In the Literature

Blogs about published peer-reviewed scientific studies.

Life on Mars? Proteomic Secrets of Bacterial Survival in Martian Brines

Posted on by Sara Millevolte

Could bacteria survive on Mars? While images of the red planet might spark thoughts of barren landscapes and lifeless deserts, Mars holds a fascinating possibility: under suitable conditions, pockets of salty, perchlorate-rich brines could temporarily form on or near its surface. These brines are formed by salts that naturally absorb water from their surroundings. By lowering the temperature at which water freezes, these salts can stabilize liquid water, raising intriguing questions about the potential for microbial life. But what exactly would it take for bacteria to survive there? New research from Kloss et al. published in Scientific Reports sheds light on this cosmic question.

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Promega Fc Effector Assays: Measure Every Mechanism

Posted on by Promega

This post is written by Kai Hillman, PhD, Promega Corporation.

Every day, scientists push the boundaries of what’s possible with monoclonal antibodies (mAbs)—from targeting cancer cells to calming autoimmune-driven inflammation. These therapies rely not only on binding but on engineering the desired immune response. The suite of Promega Fc Effector Assays helps you understand these interactions from receptor binding and function, through bridging studies. With consistency, sensitivity, and scalability, these assays support teams from early discovery through lot release.

This article draws on real-world publications and product insights to show how Promega assays are powering next-generation immunotherapies—and redefining how we measure immune engagement.

Schematic diagramming the suite of Promega Fc effector assays in one seamless workflow to support antibody development across the pipeline.
Figure 1. Promega delivers the most comprehensive suite of Fc effector assays in one seamless workflow to support antibody development across the pipeline.
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What Shelter Dogs Can Tell Us About Emerging Zoonotic Diseases

Posted on by Michele Arduengo, PhD

Why Are Zoonotic Diseases Becoming a Bigger Risk?

As of September 9, 2025, the Worldometer listed the human global population as 8.3 billion people (1). This population growth means that humans will be living and working in previously uninhabited or minimally disturbed environments, increasing interactions between humans, domestic animals, wildlife, and their pathogens. This intensifying human-animal interface heightens the risk of zoonotic disease transmission, where pathogens cross species barriers (from wildlife to domestic livestock or from wildlife to humans), potentially leading to outbreaks and even pandemics.

How Do Urbanization and Climate Change Amplify Zoonotic Threats?

Urbanization, habitat disruption, and climate change further exacerbate these risks by altering ecosystems and facilitating the spread and emergence of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. Understanding and addressing these threats requires robust surveillance, effective diagnostics, and proactive strategies to prevent and mitigate disease emergence and spread.

In urban areas, public health officials are already using wastewater to monitor known pathogens and identify “hot spots” of activity to predict increases in illness within local populations (2). Animal shelters are another place where there is an opportunity to monitor for emerging infectious diseases that could affect domestic pet animals.

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Polyserine Targeting: A New Strategy Against Neurodegeneration

Posted on by Johanna Lee

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s are marked by the accumulation of misfolded proteins that wreak havoc on neurons. One of the most notorious culprits is tau, a structural protein that, in its diseased form, clumps together into aggregates that spread throughout the brain. These aggregates interfere with normal cellular processes, leading to memory loss, behavioral changes, and other devastating symptoms. Preventing tau aggregation is therefore a key strategy for slowing the progression of these symptoms.

What if we could recruit molecular “helpers” to stop tau from accumulating?

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Developing an Experimental Model System to Understand the Tumor Microenvironment of Melanoma Brain Metastases

Posted on by Michele Arduengo, PhD

Cancer’s greatest threat is its ability to spread to other tissues—a process known as metastasis. Melanoma, a form of skin cancer, exemplifies this devastating progression. Although treatable when caught early—with surgical removal resulting in over 99% survival at five years—once melanoma metastasizes, five-year survival rates plummet dramatically to around 27%. Even more concerning, melanoma exhibits a particularly high tendency to invade the central nervous system, causing melanoma brain metastases (MBMs) that are incurable and reduce median survival to just 13 months.

