News for sctoday

E.coli’s envelope is difficult to penetrate and frustrates those who try to find new antibiotics to fight the bacterium. Two of the envelope’s three layers are secured firmly by a lipoprotein, Lpp. By manipulating it, UCLouvain researchers were able to weaken E. coli. Naturally present...

The Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean was once an explorer’s dream. Eventually, big icebreakers made their way through the ice. Soon it could become a routine summer cruise: by 2050 the North Pole will experience at least one summer without pack ice. Unlike...

For some time now researchers have been trying to neutralise a key player in the survival and multiplication of tumour cells, without much success. But today a team of researchers led by UCLouvain has found a completely new approach. Every cell needs to ‘breathe’. That is, absorb gases...

Why doesn’t Staphylococcus aureus respond to antibiotics? And why, when treatment appears to have worked and is stopped, are infection relapses frequent? To escape antibiotics and the body’s defences, the bacterium hibernates within our cells while waiting for the storm to pass! This is what...