Magnets sustainably separate mixtures of rare earth metals

A new study describes a novel approach for purifying rare earth metals, crucial components of technology that require environmentally-damaging mining procedures. By relying on the metal's magnetic fields during the crystallization process, researchers were able to efficiently and selectively separate mixtures of rare earth metals.

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Newly discovered protein is the permit to the powerhouse of cells

Researchers report the discovery of a protein, P17/PERMIT, that is key to recycling aging and damaged mitochondria. Defective mitochondria are characteristic of a number of age-related diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer's. The MUSC team showed P17/PERMIT transports the machinery that produces ceramide, a molecule that signals old mitochondria for destruction, to the mitochondria. There, it can mass-produce ceramide at the location needed for mitochondrial regulation.

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By cutting out one gene, researchers remove a tadpole's ability to regenerate

Tadpoles that can typically regrow amputated tails or limbs lost their ability to regenerate after researchers blocked the expression of a newly identified gene that is one of the drivers for this regrowth. Furthermore, scientists hypothesize that the loss of appendage regeneration in warm-blooded animals might have been caused by the gain or loss of this gene, dubbed c-Answer, in an ancestor's genome during evolution.

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