L. Mahadevan's latest study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers insight into treatments for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other diseases in which protein aggregation (misfolded proteins clump together) is implicated. While the role of protein aggregation is not fully understood, many current treatments target the aggregation process. However, finding the right treatment protocols for these drugs is challenging....

Dolphin skin has long inspired research on drag reduction mechanisms due to the presence of skin ridges that could reduce fluid resistance. Prof. George Lauder and PhD student, Dylan Wainwright (Lauder Lab) collected in vivo three-dimensional surface data on the skin from five species of odontocetes (cetaceans that includes dolphins, porpoises, and all other whales possessing teeth) to quantitatively examine skin texture, including the presence and size of ridges.

Lauder, Wainwright and team molded the skin of live...

A collaboration between professors at Tokyo Tech and Yamagata University and Prof. Jim Hanken has identified a surprising factor that the amount of oxygen surrounding the embryo could have been crucial for the appearance of interdigital cell death in tetrapods during evolution. The study, published in Developmental Cell, looked to understand the role of environmental oxygen in the...