A photograph of the bioluminescent fungus Neonothopanus nambi, featured in a paper by researchers from the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry, was selected for the cover of the October issue of The FEBS Journal (Volume 293, Issue 20, 2026). The paper also ranked among the top five most-read articles published in The FEBS Journal over the past six months.

Researchers from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of bioorganic chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences and their colleagues studied Rip-2, a natural antimicrobial peptide from the bean bug Riptortus pedestris. This β-hairpin peptide is a more active natural homolog of thanatin, a well-known antimicrobial peptide from the predatory stink bug Podisus maculiventris. Such molecules are considered promising antibiotic prototypes against Gram-negative bacteria because they target the Lpt system, which is responsible for lipopolysaccharide transport and outer-membrane formation.

A T cell recognizes a diseased cell by a molecular “tag” on its surface, and which T cell receptor fits which tag now shapes the development of cellular cancer therapies, vaccines and diagnostics. The world’s databases collecting these matches have turned out to be less dependable than was assumed: an independent experimental screen confirmed only about half of their entries. Scientists from IBCH RAS and their colleagues have shown how to tell sound records from faulty ones — and that the situation is markedly better than it might have seemed. The work is published in Nature Methods.