? The answer will surprise you.
Legumes are fancy

Legumes are fancy

Most organisms share the biosynthetic pathways for making crucial nutrients because it is is dangerous to tinker with them. But now a collaborative team of scientists has caught plants in the process of altering where and how cells make an essential amino acid.
Detecting diluteness

Detecting diluteness

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis and Princeton University developed a new way to dive into the cell’s tiniest and most important components. What they found inside membraneless organelles surprised them, and could lead to better understanding of fatal diseases such as cancer, Huntington’s and ALS.
A spillway on Mars?

A spillway on Mars?

NASA’s senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is examining rocks at the edge of Endeavour Crater for signs that they may have been either transported by a flood or eroded in place by wind.
New thermostat setpoint policy rolls out

New thermostat setpoint policy rolls out

Washington University’s Office of Sustainability is partnering with the Danforth Campus Facilities Planning and Management to roll out a new thermostat setpoint policy, designed to take the chill out of campus office temperatures during the summer.
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