Researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Singapore have discovered a new intracellular “smoke detector.” The sensor warns of damage to the mitochondria – the microscopic power plants that supply the cell with energy. If it does not function properly, chronic skin diseases can result. The sensor may also be important for unimpaired heart and bowel function. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Immunology. Every cell in the body has numerous sensors that monitor its function….

Human activities are accelerating biodiversity change and promoting a rapid turnover in species composition. A team of researchers has now shown that more widespread species tend to benefit from anthropogenic changes and increase the number of sites they occupy, whereas more narrowly distributed species decrease. Their results, which were published in Nature Communications, are based on an extensive dataset of over 200 studies and provide evidence that habitat protection can mitigate some effects of biodiversity change and reduce the systematic…

Synthesis gas and battery power from sunlight energy. Plants use photosynthesis to harvest energy from sunlight. Now researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have applied this principle as the basis for developing new sustainable processes which in the future may produce syngas (synthetic gas) for the large-scale chemical industry and be able to charge batteries. Syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, is an important intermediate product in the manufacture of many chemical starter materials such as…

New Findings on the Prevention of Retrovirus Infections. Intensive research is being carried out to enable the transplantation of organs from specially bred pigs to humans. However, the pig genome contains the genomes of various endogenous retroviruses (PERV-A, B and C) that could potentially cause infectious diseases. A research team at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut has demonstrated in the Yucatan miniature pig breed (haplotype SLA D/D) that the retrovirus PERV-C could be reproductive and therefore infectious. The identification of the PERV-C genome…

Muscle degeneration, the most prevalent cause of frailty in hereditary diseases and aging, could be caused by a deficiency in one key enzyme in a lipid biosynthesis pathway. Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences characterize how the enzyme PCYT2 affects muscle health in disease and aging in laboratory mouse models. The findings are published on March 20 in Nature Metabolism. Muscle degeneration in inherited diseases and aging affects hundreds of millions of…

Discovery of two novel classes of natural products with activity against RNA viruses. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically demonstrated that the development of effective agents against viral pathogens is of great importance for global health. Although effective vaccines are available for many viral diseases, there is an urgent need for new and effective therapeutic treatments. At the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), the team led by Prof Rolf Müller is researching novel active substances for the treatment of…

Working with fruit flies, research informs how other species might detect and avoid high-pH or alkaline foods. The sense of taste is among the first to come into contact with food before we ingest it, but whether animals can taste basic or alkaline food and how they do it remained unclear until now. A research group led by Yali Zhang, PhD, Principal Investigator at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, recently addressed this significant question, as they similarly did for sour…

Salk scientists invent wearable microscopes to produce high-definition, real-time images of mouse spinal cord activity across previously inaccessible regions. The spinal cord acts as a messenger, carrying signals between the brain and body to regulate everything from breathing to movement. While the spinal cord is known to play an essential role in relaying pain signals, technology has limited scientists’ understanding of how this process occurs on a cellular level. Now, Salk scientists have created wearable microscopes to enable unprecedented insight…

Chemistry professor Qing Ye wants to achieve fundamental innovations with boron-containing molecules. To this end, he has raised considerable funding, which also includes positions for PhD students. The basis for a new generation of chemical catalysts may be laid at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU). Here, Professor Qing Ye is investigating the molecule class of bisalkynyl boranes. “They have been little studied so far compared to other boranes,” he says, “and I see great potential for fundamental innovations in them.” Apparently, the…

In pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), the small vessels in the lungs become increasingly narrow and obstruct the transport of blood to the lungs. A new drug can stop this change and possibly even reverse it. Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a special form of pulmonary hypertension. It occurs because the small arteries in the lungs narrow as a result of progressive changes in the blood vessels. As a result, the right side of the heart has to pump harder to…

University of Wyoming researchers’ study of how microscopic creatures called tardigrades survive extreme conditions has led to a major breakthrough that could eventually make life-saving treatments available to people where refrigeration isn’t possible. Thomas Boothby, an assistant professor of molecular biology, and colleagues have shown that natural and engineered versions of tardigrade proteins can be used to stabilize an important pharmaceutical used to treat people with hemophilia and other conditions without the need for refrigeration — even amid high temperatures…

Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center have developed genetically defined mouse models for two subtypes of multiple myeloma. B lymphocytes – also known simply as B cells – play a central role in the immune system. If pathogens enter the body, B cells are activated and develop into plasma cells, which then release antibodies. One important step in this process is the germinal center reaction. If the B cells’ maturation into plasma cells is disrupted, multiple myeloma can develop – one of the most…

For in vivo studies of internal processes in an organism, body pigmentation is a considerable limitation. To circumvent this, various transparent fish models have already been generated, and are used in cancer research, among other things. In research on aging, however, these fish are rarely being used due to their relatively long lifespan of up to five years. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in Jena have now succeeded, with the help of the…

Researchers in China have successfully restored the vision of mice with retinitis pigmentosa, one of the major causes of blindness in humans. The study, to be published March 17 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, uses a new, highly versatile form of CRISPR-based genome editing with the potential to correct a wide variety of disease-causing genetic mutations. Researchers have previously used genome editing to restore the vision of mice with genetic diseases, such as Leber congenital amaurosis, that affect the…

The human immunodeficiency virus HIV-1 is able to infect various tissues in humans. Once inside the cells, the virus integrates its genome into the cellular genome and establishes persistent infections. The role of the structure and organisation of the host genome in HIV-1 infection is not well understood. Using a cell culture model based on brain immune microglia cells, an international research team led by scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) now defined…

Efficient and stable … mRNA-based vaccines have been one of the key elements in the fight against the coronavirus. The technology was originally developed for cancer therapy and can be used to treat many diseases. Together with partners from science and industry, Fraunhofer IPK is now researching how mRNA therapeutics and other medication can be better produced and more effectively applied. A major challenge in using RNA molecules for medical purposes is still that they are very quickly degraded enzymatically….