Nanobody-Mediated Neutralization Reveals an Achilles Heel for Norovirus

An Achilles' Heel of Term-Resolution

Term-resolution provides an elegant mechanism to prove that a quantified Boolean formula (QBF) is true. It is a dual to Q-resolution (also referred to as clause-resolution) and is practically highly important as it enables certifying answers of DPLL-based QBF solvers. While term-resolution and Q-resolution are very similar, they’re not completely symmetric. In particular, Q-resolution operates ...

Does Plasmodium falciparum have an Achilles' heel?

BACKGROUND Plasmodium falciparum is the parasite that causes the most severe form of malaria responsible for nearly a million deaths a year. Currently, science has been established about its cellular structures, its metabolic processes, and even the molecular structures of its intrinsic membrane proteins responsible for transporting water, nutrient, and waste molecules across the parasite plasm...

Cancer's new Achilles' heel?

Claims to the discovery of cancers Achilles’ heel are multiple, even clichéd. Analogies to this Greek myth usually refer to the fall of the undefeatable, yet the novelty behind the legend is that a seemingly immortal foe could be toppled by something so innocuous as his heel. This may be the case for cancer and a non-coding mitochondrial RNA that as yet has no known physiological function or me...

Ideology: Criminology's Achilles' Heel?

Antagonizing XIAP-mediated caspase-3 inhibition. Achilles' heel of cancers?

In this issue of Cancer Cell, Schimmer et al. report the identification of small molecule antagonists of XIAP that overcome its inhibition of caspase-3. It was remarkable that the compounds directly induced cell death in tumor cells while having little toxicity on normal cells. This suggests that caspases are already activated in tumor cells, which is different from the caspase activation statu...