An ingenious device, only a few micrometers in size, enables to study the reaction of individual biological cells to mechanical stress – publication in Science Advances. The behavior of cells is controlled by their environment. Besides biological factors or chemical substances, physical forces such as pressure or tension are also involved. Researchers from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Heidelberg University developed a method that enables them to analyze the influence of external forces on individual cells. Using a 3D…
A novel optical switch makes it possible to precisely control the lifespan of genetic “copies”. These are used by the cell as building instructions for the production of proteins. The method was developed by researchers from the universities of Bonn and Bayreuth. It may significantly advance the investigation of dynamic processes in living cells. The study is published in the journal Nature Communications. Metaphorically speaking, every human cell contains in its nucleus a huge library of tens of thousands of…
Soft matter on new ways to self-organization Nematic materials, such as the liquid crystals in our displays, contain molecules that align themselves in parallel. When they are constructed from microtubules and kinesins, materials found in our cells, they become active and move and deform without the supply of energy from the outside. In a new paper published in Nano Letters, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen report the creation of a 3D active nematic….
Secondary variant of Photorhabdus luminescens interacts with plant roots New form of insect-pathogenic bacterium extends the options for sustainable crop protection and biological pest control in agriculture. One of the basic approaches in organic farming is to use organisms beneficial to the system to combat pests. The bacterium Photorhabdus luminescens is one such beneficial organism. In the case of insect larvae infestation, the bacterium produces a variety of different toxins which quickly kill the larvae. Yet, it seems this is…
Scientists from Göttingen compare cognitive skills of different primate species. Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans are our closest relatives, and like us they have relatively large brains and they are very intelligent. But do animals with larger brains really perform better in cognitive tests? A research team from the German Primate Center (DPZ) – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen has for the first time systematically investigated the cognitive abilities of lemurs, which have relatively small brains compared to other…
Kiel research team is using the nematode model Caenorhabditis elegans to gain new insights into the regulation of the innate immune response All higher organisms have an immune system that constitutes a biological defense mechanism to protect the body from pathogens and foreign substances. It consists of a complex network of different organs, cell types and molecules that recognizes and fights harmful substances and pathogenic microorganisms. Invertebrates rely exclusively on the innate immune system, which protects the integrity of the…
The cells that make up our body are tiny, each of them measuring only micrometers in diameter. The ensemble of chromosomal DNA molecules that encode the genome, on the other hand, measures almost 2 meters. In order to fit into cells, chromosomal DNA is folded many times. But the DNA is not merely squeezed into the nucleus in a random manor but folded in a specific and highly regulated structure. The spatial organization of chromosomal DNA enables regulated topological interactions…
Researchers have sequenced the genome of Alexander Fleming’s penicillin mould for the first time and compared it to later versions. Alexander Fleming famously discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928 while working at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, which is now part of Imperial College London. The antibiotic was produced by a mould in the genus Penicillium that accidentally started growing in a Petri dish. Now, researchers from Imperial College London, CABI and the University of Oxford have sequenced the…
By far the most important process in cell development is how cells divide and then enlarge in order to multiply. A research team headed by Freiburg medical scientist Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse has now discovered that bundled fibers of actin within a cell nucleus play an important part in how they enlarge after division. Fibers of the structural protein actin stabilize the outer form of the cell and transport substances into a cell. The mechanisms that influence the growth of…
Widespread fungal disease in plants can be controlled with a commercially available chemical that has been primarily used in medicine until now. This discovery was made by scientists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of the State of Paraná in Brazil. In a comprehensive experiment the team has uncovered a new metabolic pathway that can be disrupted with this chemical, thus preventing many known plant fungi from invading the host plant. The team reported on their study…
Kiel research team provides new insights into the role of the eisosomes as membrane building blocks in fungi The red mould Neurospora crassa belongs to the group of sac fungi and serves researchers as a common model organism that allows a comparatively simple analysis of genetic information and the functions associated with it. The fungus has been the subject of scientific research for decades and its genetic information contained in around 10,000 genes has been completely decoded since the beginning…
The stem cells tasked with creating and maintaining biological tissues have a difficult job. They have to precisely divide to form new specialized cells, which are destined to different fates even though they contain identical DNA. An obvious question then is: How do the cells divide in all the right ways to produce a healthy tissue? This was the grand motivating question for Andrew Muroyama, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Stanford University biologist Dominique Bergmann, as he monitored…
How is conceptual knowledge represented in the brain such that we can flexibly use it to interpret unfamiliar information or to infer relations we’ve never directly experienced? One means of organizing conceptual knowledge would be in a kind of internal map. Thus, the map would have to be dynamically defined along those feature dimensions that are currently relevant to the concept. Stephanie Theves and Christian Doeller of MPI CBS in Leipzig together with Guillén Fernández of the Donders Institute Nijmegen,…
Scientists from the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of British Columbia have discovered a major role of the protein JAGN1 in antibody production and the body’s ability to mount a defense against pathogens, including viruses. The results have been published online today in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Antibodies play a fundamental role in medicine, and antibody-mediated immune response is the ultimate target in the quest for a vaccine to defeat the…
Multiresistant bacteria are a serious problem in hospital and healthcare environments. By forming a biofilm, these pathogens can colonize door handles and light switches and their presence on medical implants can lead to serious cases of post-operative infection. A team of physicists at Saarland University has now shown why hospital germs adhere strongly to surfaces from which water simply rolls off, but bind so poorly to surfaces that are easily wetted by water. These results from studies in both experimental…
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam have developed a green and sustainable approach for selective p-xylene synthesis Lemonade, juice and mineral water often come in PET bottles. While these are practical and functional, their production is complex and not necessarily sustainable. The starting material for terephthalic acid, which is used to produce saturated polyesters such as PET (Polyethylene terephthalate), is p-xylene pXL. To this day, the production of pXL is still based on fossil…
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