The venom of a single spider can contain up to 3000 components. These components, mostly peptides, can be used to develop promising drug leads for the treatment of diseases. Spider venom can also be used as a biological pesticide. A team of scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME and the Justus Liebig University in Giessen is primarily researching the venoms of spiders native to Germany, which have mostly been neglected until now. Their results…

Scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), together with colleagues from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the university hospitals in Bonn and Aachen, have found a type of immune cells that is particularly active in severely ill COVID-19 patients. The CD16 positive T cells have an increased cytotoxic effect, especially on the inner cell layer of blood vessels. Their presence, along with complement system factors, is associated with a highly fatal outcome of the disease. The scientists…

Researchers invented a technique that combines bioprinting with cryopreservation to construct frozen, cell-laden structures that can be used in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug discovery. A new technique takes bioprinting — in which an ink of cells is printed, layer by layer, to form a structure — to a whole new, and icy level. Investigators from the Zhang lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a technology that they term “cryobioprinting,” a method that uses a bioink embedded…

Scripps Research and collaborators find new target for universal influenza vaccine. Scientists at Scripps Research, University of Chicago and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a new Achilles’ heel of influenza virus, making progress in the quest for a universal flu vaccine. Antibodies against a long-ignored section of the virus, which the team dubbed the anchor, have the potential to recognize a broad variety of flu strains, even as the virus mutates from year to year, they…

With the demand in real-time monitoring of endoplasmic variations and rapid detection of extracellular signals, a great number of approaches to bioimaging have been developed. The past few decades have witnessed a dramatic progress in optical imaging, especially with the emerging of microsphere-assisted techniques that have the excellent ability of signal collection and enable real-time and super-resolution imaging with conventional optical microscopic systems. However, as most of the microspheres in current strategies are in solid and artificially synthetic materials, they…

In the study, the researchers have developed new approaches that allow DNA repair to be visualised by analysing hundreds of proteins at once. Each one of the trillions of cells that make up the human body suffers more than 10,000 DNA lesions every day. These injuries would be catastrophic if cells were unable to repair them, but a very delicate machinery that detects and repair genetic damage is at work to prevent DNA mutations and diseases such as cancer. With…

Rethinking how drugs are administered: Scientists develop promising fabrication process for microneedle arrays capable of administering protein-based drugs subcutaneously without damaging the skin. The painful feeling of receiving an injection through a hypodermic needle or with the unpleasant sensation of swallowing a large pill is a globally familiar sensation. But what if a revolutionary and gentler way of administering drugs was in the works? For over two decades, researchers have been investigating various types of microneedles as a minimally invasive…

Findings from a new study could point the way to new treatments for blood diseases including cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma. Scientists have found a way to prove that biochemical signals sent from cell to cell play an important role in determining how those cells develop. The study from researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences was published in the journal Development on Dec. 22. A little background: All cells within the body begin as…

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a powerful new tool that monitors the electrical activity inside heart cells, using tiny “pop-up” sensors that poke into cells without damaging them. The device directly measures the movement and speed of electrical signals traveling within a single heart cell—a first—as well as between multiple heart cells. It is also the first to measure these signals inside the cells of 3D tissues. The device, published Dec. 23 in the journal…

They are at the forefront in the fight against viruses, bacteria, and malignant cells: the T cells of our immune system. But the older we get, the fewer of them our body produces. Thus, how long we remain healthy also depends on how long the T cells survive. Researchers at the University of Basel have now uncovered a previously unknown signaling pathway essential for T cell viability. Like human beings, every cell in our body tries to ward off death…

Using targeted gamma radiation, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have revealed the appearance and the specific role of non-crystalline phases during the formation of mesocrystals – crystals consisting of aligned nanoparticles. Their findings provide fundamental insights for the controlled development and design of new mesocrystalline. Wouldn’t it be practical if the bricks of a house assembled all by themselves? This has been happening in nature for millions of years in the form of mesocrystals. These…

Equal rights in the brain? A new ESI paper shows that the call for equal rights also affects one of the smallest components of the brain: the dendrites. These are the sections of nerve cells that receive and transmit stimuli. The findings have been published in the scientific journal Neuron. We know that neurons of different shapes perform different computations. But do the different shapes also help to make their functions more similar? Hermann Cuntz, a researcher at the Ernst…

Human microbiome encodes resistance to acarbose. Acarbose is a commonly prescribed antidiabetic drug that helps control blood sugar levels by inhibiting human enzymes that break down complex carbohydrates. Now, new research from the laboratory of Princeton researcher Mohamed Donia demonstrates that some bacteria in the mouth and gut can inactivate acarbose and potentially affect the clinical performance of the drug and its impact on bacterial members of the human microbiome. The paper appeared online and in the December 2, 2021…

WEHI researchers have discovered how dormant Toxoplasma parasites in the brain manipulate their host cells to ensure their own survival. The researchers showed that the parasites were able to lay dormant and undetected inside neurons (brain cells) and muscle cells by releasing proteins that switch off the cells’ ability to alert the immune system. With expertise and technologies from WEHI’s Advanced Genomics facility and Centre for Dynamic Imaging, they were able to visualise the parasites in real-time. The discovery provides…

The active plant ingredient anemonin could provide a new approach in the treatment of malaria. It was identified by researchers from Ethiopia and Germany in a buttercup that is traditionally used in some African countries as a medicinal plant to treat malaria. Extracts from the plant significantly alleviated the symptoms of infected mice, as the team from Arba Minch University (AMU), Addis Ababa University (AAU) and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) reported in the journal “Molecules”. A tea made from…

Heidelberg researchers investigate how the spoonweed genus successfully adapted to extreme climatic changes over millions of years. As cold relics in an increasingly warming world, plants of the spoonweed group time and again quickly adapted to a changing climate during the Ice Ages of the last two million years. An international team of evolutionary biologists and botanists led by Prof. Dr Marcus Koch of Heidelberg University used genomic analyses to study what factors favour adaptation to extreme climatic conditions. The…