solubility

Picture a tiny hole in a sheet of graphene: a single missing carbon atom. It used to be thought that a water molecule splits apart at this defect only on its own, in dry gas. But if liquid water is sloshing all around, everything changes.

Construction is in full swing: neurons are laying down their processes the way bricklayers stack up walls. But an error has crept into the blueprints. The protein tau, which normally serves as scaffolding for the cellular framework, in its mutant form starts dictating the wrong dimensions.

In a city where danger zones pop up and vanish without warning, a malicious GPS is always trying to steer you into a trap. This unpredictable foe operates at every intersection. Yet a mathematical universal framework calculates all possible ploys and charts a path that guarantees safety even amid severe interference.

Think of a massive cookbook: each recipe is a protein, and the finished dish is its job in the cell. To whip up a complex treat, you often need to mix several ingredients and let them 'set' into the right shape. Until now, scientist-chefs could only guess how someone else's recipes would fold.