Diseases such as tuberculosis, anthrax, and shigellosis -- a severe food-borne illness -- eventually could be treated with an entirely new and more-effective kind of antibiotic, thanks to a team of scientists led by Kenneth Keiler, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State. The team describes 46 previously untested molecules that target and disrupt an important step in the process of protein synthesis in bacteria, thereby making the bacteria incapable of replicating. This important step, known as "trans-translation," is a quality-control mechanism that is found in all species of bacteria. More information is online at science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2013-news/Keiler5-2013.

Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, autism and other difficult-to-study diseases now can be probed more safely and effectively thanks to an innovative new method for obtaining mature brain cells from reprogrammed skin cells. The method was developed by a research team led by Gong Chen at Penn State. "The most exciting part of this research is that it offers the promise of direct disease modeling by the creation, in a Petri dish, of mature human neurons that behave a lot like the neurons that grow naturally in the human brain," said Chen, a professor of biology and the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences at Penn State.