From Soft to Solid: How a Coral Stiffens Its Skeleton on Demand

News / October 29, 2025

Touch the branches of Leptogorgia chilensis, a soft coral found along the Pacific coast from California to Chile, and its flexible arms stiffen, like Marvel’s Mr. Fantastic warding off a foe. Now, Penn Engineers have discovered the mechanism underlying this astonishing ability, one that could advance fields as varied as...

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Nanoparticle Blueprints Reveal Path to Smarter Medicines

News / October 23, 2025

Lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) are the delivery vehicles of modern medicine, carrying cancer drugs, gene therapies and vaccines into cells. Until recently, many scientists assumed that all LNPs followed more or less the same blueprint, like a fleet of trucks built from the same design Now, in Nature Biotechnology, researchers from...

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AI Uncovers New Antibiotics in Ancient Microbes

News / August 12, 2025

They’ve survived for billions of years in boiling acid, deep-sea vents and salt flats. Now, some of Earth’s oldest life forms — microbes called Archaea — are offering a new weapon in the fight against one of today’s most urgent health threats: antibiotic resistance.In a new study published in Nature...

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Centuries After Discovery, Red Blood Cells Still Hold Surprises

News / August 6, 2025

Red blood cells, long thought to be passive bystanders in the formation of blood clots, actually play an active role in helping clots contract, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. “This discovery reshapes how we understand one of the body’s most vital processes,” says...

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$2.6M NIH Grant Backs Search for Genetic Cure in Deadly Heart Disease

News / July 7, 2025

Fourteen million people worldwide suffer from enlarged hearts, or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic disease that thickens the heart’s walls, making it harder for the organ to pump blood — but many of them don’t know it. The disease is often undiagnosed, despite being the most common genetic heart disease...

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