An antidote to fear

10 million people in the UK suffer from some sort of phobia. At the heart of these anxiety-related disorders are aversive memories, which are formed when the brain makes a link between an object, animal, place, or situation and a traumatic event experienced at the same time. Currently, treatment for these phobias involves gradually exposing…

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Ramakrishnan and his ribosome – a review

Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society and 2009 Nobel Prize winner, is already well known in the scientific community for his publications about the ribosome. What I wasn’t expecting however, was that his part-memoir, part-popular science book contained far more about the pace, people and progress of science than could ever be gleaned from…

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Aberrant antibodies: don’t always trust what it says on the tin

Antibodies are proteins generated by the immune system capable of recognising short peptide fragments (known as epitopes) with a remarkably high degree of specificity. This specificity makes them a powerful tool for research, allowing us to identify, track, and quantify specific proteins in a wide range of assays. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) can be generated for…

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