Researchers at the University of Freiburg established the world’s largest collection of moss species for the peat industry and science. Peatlands with their huge diversity of peat moss species store about 30 percent of the earth’s soil carbon. This means they store roughly twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. However, peat harvesting and climate change are threatening these long-term carbon stores because there is not enough founder material for cultivating peat mosses on a large scale….
Professor Andreas Reiner and Stefan Pollok from the junior research group Cellular Neurobiology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) report on this unexpected finding and the underlying mechanisms in the journal PNAS from 30 September 2020. Wanted: more precise drugs Glutamate is the messenger substance, which the brain uses to pass on excitatory signals. Receptors for this neurotransmitter are a promising target for drug development, as they are involved in many pathological processes. For example, they play a role in epilepsy, mental…
Industrial Relevance Proven In catalysts, more surface area usually equals more activity. And hardly anything offers more surface than structures made of nanoparticles. Scientists from the Center for Nanointegration (CENIDE) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) have shown that it makes sense in economic terms to produce catalytically highly active particles by laser. Not only are they extremely pure, but even at low temperatures they are more efficient than their conventionally produced counterparts. This has been demonstrated in tests conducted…
In unraveling how a single cell develops into a complex organism, one vexing question has remained for developmental biology: How do robust patterns form in the body? An answer has now been found for the zebrafish neural tube. In this paradigm of patterned tissues, the varying stickiness of cells combined with gradients of signaling molecules is responsible for generating a robust pattern. This is the result of a study published in Science, carried out jointly by the lab of Carl-Philipp…
Limited access to iron at high temperatures impairs growth and function of microalgae that live within coral cells. How well corals respond to climate change could depend in part on the already scarce amount of iron available in their environment, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. The study reveals that the combination of hot water temperatures and low iron levels compromises the algae that live within coral cells, suggesting that limited iron levels–which could decline with…
Freiberg researchers use bioleaching to recycle electronic waste Biohydrometallurgists at TU Bergakademie Freiberg have demonstrated for the first time that leaching with the help of bacteria can also be used to separate components when recycling electronic waste. The team around Professor Michael Schlömann has now published their research results in the current issue of the journal MDPI / Recycling. An old electronic board was placed in a flask filled with a bacterial solution. In the beginning, not much happens in…
The number of alien (non-native) species, particularly insects, arthropods and birds, is expected to increase globally by 36% by the middle of this century, compared to 2005, finds new research by an international team involving UCL. Published in Global Change Biology, the study also predicts the arrival of around 2,500 new alien species in Europe, which translates to an increase of 64% for the continent over the 45-year period. The research team led by the German Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate…
The case of the cluster anemones If you dive in the Mediterranean Sea, the cluster anemone is among the most fascinating and magnificent corals you could see. You can find it on rocks or sponges, in scarcely lit areas such as sea caves and gorges, where it clusters in dense agglomerations resembling yellow and orange carpets. In a study published in Scientific Reports, a research group of the University of Bologna found evidence that some corals commonly labelled as “cluster…
Researchers at the University of Bath in the UK and biopharma company UCB have found a way to produce miniaturised antibodies, opening the way for a potential new class of treatments for diseases. Until now, the smallest manmade antibodies (known as monoclonal antibodies, or mAbs) were derived from llamas, alpacas and sharks, but the breakthrough molecules isolated from the immune cells of cows are up to five times smaller. This is thanks to an unusual feature of a bovine antibody known as…
An African millet crop could be improved for growth in the dry, arid lands of Saudi Arabia by using information about its genome. Fonio is already well-adapted to this environment but has not had as much domestication as the major cereal crops, such as wheat, rice and maize. Gene targeting could lead to higher yields and larger grains. “The Arabian Peninsula is home to 80 million people and needs to import 90 percent of its food,” says KAUST plant scientist,…
Dresden researchers develop a new method and discover new features of primary cilia – little understood antenna-like structures protruding from cells. Cells sense their environment and send signals to other cells to function properly. The responsible “organ” to perform these functions is the cilium, an antenna-like structure protruding from most vertebrate cells. There are two types of cilia: motile and non-motile cilia. While motile cilia have been studied extensively, the three-dimensional architecture and molecular composition of non-motile cilia, also called…
In birds and other species alike, pairs can face considerable difficulties with reproduction. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now shown in an extensive analysis of 23,000 zebra finch eggs that infertility is mainly due to males, while high embryo mortality is more a problem of the females. Inbreeding, age of the parents and conditions experienced when growing up had surprisingly little influence on reproductive failures. Zebra finches are small songbirds that originate from Australia….
A molecule that can mimic the function of zaxinone, a natural growth-promoting plant metabolite, has been designed and fabricated by an international team led by KAUST and the University of Tokyo. Their successful mimic may have wide-reaching applications in plant biology and agriculture. “We identified zaxinone in a previous study and found that it both stimulates the growth of rice plants and appears to reduce infestation by the root parasite Striga (witchweed),” says Jian You Wang, Ph.D. student under the…
For over 15 years, ETH Professor Andreas Hierlemann and his group have been developing microelectrode-array chips that can be used to precisely excite nerve cells in cell cultures and to measure electrical cell activity. These developments make it possible to grow nerve cells in cell-culture dishes and use chips located at the bottom of the dish to examine each individual cell in a connected nerve tissue in detail. Alternative methods for conducting such measurements have some clear limitations. They are…
Mitochondria are the powerhouses of our cells, generating energy that supports life. A giant molecular proton pump, called complex I, is crucial: It sets in motion a chain of reactions, creating a proton gradient that powers the generation of ATP, the cell’s fuel. Despite complex I’s central role, the mechanism by which it transports protons across the membrane has so far been unknown. Now, Leonid Sazanov and his group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) have…
We humans need oxygen to breath – for a lot of microbes it is a lethal poison. That is why microorganisms have developed ways to render oxygen molecules harmless. Microbiologists from Bremen, Marburg and Grenoble have now succeeded in decrypting such a mechanism. They show, how methane-generating microbes transform oxygen into water without causing any damage to the cell. These findings are relevant for future bio-inspired processes. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that plays a central role in the…
Feedback
