The structure of an asymmetrical ABC transporter complex has been determined with the aid of a high-resolution cryo-electron microscope.

ABC transporters cause bacteria and other pathogens to become resistant to antibiotics. They can also help cancer cells to defend themselves against cytostatic agents and thus determine whether chemotherapy will succeed.   

"ABC transporters causes diseases such as cystic fibrosis, while on the other hand they are responsible for the immune system recognising infected cells or cancer cells," explains Professor Robert Tampé from the Institute for Biochemistry at the Goethe University. 

A serious epidemic of poliomyelitis that struck the Republic of the Congo in 2010 has been identified as a vaccine-resistant strain of polio.

The epidemic affected 445 people in the city of Pointe-Noire, the economic capital of the country, killing almost half of them. The researchers fear the emergence of other strains against which vaccines would have little effect.

Like coffee but your liberal guilt won't let you enjoy it if the energy to heat the water might have come from natural gas or nuclear energy?

There may be hope for the future. Researchers at Lancaster University have used a Raspberry Pi to determine the optimum time for a cup of tea in terms of impact on the environment - it only allows a kettle to boil when the University’s wind turbine is producing electricity. Windy Brew is the brainchild of Dr. Will Simm, Dr. Peter Newman, Dr. Maria Angela Ferrario and Dr. Stephen Forshaw.

It envisions a future where man does not reshape nature, but where we are hostage to it. 

A team of scholars say genetic markers that may help in identifying individuals who could benefit from the alcoholism treatment drug acamprosate - patients carrying these genetic variants have longer periods of abstinence during the first three months of acamprosate treatment.

It's common sense that if you have ne mess and add another mess, you have created an even bigger mess.

But in arcane statistics, economics and social science, a bigger mess can lead to more order - a concept known as antifragility. 

In a paper published in The Journal of Chemical Physics, researchers found a counterintuitive interplay between two different types of disorder. One is thermodynamic disorder, or entropy. The other is the structural disorder—defects in an idealized system that can change its properties.

Tectonic plates, which make up the outer layer of the earth, are rigid. It is giant layers of rock, after all. But that is a bit of a simplification. They are not rigid and don't fit together as nicely as we imagine, according to a new paper in Geology by Corné Kreemer, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and his colleague Richard Gordon of Rice University, which quantifies deformation of the Pacific plate and challenges the central approximation of the plate tectonic paradigm that plates are rigid.