Michael Eisenstein

1 week ago | nature.com | Michael Eisenstein

‘Blink and you’ll miss it’ is an understatement in the world of protein biology. A blink lasts hundreds of milliseconds. Proteins operate on a much shorter timescale — on the order of a millisecond, or even faster. “To capture many of the domain motions of proteins that are linked to function, you would have to be able to go down to a microsecond timescale,” says Ulrich Lorenz, a chemist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

4 weeks ago | nature.com | Michael Eisenstein

A steadily growing toolbox of techniques is helping researchers to understand the structural complexity that enables RNA molecules to perform a dizzying array of functions in the cell. You have full access to this article via your institution. It has always been easy to underestimate RNA as a mere ‘middleman’ between DNA and protein.

2 months ago | photonics.com | Michael Eisenstein

Amid abundant opportunity for directed energy systems, the viability of the technology’s deployment hinges on sustained investment. “Keep your eye on the sky” is a critical rule in modern warfare, due to the rapid proliferation of low-cost, speedy uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). These aircraft can be fitted with surveillance equipment for tracking the enemy or loaded with weapons or explosives to take out targets.

Feb 21, 2025 | nature.com | Michael Eisenstein

In the United States, healthy people are routinely screened for signs of a handful of cancers — women entering middle age should schedule a routine mammogram to check for breast cancer, for example. Unfortunately, this kind of early-detection programme is not the norm for all cancers; most malignancies are spotted only at more advanced stages, when people already have symptoms and treatments are much less effective.

Feb 18, 2025 | nature.com | Michael Eisenstein

When Patrick Yizhi Cai reflects on the state of synthetic genomics, he recalls the Big DNA Contest. Launched in 2004, the competition challenged synthetic biologists to design a novel, functional 40,000-base-pair DNA sequence that the contest sponsor, US DNA-synthesis firm Blue Heron Biotech (now Eurofins Genomics Blue Heron) would manufacture for free.