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. 

Credit: Filip Bunkens/Flickr

By Meredith Knight, Genetic Literacy Project

Who wants a healthy gut? Apparently a lot of people. The probiotics industry is expected to reach $45 billion annually in the next 4 years, just selling add-ons to the bacteria we already walk around with. That’s aside from the billions going into the pharmaceutical and agricultural research and development of the microbiome and its potential for new drugs.

As both a word and an idea, 'medieval' carries centuries of connotation of a murky and brutal pre-scientific age. Swanson Scott/US Fish&Wildlife Service 

By Louise D'Arcens, University of Wollongong and Clare Monagle, Monash 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.

Dalibor Levíček, CC BY-NC-SA

By Mick Reed, University of New England

The Jack the Ripper murders are the most potent cold case ever. More than a century on from the first killing in 1888 they are still attracting global attention.

via: The Telegraph

By Jane Palmer, Genetic Literacy Project

Sometimes I think I’ve outsourced my consciousness to Google. Can’t remember something? Google it. Want to remember something? Google Doc it. Want to get noticed? Get on Google News. If Google ever does pull the plug it will take my career, my social life and my memories leaving me a mere shell of an intelligence thinking human being, such is my sad dependent state.

Air pollution is harming India's wheat farmers. EPA

By Zongbo Shi, University of Birmingham

Researchers have long known that man-made climate change will harm yields of important crops, possibly causing problems for the world’s food security. But new research shows air pollution doesn’t just harm crops indirectly through climate change; it seems to harm them directly.

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.