helix

Normally, alpha-synuclein's natural or "native state" is like a flexible strand, but when active it shapes itself into a helix, which is critical for its function in binding and transporting parcels of dopamine.

This is because the layers of helices stuck together are too big to be the building blocks of nanofibers.

More than seven decades later, mathematician Robert Monjo believes he has discovered a similarly significant double helix — but this time not as the structure of human DNA, but as the structure of spacetime itself.

The enigma emerged in the 1950s, when biologists discovered that the double helix of DNA encodes genes.

Functional analysis based on these structures also revealed how a "prime editor" could achieve reverse transcription, synthesizing DNA from RNA, without "cutting" both strands of the double helix.