Mobile phone, computer and TV displays all use very expensive colour filters and other components, which cannot be easily recycled. German and Spanish scientists have designed a new screen, which is cheaper and ecological as it uses a hybrid material. This material’s luminescent proteins can be used in backlighting systems and colour filters made using a 3D printing technique.

Wheat, one of the most widely consumed grains in the world, contains gluten, a mixture of proteins that can be toxic for people with coeliac disease. A new study that analysed the toxic components of these proteins in various varieties of wheat makes the first step forward towards developing wheat-based products that are safe for coeliacs.

Spanish and German researchers have successfully seen for the first time the pores, shaped like rings and crescent moons, that the Bax protein perforates in mitochondrial membranes. This advance has been achieved thanks to super-resolution microscopy and may help find the “holy grail” of cell suicide, a crucial process in preventing cancer.

Researchers from the University of Oviedo have labelled sulphur in brewer’s yeast with a non-radioactive method so that when feeding it to laboratory rats the course taken by the element can be tracked and the amino acids and proteins analysed at the point of incorporation. The technique could be very useful for studying the metabolism of this micro-nutrient in vivo and verifying how sulphur-based drugs behave in the organism.