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Category: nanotechnology

Sound-sensing hair bundles in our ears act as tiny thermodynamic machines

The hair cells lining the inner ear are among the most sophisticated structures in the human body: capable of detecting sounds as faint as a whisper, while helping to maintain our sense of balance. Through new models detailed in PRX Life, a team led by Roman Belousov at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory has revealed for the first time how oscillating bundles attached to these cells operate in different thermodynamic regimes—offering a new framework for understanding how our hearing works at a fundamental level.

Within the inner ear, each hair cell hosts a hair “bundle”: a cluster of tiny, bristle-like projections that vibrate in response to incoming sound waves. The mechanical energy from these oscillations is then converted into electrical signals which travel to the brain. Rather than being passive receivers, these bundles actively oscillate —driven by molecular motors within the cell that allow them to amplify faint signals and tune in to specific frequencies.

But despite decades of study, researchers are still unclear on the connection between this active oscillation and the hair bundle’s response to external sound. Existing models tended to treat bundles as if they were moving spontaneously, without accounting for what happens when they actually interact with sound.

A nanoparticle therapy to treat lung cancer and associated muscle wasting at the same time

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a technique for simultaneously treating lung cancer and a serious muscle-wasting condition that often accompanies it. The study, published in the Journal of Controlled Release, involves lipid nanoparticles delivering therapeutic genetic material to lung tumors.

In a mouse model, scientists led by Oleh Taraula and Yoon Tae Goo of the OSU College of Pharmacy showed that a type of nanocarrier loaded with follistatin messenger RNA is able to accumulate in tumors. Once there, the mRNA triggers cells to produce the follistatin protein, which plays a key role both in inhibiting tumors and promoting muscle tissue growth.

The lipid nanoparticles, or LNPs, can be administered intravenously and reach the lungs courtesy of another protein, vitronectin, that’s found in blood serum. Lipids are fatty acids and similar organic compounds, including many natural oils and waxes. Nanoparticles are tiny pieces of material ranging in size from one-to 100-billionths of a meter.

Scientists reveal a new way cancer cells survive DNA damage

A cancer drug target already being investigated in clinical trials turns out to be doing something even more consequential than researchers realized. Scientists at Scripps Research have discovered that the enzyme Pol theta (Polθ) drives a DNA repair mechanism directly at broken replication forks—one of the most frequent forms of DNA damage in cancer cells. The findings, published in Molecular Cell on March 16, 2026, help explain how tumors survive relentless replication stress and clarify why Pol theta inhibitors may be an effective strategy to selectively target cancer.

“We’ve uncovered a whole new dimension of how cancer cells cope with DNA damage at replication forks,” says Xiaohua Wu, professor at Scripps Research and senior author of the study.

Every time a cell divides, it must make an exact copy of its entire genome, a process carried out by molecular machinery that unzips the DNA double helix and reads each strand to build a new one. The point where this unzipping and copying actively happens is called a replication fork. But when this replication machinery encounters damage, forks can stall or collapse, leaving behind dangerous one-ended DNA breaks that are particularly difficult to repair and, if left unresolved, can kill the cell. This is particularly true in cancer cells, where replication stress is constant.

What this AI epitope library means for vaccines, immunotherapy and biosensors

A new tool makes it possible to screen millions of tiny protein fragments and select those that can be recognized by the immune system. The CIC biomaGUNE Center for Cooperative Research in Biomaterials has developed epiGPTope, a system that uses machine learning to generate and classify epitopes, in collaboration with the company Multiverse Computing.

The immune system is triggered by the presence of viruses or bacteria. When the antibodies produced recognize the epitopes, a small part of these viruses or bacteria, they launch an attack strategy. These epitopes are small fragments of protein recognized by antibodies or by immune cell receptors. So discovering new epitope sequences that target specific antibodies is essential for the development of diagnostic tools, immunotherapies and vaccines.

CIC biomaGUNE’s Biomolecular Nanotechnology laboratory, led by the Ikerbasque Research Professor Aitziber L. Cortajarena, is creating a library or database of hundreds of thousands of synthetic epitopes using this AI-based technique. The work is published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology.

3D-printed ‘spanlastics’ could change how cancer drugs reach tumors

University of Mississippi research offers hope that cancer drug therapies packaged in 3D-printed carriers could deliver medication directly to tumors while reducing many of the side effects that cancer patients endure. In a study published in Pharmaceutical Research, the Ole Miss team demonstrated that 3D-printed spanlastics—a tiny carrier filled with cancer-fighting drugs—could be implanted directly at the site of a tumor and kill those cells.

“This paper introduced a new 3D printing concept called FRESH 3D printing,” said Mo Maniruzzaman, chair and professor of pharmaceutics and drug delivery. “It uses spanlastics as a new nano-drug delivery vehicle for anticancer drug delivery. We actually applied this on breast cancer cells and we got some really, really promising data.”

Traditional chemotherapy is often given orally or injected into the bloodstream, where the circulatory system disperses cancer-fighting therapy throughout the body.

Quantum ground state of rotation achieved for the first time in two dimensions

Quantum mechanics tells us that a particle can never be perfectly still. But how precisely can it be oriented? A research team at the University of Vienna, together with colleagues at TU Wien and Ulm University, has now cooled the rotational motion of a levitated silica nanorotor all the way to its quantum ground state—in two orientational degrees of freedom.

Reporting in Nature Physics, they show how optical cooling confines the nanoparticle’s orientation to within the bounds of quantum zero-point fluctuations, the unavoidable orientational uncertainty imposed by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Such quantum-limited alignment is an important milestone towards rotational matter-wave interferometry and ultra-sensitive quantum torque sensing.

Reshaping gold leads to new electronic and optical properties

By changing the physical structure of gold at the nanoscale, researchers can drastically change how the material interacts with light—and, as a result, its electronic and optical properties. This is shown by a study from Umeå University published in Nature Communications.

Gold plays a crucial role in modern advanced technology thanks to its unique properties. New research now demonstrates that changing the material’s physical structure—its morphology—can fundamentally enhance both its electronic behavior and its ability to interact with light.

“This might make it possible to improve the efficiency of chemical reactions such as those used in hydrogen production or carbon capture,” says Tlek Tapani, one of the leading researchers behind the study and doctoral student at the Department of Physics.

A New Probe of Nanoparticle Melting

Understanding nanoparticles is important in astrophysics and atmospheric physics and for applications like catalysts. These particles are tough to characterize, but now Vitaly Kresin of the University of Southern California and his colleagues have determined one elusive property with high accuracy. They inferred the melting point of sodium and potassium nanoparticles 7–9 nm in diameter with an accuracy of 1% [1]. They found that the melting point is about 100 K lower than in bulk samples, in agreement with less-precise data on other types of nanoparticles of this size and with theoretical predictions. The technique could potentially provide a new way to probe other properties of nanoparticles having a wide range of sizes.

Metal nanoparticles are known to melt at lower temperatures than bulk samples, but the theory needed to predict the melting point has significant uncertainties. Experiments also face various challenges, such as the tendency of electron microscopes to melt nanoparticles. Kresin and his colleagues suspected that the work function—the energy required to remove an electron from a surface or a nanoparticle—might show some notable changes when a nanoparticle melts, given the major structural rearrangements involved.

Their recently developed setup [2] uses a beam of temperature-controlled nanoparticles targeted by an adjustable-wavelength, monochromatic light source. When the photons eject electrons, the team detects the charged particles. For both sodium and potassium, the work function-versus-temperature data show a clear discontinuity and change in slope at the melting point.

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