Most bacteriophages are tailed bacteriophages with an isometric or a prolate head attached to a long contractile, long non-contractile, or short non-contractile tail. The tail is a complex machine that plays a central role in host cell recognition and attachment, cell wall and membrane penetration, and viral genome ejection. The mechanisms involved in the penetration of the inner host cell membrane by bacteriophage tails...
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Chewbacca Mom’s Facebook fame continues as she visits Hasbro, makers of the mask
What a view! Space station trio sails home through picture-perfect clouds
Three spacefliers from the International Space Station made a photogenic...
Jeff Bezos finds the perfect Father’s Day gift: A New Shepard launch
"Hey guys, do you think we can land with just two of those?" (credit: Blue Origin)
On Sunday morning, Blue Origin plans to continue pushing the capabilities of its New Shepard launch system, as well as the boundaries of the company's own transparency.
The company conducted the first two flights of New Shepard, which consists of a...
Revealed: EY names 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year winners for Pacific NW
Computational materials science: Predictions of pinning
A multiscale model has been implemented that provides accurate predictions of the behaviour of ferroelectric materials in electric fields, and might aid efforts to design devices such as sensors and digital memory. See Letter p.360
Nature 534 331 doi: 10.1038/534331a
The bastard battle you don’t want to miss: Epic ‘Game of Thrones’ episode airs Sunday
“Game of Thrones” geeks are going to finally get the epic battle they’ve been waiting for this Sunday, as Jon Snow takes on Ramsay Bolton in the “Battle of the...
Genetic dissection of Flaviviridae host factors through genome-scale CRISPR screens
The Flaviviridae are a family of viruses that cause severe human diseases. For example, dengue virus (DENV) is a rapidly emerging pathogen causing an estimated 100 million symptomatic infections annually worldwide. No approved antivirals are available to date and clinical trials with a tetravalent dengue vaccine showed disappointingly low protection rates. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) also remains a major medical problem, with 160 million...
Please read about the grandma whose Google search went viral. Thank you.
The internet is so taken aback by good manners that a tweet about a British grandma who used “please” and “thank you” as bookends to a Google search has achieved viral status.
We all have a family member who may be a little less...
Bird brains are dense—with neurons
What do you think they're using all those neurons for? (credit: Flickr user Teddy Llovet)
Birds are smart. They use tools, engage in social learning, plan for the future, and do a variety of other things that were once thought to be exclusively the stuff of primates. But hundreds of millions of years of evolution separate...