Unexpected findings on SARS-CoV-2 replication. How SARS-CoV-2 initiates its replication process during infection is not yet fully understood. Researchers from the Helmholtz Institute Würzburg have now shown for the first time in the journal Cell that it is the human protein SND1 which works together with the viral protein NSP9 to stimulate the virus’s genetic replication program in infected cells. The scientists were surprised to find that NSP9 acts as the first building block in the production of new viral…
Robots built by engineers at the University of California San Diego helped achieve a major breakthrough in understanding how insect flight evolved, described in the Oct. 4, 2023 issue of the journal Nature. The study is a result of a six-year long collaboration between roboticists at UC San Diego and biophysicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The findings focus on how the two different modes of flight evolved in insects. Most insects use their brains to activate their flight…
… a universal workflow. Biophysically detailed neuronal models provide a unique window into the workings of individual neurons. They enable researchers to manipulate neuronal properties systematically and reversibly, something that is often impossible in real-world experiments. These in silico models have played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of how neuronal morphology influences excitability and how specific ion currents contribute to cell function. Additionally, they have been instrumental in building neuronal circuits to simulate and study brain activity, offering…
To distinguish motion patterns, a neuronal computation is performed three times in a row. Recognizing motion requires an enormous amount of computing power from the brain. A new study from Alexander Borst’s department at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence shows how the fly brain masters this task: By performing a neuronal computation on three network levels, it distributes the workload over several steps. This is the first time that researchers have deciphered a neuronal network in which one…
A chloroplast enzyme safeguards plants against pathological protein aggregation that causes Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases / new research reported in “Nature Aging” may have found a way to “copy” the mechanism for application in human cells. Researchers at the University of Cologne’s CECAD Cluster of Excellence for Aging Research and the CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence for Plant Sciences have found a promising synthetic plant biology approach for the development of a therapy to treat human neurodegenerative diseases, especially Huntington’s…
Genetic quality or genetic compatibility? What do female fruit flies prioritize when mating? Researchers at the University of Zurich show that both factors are important at different stages of the reproductive process and that females use targeted strategies to optimize the fitness of their offspring. Breeding female fruit flies face a difficult decision: do they mate with the male that has the best genes, or with the one whose genes best match their own? Evolutionary biologists from the University of…
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine, and the Hospital for Special Surgery Research Institute have uncovered new details about how the immune system prevents the production of antibodies that can recognize and damage the body’s own, healthy tissues. The study, to be published September 29 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (JEM), also reveals how this process is impaired in autoimmune disorders such as systemic sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus and suggests potential new…
Newly engineered CRISPR enzyme for editing DNA is more compact yet just as efficient as current popular tool, and could improve patient treatment. A new CRISPR-based gene-editing tool has been developed which could lead to better treatments for patients with genetic disorders. The tool is an enzyme, AsCas12f, which has been modified to offer the same effectiveness but at one-third the size of the Cas9 enzyme commonly used for gene editing. The compact size means that more of it can…
MPI scientists reveal how phosphate escapes from actin filaments – a key signal that primes older filaments for disassembly. Actin filaments are dynamic protein-fibres in the cell built from single actin proteins. Many cellular functions, including cell movement, are regulated by constant filament assembly and disassembly. The disassembly phase is initiated by the release of a phosphate group from inside the filament, but the details of this process have puzzled scientists since decades. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of…
A microbial enzyme inspires electrochemistry. Humans continuously emits greenhouse gases, worsening global warming. For example, carbon dioxide (CO2) accumulates dramatically over the years and is chemically very stable. Yet, some microbes capture CO2 using highly efficient enzymes. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen together with the Universities of Geneva and Radboud isolated one of these enzymes. When the enzyme was electronically branched on an electrode, they observed the conversion of CO2 to formate with perfect…
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have illuminated one of the important ways that cells respond to stress. The findings could also be relevant to Alzheimer’s, ALS and other diseases in which this mechanism may be abnormally active. When stressed by heat, toxins or other potentially damaging factors, cells gather many of their messenger RNAs (mRNAs), molecules that carry the instructions for making proteins, into droplet-like compartments called stress granules. These granules sequester affected mRNAs, preventing them from being translated into…
A UNIGE team shows that disruptions to the circadian clock increase the risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease. Disturbances in sleep patterns and the internal biological clock are frequently associated with Parkinson’s disease. However, the link between biological rhythm and neuronal degeneration remains unclear. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) investigated the destruction of neurons at different times of the day, using the fruit fly as a study model. The scientists discovered that the type of cellular stress…
Direct conversion of methane (CH4) to high value-added chemicals at room temperature, by directly using abundant and low-cost molecular oxygen (O2) as an oxidant, is an ideal route for CH4 utilization. But it remains a challenge owing to the chemical inertness of methane and low activity of O2. Recently, a research group led by Prof. DENG Dehui and Assoc. Prof. YU Liang from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) realized direct CH4 conversion to C1 oxygenates (CH3OH,…
Edges cause cilia to quickly synchronize their beating pattern. Border regions can cause cilia to coordinate their motion creating a unidirectional wave that is essential for biological functions. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) in Göttingen proposed a new model describing this synchronized pattern driven by the border region. What do the crowd at a football stadium, the feet of a centipede, and the inside of your lungs have in common? All of these systems…
Animals possess specialized networks of neurons in the brain that receive signals about the outside world from the retina and respond by initiating appropriate behavior. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence studied a genetic mutation in zebrafish that eliminates all connections between retina and brain throughout development. The team found that in these ‘deep-blind’ fish the brain circuits are fully functional, as direct brain stimulation with optogenetics can drive normal visual behavior. This shows that the assembly…
Using an innovative new approach to sampling corals, researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa are now able to create maps of coral biochemistry that reveal with unprecedented detail the distribution of compounds that are integral to the healthy functioning of reefs. Their study was published today in Communications Biology. “This work is a major step in understanding the coral holobiont [the coral animal and all of its associated microorganisms], which is critical for reef restoration and management,”…
Feedback