To understand metastasis, we need reliable and realistic experimental models. Traditional cell cultures on plastic dishes are limited, failing to replicate the intricate spatial organization and biochemical interactions within living tissues. Animal models are informative but expensive, ethically complex, and not always accurate for human diseases. Addressing this critical gap, Reed-McBain and colleagues (2025) introduced an innovative microphysiological system (MPS) designed to simulate the tumor microenvironment in the brain affected by metastatic melanoma.

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How Computational Design Can Predict the Next Viral Variant—and Help Us Prepare

Posted on by Johanna Lee

As SARS-CoV-2 continues to evolve, one lesson is painfully clear: immunity today may not guarantee protection tomorrow. Viruses are experts at mutating into countless variants to evade detection or neutralization by the immune system. In the race to keep up with this “immune escape”, researchers have largely focused on reactive strategies—testing vaccines against variants that already exist. But what if we could flip the script and anticipate where the virus is going next?

That’s precisely the aim of a new study published in Immunity. This study introduces EVE-Vax, a computational design platform that builds synthetic spike proteins capable of mimicking immune escape mutations—before they naturally arise.

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IL-6/STAT3-Regulated Long Non-Coding RNA Is Involved in Colorectal Cancer Progression

Posted on by Michele Arduengo, PhD

Researchers from Wenzhou Medical University in China have identified a mechanism involving long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) that contributes to colorectal cancer (CRC) progression. CRC is the third most common cancer worldwide and is one of the most lethal cancers across the globe. Understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie the development and progression of CRC is critical to developing biomarkers to detect it and new therapeutics to treat it. 

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What’s Hiding in Your Mussels? 

Posted on by Shannon Sindermann
mussels

Fresh mussels might be a delicacy in many parts of the world, but a new study from Italy suggests they could also be carriers of something much less appetizing: infectious viruses and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Published in Food and Environmental Virology, Venuti et al. (2025) investigated 60 mussel batches originating from the Campania (Southern Italy), Lazio and Puglia regions—and what they found raises important questions about food safety and environmental monitoring. 

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Growing Our Understanding of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa: Why Comprehensive Population Data Matters

Posted on by Kelly Grooms
A digitally rendered illustration of a cancer cell superimposed over the African continent. The cancer cell, with a textured, reddish-orange surface and extending tendrils, appears to spread across the dark red map of Africa, symbolizing the impact or presence of cancer on the continent.

In the genomics era, the promise of precision medicine and tailored diagnostics is only as good as the datasets, which makes it imperative that those sets reflect the diversity of the human population. Populations from the African continent, the most genomically diverse region in the world, are underrepresented in current genomic data sets.  Nowhere is closing this data gap more urgent than with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which has a disproportionately high incidence in women of African descent and limited therapeutic options.

Highlighting why comprehensive population data is so important are the results of a recent study profiling of 30 TNBC tumor samples from Angola and Cape Verde (1).  Whole-exome sequencing (WES), enriched with untranslated regions (UTRs), showed that 86% of somatic variants in these samples had never been reported before. WES can be especially valuable when working with limited or degraded samples, such as the FFPE samples used in this study, because it allows you to gain valuable insights from samples that are impractical for whole-genome sequencing (WGS). This study’s results emphasize the value in expanding omics cancer research so that it includes all populations and areas of the genome.

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Seeing Signals in a New Light: Far-Red Chemigenetic Biosensors Illuminate Kinase Activity

Posted on by Johanna Lee

Cell signaling is a finely tuned process where both timing and spatial context play essential roles. Whether it’s a hormone triggering a cellular response or a drug modulating a pathway, these processes unfold in dynamic, spatially organized ways. To study them, researchers rely on chemigenetic biosensors—genetically encoded tools that light up in response to molecular activity. However, traditional biosensors are constrained by several limitations: poor photostability under prolonged imaging, limited spectral flexibility for multiplexing, and insufficient spatial resolution for studying signaling events at subcellular scales.

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