D tagged posts

This artist’s impression shows several of the planets orbiting the ultra-cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. New observations, when combined with very sophisticated analysis, have now yielded good estimates of the densities of all seven of the Earth-sized planets and suggest that they are rich in volatile materials, probably water. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

A new study has found that planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1 are made mostly of rock, and some could hold more H2O than Earth. The planets’ densities suggest that some of them could have up to 5% of their mass in the form of water. The hotter planets closest to their parent star are likely to have dense steamy atmospheres and the more distant ones probably have icy surfaces...

The new method overcomes obstacles in designing D versions of complex helical peptides. Credit: Michael Garton, University of Toronto

Mirror-image version of existing drugs would last longer in the body thanks to their ability to avoid breakdown by enzymes in the stomach and bloodstream. For patients, this means less frequent drug injections and more medicines could potentially be made available as pills. Designing these drugs has been tricky, however. Now a team of researchers led by Philip Kim, a professor of computer science and molecular genetics in the University of Toronto’s Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, has developed a new technology for making mirror-image peptides, which bind and activate receptors on the surface of cells.

They created mirror-image versio...