Nramp-family transporters adapt a common fold to a novel mechanism in which the spatial and temporal separation of like-charge transition metal and proton co-substrates circumvents the expected electrostatic repulsion.

RecO efficiently displaces SSB from ssDNA without consuming ATPs using its two DNA-binding sites, even though SSB binds to ssDNA approximately 300 times more strongly than RecO does.

A structural investigation reveals details of the mechanism by which the nuclease RecJ processes DNA ends to repair double strand breaks.

Time-resolved crystallography provides insight into the photochemical reactions in photoreceptor proteins, explaining the earliest steps of how plants, fungi and bacteria sense red light.

Random sequence RNA pools display an innate capacity for ligation and recombination, enabling them to “bootstrap” themselves towards higher compositional, informational and structural complexity.

Extremely short X-ray pulses from a free-electron laser are helping to clarify how phytochromes respond to light, but puzzles remain.

The structural and mechanistic characterization of competitive inhibition of human DMT1 offers a promising route for the development of compounds for the treatment of iron overload disorders.

Experiments on E. coli show that multiple mechanisms contribute to extreme resistance to ionizing radiation in bacteria, with mutations to three genes for DNA repair having a prominent role in one evolved population.

Kasugamycin potentiates rifampicin killing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by targeting adaptive mistranslation.