Neutrons show a connection between lithium concentration and depression Depressive disorders are among the most frequent illnesses worldwide. The causes are complex and to date only partially understood. The trace element lithium appears to play a role. Using neutrons of the research neutron source at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), a research team has now proved that the distribution of lithium in the brains of depressive people is different from the distribution found in healthy humans. Lithium is familiar…

For the first time, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces have synthesized sugar chains that resemble the envelopes of the four major variations of the bacterium streptococcus suis. This is an important first step for the development of glycoconjugate vaccines against a pathogen that is a serious problem in pigs. Once in the pigsty, the pathogen spreads rapidly, which regularly causes major problems for farms. The bacterium can cause diseases such as meningitis, pneumonia and pericarditis,…

For the first time in Europe: Cardiologists use “SuperSaturated Oxygen” procedure to reduce heart muscle damage. In Germany, more than 200,000 people suffer a heart attack every year. Despite good medical care, many are left with reduced cardiac output. This is particularly true for patients with severe heart attacks: more than 30 percent of those affected develop heart failure, and almost half of them die within the next five years. Experts at the Department of Cardiology and Angiology at Hannover…

Scientists led by Dr. Salvador Aznar-Benitah, head of the Stem Cells and Cancer laboratory at IRB Barcelona, have described the alterations that occur during mammary gland formation when heterochromatin (the part of DNA that does not actively produce proteins) is poorly regulated. The results, which have been published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, indicate that incorrect DNA packaging makes retrotransposons (a type of transposable element originated in ancestral fragments of viruses integrated into the cell genome) more accessible. As…

An imaging technique pioneered by Berkeley Lab is helping reveal the best antibodies for COVID-19 detection. Vaccines are turning the tide of the pandemic, but the risk of infection is still present in some situations. If you want to visit a friend, get on a plane, or go see a movie, there is no highly accurate, instant test that can tell you right then and there whether or not you have a SARS-CoV-2 infection. But new research from Lawrence Berkeley…

An international team of scientists compared the regeneration abilities of axolotls and frogs at the cellular and molecular levels. Their study, published in Developmental Cell, reveals the intrinsic inability of frog cells to regenerate a lost limb, a major difference from the axolotl’s extraordinary physiology. In Lake Xochimilco of central Mexico dwells a rare salamander, the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum). In the wild, the axolotls do not metamorphose: adults very much resemble their larval counterparts and keep the external gills that…

New discoveries in the field of nanoscience … Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces developed a membrane that is composed of a bundle of nanometer-sized tubes. They used it as a nanoreactor to convert water marked with methylene blue into clear water in milliseconds using sunlight as a driver. ‘Running reactions in fluids with lower viscosity in a blink of an eye represents a new opportunity for chemistry,’ says Prof. Markus Antonietti, Director of the Department…

Dresden researchers discover how a protein creates the rotatory forces essential for animal development. Our body appearance is symmetric from the outside. If you take a look inside, you will find our organs are not at all arranged symmetrically. The heart, for example, is on our left side. These differences in structure, referred to as left-right asymmetry, emerge very early during the development and are crucial for an embryo to properly grow. Researchers have found in past studies that rotatory…

The working group around Dr. Philipp Rathert at the Institute for Biochemistry and Technical Biochemistry investigates the regulation of epigenetic networks of certain cancers and ways of treating them. The working group published its new findings in April. Epigenetics research is a relatively young discipline in biology. Epigenetic mechanisms regulate which genetic information is used when and how. They play an important role in controlling the activity of genes. The epigenetic modifications control the gene activity individually in each individual…

When neuroscientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria analyzed the exact properties of nerve connections in the brain, they made a startling observation: At a key connection, or synapse, messages are sent against the usual stream of information. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, reports that the signal glutamate likely plays a role in this unusual transmission. Information flows in a well-defined direction in the brain: Chemical and electrical signals are passed from one neuron…

Researchers reveal the diversity of our neurons… The nerve cells, also called neurons, in our brain control all the basic processes of our body. For this reason, there are different types of neurons distributed over specific regions of the brain. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Metabolic Research and the CECAD Cluster of Excellence in Aging Research of the University of Cologne have developed an approach that allows them to show that neurons that are supposedly the same are…

How novel therapeutics provide insight into bacteria membranes. Whether bacteria are resistant to antibiotics is often decided at the cell membrane. This is where antibiotics can be blocked on their way into the cell interior or catapulted from the inside to the outside. Macrocyclic peptides, a novel class of antibiotics, bioactive cytotoxins and inhibitors, shed light on how this transport process occurs at the membrane, how it is influenced and how it can be used to circumvent the resistance of…

A new technology developed by UZH researchers enables the body to produce therapeutic agents on demand at the exact location where they are needed. The innovation could re-duce the side effects of cancer therapy and may hold the solution to better delivery of Covid-related therapies directly to the lungs. Scientists at the University of Zurich have modified a common respiratory virus, called adenovirus, to act like a Trojan horse to deliver genes for cancer therapeutics directly into tumor cells. Unlike…

New model reveals that a network of cellulose is key to this unique combination. A plant cell wall’s unique ability to expand without weakening or breaking–a quality required for plant growth–is due to the movement of its cellulose skeleton, according to new research that models the cell wall. The new model, created by Penn State researchers, reveals that chains of cellulose bundle together within the cell wall, providing strength, and slide against each other when the cell is stretched, providing…

On an expedition to Peru in November 2019, shortly before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, a group of researchers including Jörn Köhler, zoologist at the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, discovered a new species of ‘beaked toad’. The new species from the Cordillera Azul is characterised, as the name implies, by a particularly long ‘nose’. Although most toads are brown, these animals are predominantly green in colour, but it were mainly genetic studies that aided in their identification, Köhler reports. The…

Rice University bioengineers adapt extracellular matrix for electrospinning. Rice University bioengineers are fabricating and testing tunable electrospun scaffolds completely derived from decellularized skeletal muscle to promote the regeneration of injured skeletal muscle. Their paper in Science Advances shows how natural extracellular matrix can be made to mimic native skeletal muscle and direct the alignment, growth and differentiation of myotubes, one of the building blocks of skeletal muscle. The bioactive scaffolds are made in the lab via electrospinning, a high-throughput process…