Editorial / Analysis
Science and post-truth
The team of Editors
We live in a technological era, characterized by extensive, easy and quick access to information. Years ago, as we contemplated the rise of this new age, a common opinion was that it would contribute to spread knowledge to all layers of society, reinforcing democracy, equality, freedom and justice. Back in 2012 there was a positive general opinion about how internet was transforming our lives, as it was “changing, for the better, the relationship between governments and citizens and increasing the involvement of people in political debate” [1]. At that time we had increasing number of examples in the international scene…
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beyond Biophysics
Diseño de fármacos y búsqueda de nuevas dianas
Federico Gago
Universidad de Alcalá (España)
La industria farmacéutica, las instituciones académicas y los centros de investigación cuentan con dos aproximaciones principales para el descubrimiento de nuevos fármacos: (i) los conocidos como cribados fenotípicos, que no son otra cosa sino los ensayos tradicionales de medida de una actividad biológica y la posible observación de un cambio (positivo o negativo) en presencia de una determinada molécula candidata, y (ii) la identificación o creación de nuevas moléculas basada en el conocimiento de la estructura…
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cool Biophysics
High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy: Probing the dynamics of biomolecules
Lorena Redondo-Morata
INSERM, Marseille (France)
Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)-based studies constitute today a fairly established methodology to observe the structure of biomolecules and to measure their mechanical properties. However, biomolecules are dynamic in nature; hence, to understand how they work we need to increase the spatiotemporal resolution of conventional AFM. In the last decade, High-Speed AFM (HS-AFM) was developed and successfully applied to several cellular machineries, either cytoplasmic or bound to membranes…
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