Collaboration by researchers in Singapore and Australia lead to first-of-its-kind computational biology algorithm that could enable more effective cellular therapies against major diseases. Cellular therapy is a powerful strategy to produce patient-specific, personalised cells to treat many diseases, including heart disease and neurological disorders. But a major challenge for cell therapy applications is keeping cells alive and well in the lab. That may soon change as researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and Monash University, Australia have devised an algorithm…
Discovery that bacterial biofilms behave like animal embryos sheds new light on the origin of life. Bacteria are a dominant form of life that inhabit every environment on Earth. This includes human bodies, where they outnumber our cells and genes and regulate our existence for good or bad. Bacteria are regularly viewed as simple, single-celled organisms. As bacteria are ancient, it is widely accepted that a bacteria-like, unicellular being was the first life. Recent work published in ‘Molecular Biology and…
Biotechnological solutions for degradation and recycling of plastics. Plastics are wonderful materials. They are extremely versatile and of almost eternal durability. But that also causes a problem. After around 100 years of plastic production, plastic particles are almost everywhere: in ground water, the oceans, the air and the food chain. Across the globe, considerable efforts are being taken to solve this “plastic crisis” by using biotechnological methods. However, most progress is restricted to a specific type of plastic, namely polyesters…
Research led by University of Pennsylvania biologists reveals an antagonistic relationship behind flower development. In an elegant choreography, plants take cues from their environment and channel them into flowers, roots, or branches. In a new paper in Nature Communications, biologist Doris Wagner of the School of Arts & Sciences and colleagues identified some of the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into arriving at these variations in plant architecture. Long interested in the translation of these environmental inputs to physical traits, Wagner…
Banyan trees are fig trees that begin their life as an epiphyte. The most noticeable feature of banyan Ficus species is their extraordinary aerial roots, which enable them to live as hemi-epiphytes, as do the strangler figs often seen in tropical forests. Being special for their enclosed urn-shaped inflorescence, fig plants rely on specific insect pollinators (fig wasps) for pollination and, in turn, provide nourishment and shelter for pollinators to reproduce. Morphological matching and signaling communication for host location between…
Switching voltage of an electrode alone can fine-tune the reactivity of a molecule. As we learned in chemistry class, chemical reaction occurs with the formation or cleavage of bonds between atoms. These chemical bonds form when atoms share or exchange electrons. The chemical reactivity can be controlled in several ways. Among them, the control of electronic property at the reaction site is generally employed. For example, electron-rich molecule prefers to react with a molecule that can readily accept electrons. Many…
Duplications and inversions of DNA segments lead to the masculinization of female moles. Female moles not only have ovarian, but also testicular tissue that produces male sex hormones – which lets them diverge from the categorization into two sexes. A team led by Berlin researchers Stefan Mundlos and Darío Lupiáñez describes in “Science” which genetic modifications contribute to this singular development. Moles are special creatures that roam in an extreme habitat. As mammals that burrow deep into the earth, they…
Heidelberg University neurobiologists have uncovered how a special receptor can lead to cell death. Their fundamental findings on neurodegenerative processes simultaneously led the researchers to a completely new principle for therapeutic agents. In their experiments on mouse models, they discovered a new class of highly effective inhibitors for protecting nerve cells. This novel class of drugs opens up perspectives to combat currently untreatable diseases of the nervous system. New Class of Highly Effective Inhibitors Protects against Neurodegeneration Heidelberg neurobiologists decode…
Measurements in thorium-229 take a step towards the direct laser excitation of an atomic nucleus in this unique isotope Nuclear clocks could make our time measurement even more accurate than atomic clocks. The key to this lies in thorium-229, an atomic nucleus whose lowest excited state has very low energy. A research team from the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at the University of Heidelberg, TU Wien, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), and GSI Helmholtzzentrum in…
New study by a team of Harvard-led researchers rebuts 75-year-old belief in reptile evolution. Challenging a 75-year-old notion about how and when reptiles evolved during the past 300 million-plus years involves a lot of camerawork, loads of CT scanning, and, most of all, thousands of miles of travel. Just check the stamps in Tiago R. Simões ‘ passport. Simões is the Alexander Agassiz Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Harvard paleontologist Stephanie Pierce. From 2013 to 2018, he traveled to…
In response to climate change, the spring migration of many migratory birds is shifting ever further forward. However, according to a study presented by an international research team led by Vetmeduni Vienna, this change does not follow a uniform pattern. On the contrary, closer inspection reveals a complex picture: Essential for the start of the migration is the region of wintering. It is known from previous studies that migratory birds bring forward their spring arrival in European breeding areas due…
Evolution in Action A new plant species named “Cardamine insueta” appeared in the region of Urnerboden in the Swiss alps, after the land has changed from forest to grassland over the last 150 years. The inheritance of two key traits from its parent plants enabled the newly emerged species to grow in a distinct environmental niche, as researches from the University of Zurich now show. The emergence of a new species is generally thought to occur over long periods of…
Real-time observation of signal transmission in proteins provides new insights for drug research. Proteins transduce information and signals within the human body by changes in their structures. For example, hormones binding to their target proteins cause a structural change which in turn opens new binding sites for other proteins elsewhere on the surface of the protein. Researchers refer to this coupling of different, distant binding sites as allostery. An interruption of this coupling leads to signals not being passed on….
The carnivorous Venus flytrap snaps shut when a prey touches it twice within 30 seconds. In the journal Nature Plants researchers report on how this plant’s short-term memory and counting system works. The carnivorous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) can count to five: A team led by biophysicist Rainer Hedrich, professor at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, proved this in 2016. This finding received worldwide attention in science and the media. In 2019, the JMU plant scientist was awarded the…
To achieve food security, to promote peace, to ensure access to quality education and clean water and sanitation, to improve health, to take action to combat climate change, to restore ecosystems and to reduce inequalities: these are some of the 17 SDG identified by the UN to address the global challenges faced by societies. Research can be used to achieve these interrelated goals, by not only producing reliable knowledge and data, offering innovative solutions and assessing progress but also in…
Researchers from TU Graz and Ruhr University Bochum show in the journal ACS Catalysis how the catalytic activity of cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can be significantly increased. This brings biotechnological and thus eco-friendly application a big step closer. Cyanobacteria, despite staining water green through their special pigments, are colloquially known as “blue-green algae”, and convert light energy into chemical energy particularly effectively thanks to their highly active photosynthetic cells. This makes them attractive for biotechnological application, where they…
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