REAL STORIES

Mike Doustdar did not arrive at the top of Novo Nordisk through the laboratory or the Copenhagen boardroom. According to the company's official biography,...

Some of the most important interactions in biology do not happen inside neat, deep pockets. They occur where two proteins touch across broad surfaces,...

For generations, biology textbooks introduced mitochondria as the cell's power plants. The metaphor was useful, but it concealed a more complicated reality. Mitochondria have their...

One of the most consequential discoveries in peptide biology began with a receptor whose natural messenger was missing. Scientists knew that certain synthetic compounds...

An enzyme is a molecular machine refined by evolution, but the version found in nature is not always the version an industrial chemist needs....

Chemistry laboratories are comfortable places for reactions that would be disastrous inside a living cell. Reagents can be harsh, solvents can be toxic, and...

Long before protein design became a favorite phrase in artificial-intelligence headlines, David Baker was pursuing a deceptively radical idea: perhaps scientists did not have...

A short peptide is not the same as a full protein, and for much of modern chemistry that difference imposed a practical limit. Researchers could...