news 2018

Paris, 9 January 2017 To paint quickly while creating exceptional texture and volume effects, J. M. W. Turner and other English artists of his generation relied on the development of innovative gels. All the rage in the 19th century—and still in use today—these compounds alter the properties of the oil paints they are combined with.

Paris, 22 November 2018 Asymmetry plays a major role in biology at every scale: think of DNA spirals, the fact that the human heart is positioned on the left, our preference to use our left or right hand … A team from the Institute of biology Valrose (CNRS/Inserm/Université Côte d'Azur), in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania, has shown how a single protein induces a spiral motion in another molecule.

A 2016 study 1 showed that exposure to urban pollution involving magnetite particles played a role in the development of Alzheimer's disease. It began from the hypothesis that magnetite particles would generate chemical reactions that could cause oxidative stress for neurons. CNRS researchers have now called this connection into question, showing that it is very unlikely that magnetite is involved in neuron degeneration.

Abstract: The ovules and seeds of most angiosperm groups are enclosed by two integuments, whose evolutionary origins are considerably separated in time, as the inner integument arose over 300 million years ago (MYA) in an ancestor of all living seed plants, while the outer integument arose, perhaps as recently as 164 MYA, in an ancestor of all living angiosperms.

Publication from the Chemistry laboratory in the Chemical Sciences journal on September 18, 2018. Abstract: The intrinsic photostability of nucleic acids is intimately related to evolution of life, while its understanding at the molecular and electronic levels remains a challenge for modern science.

A team of researchers at CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université and Université Paris 13 has demonstrated effective molecular labelling to unequivocally identify biomedical implants, even after a prolonged period inside the living being. These results were published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition on July 5, 2018.

A team of researchers from the CNRS and Université Nice Sophia Antipolis 1 has just shown that a small molecule called methiothepin can inhibit the chemotherapy resistance of certain tumors. These results will be on the cover of the July 1, 2018 issue of International Journal of Cancer . Cancerous tumors are also capable of “detoxing,” subsequently limiting the efficiency of chemotherapy.

The accumulation of amyloid peptides in the form of plaques in the brain is one of the primary indicators of Alzheimer's disease.

An international team led by researchers at CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) has challenged currently held ideas about star formation. The unprecedented resolution of the observations obtained using the Atacama Large Millimetre/Submillimetre Array (ALMA) enabled them to measure the quantity of high-mass star-forming cores in a remote, very active region of our Galaxy, and show that there is a higher proportion of them there than expected.

Mimicking photosynthesis in plants, using light to convert stable and abundant molecules like water and CO2 into a high energy fuel (hydrogen) or into chemicals of industrial interest, is a major research challenge today.

Biological tissues have complex mechanical properties – soft-yet-strong, tough-yet-flexible – that are difficult to reproduce using synthetic materials. An international team has managed to produce a biocompatible synthetic material that replicates tissue mechanics and alters color when it changes shape, like chameleon skin.

Access to clean drinking water is considered to be one of the main challenges of the 21st Century, and scientists have just opened a path to new filtration processes. Inspired by cellular proteins, they have developed membranes with asymmetric artificial channels in the interior, from which they were able to observe “chiral” water 1 .