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A natural protein may protect the GI tract from infection

April 21, 2026
Embedded in the body’s mucosal surfaces, proteins called lectins bind to sugars found on cell surfaces. A team led by MIT chemistry professor Laura Kiessling has found that one such protein, intelectin-2, both helps fortify the mucosal barrier and offers broad-spectrum protection against harmful bacteria found in the GI tract.  Intelectin-2 binds to a sugar…

Early life may have breathed oxygen earlier than believed

April 21, 2026
Around 2.3 billion years ago, a pivotal period known as the Great Oxidation Event set the evolutionary course for oxygen-breathing life on Earth. But MIT geobiologists and colleagues have found evidence that some early forms of life evolved the ability to use oxygen hundreds of millions of years before that. By mapping enzyme sequences from…

Analog computing from waste heat

April 21, 2026
Heat generated by electronic devices is usually a problem, but a team led by Giuseppe Romano, a research scientist at MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, has found a way to use it for data processing that doesn’t rely on electricity. In this analog computing method, input data is encoded not as binary 1s and 0s…