Llama nanobodies and nearby black holes

Lost in Science

This week, Cat tells us about nanobodies, the smaller versions of antibodies that camelids like llamas and alpacas have, and how they could help combat HIV; and Chris clues us into the closest known black hole in our galaxy, and a much larger one thousands of times the mass of our Sun, hidden inside a star cluster.Jianliang Xu et al., Ultrapotent Broadly Neutralizing Human-llama Bispecific Antibodies against HIV-1. Adv. Sci. 2024, 11, 2309268. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202309268Kareem El-Badry et al., A Sun-like star orbiting a black hole, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 518, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages 1057–1085, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac3140Häberle, M., Neumayer, N., Seth, A. et al. Fast-moving stars around an intermediate-mass black hole in ω Centauri. Nature 631, 285–288 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07511-z