Capability could accelerate the development of new treatments for diseases. Northwestern University synthetic biologist Joshua Leonard used to build devices when he was a child using electronic kits. Now he and his team have developed a design-driven process that uses parts from a very different kind of toolkit to build complex genetic circuits for cellular engineering. One of the most exciting frontiers in medicine is the use of living cells as therapies. Using this approach to treat cancer, for example,…

A gene linked to unusually long lifespans in humans protects brain stem cells from the harmful effects of stress, according to a new study by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. Studies of humans who live longer than 100 years have shown that many share an unusual version of a gene called Forkhead box protein O3 (FOXO3). That discovery led Dr. Jihye Paik, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, and her colleagues to investigate how this gene…

Deep learning algorithms reveal rules of gene regulation With the help of artificial intelligence (AI) a German-American team of scientists deciphered some of the more elusive instructions encoded in DNA. Their neural network trained on high-resolution maps of protein-DNA interactions uncovers subtle DNA sequence patterns throughout the genome, thus providing a deeper understanding of how these sequences are organized to regulate genes. Artificial intelligence algorithms are extremely powerful at fitting massive and complex datasets. But their interpretation, rationalizing how the…

Magnetic nanoparticles biosynthesized by bacteria might soon play an important role in biomedicine and biotechnology. Researchers of the University of Bayreuth have now developed and optimised a process for the isolation and purification of these particles from bacterial cells. In initial tests, magnetosomes showed good biocompatibility when incubated with human cell lines. The results presented in the journal “Acta Biomaterialia” are therefore a promising step towards the biomedical use of magnetosomes in diagnostic imaging techniques or as carrier in magnetic…

During development, cells must specialize their function in a well defined timeline: formation of different tissues must be coordinated from a pile of cells. The research group led by Aneta Koseska (former Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology (MPI), CAESAR Bonn) has now developed a new theoretical concept that shows how cells specialize in right proportions in a coordinated manner through their communication with each other, and thus how new structures are formed and maintained. Stem cells are the all-rounders…

Researchers from Hanover, Mainz, Wuppertal and Witten develop high-resolution tomography – application conceivable for Covid-19, Alzheimer’s and cancer. Researchers from Hanover Medical School (MHH), Mainz University Hospital and HELIOS University Hospital Wuppertal at Witten/Herdecke University are leading an international, multidisciplinary consortium that makes high-resolution, three-dimensional X-ray images of the human body possible. With a maximum resolution of up to 300 nanometres, they are equivalent to one tenth of the diameter of a human hair. “The networking between radiology, pathology and…

Max Planck researchers and their collaborators reveal transformation of colon organoids in vitro. Escherichia coli bacteria are constitutive members of the human gut microbiota. However, some strains produce a genotoxin called colibactin, which is implicated in the development of colorectal cancer. While it has been shown that colibactin leaves very specific changes in the DNA of host cells that can be detected in colorectal cancer cells, such cancers take many years to develop, leaving the actual process by which a…

Working with colleagues from Germany and the US, researchers at Leipzig University have achieved a breakthrough in research into how cancer cells spread. In experiments, the team of biophysicists led by Professor Josef Alfons Käs, Steffen Grosser and Jürgen Lippoldt demonstrated for the first time how cells deform in order to move in dense tumour tissues and squeeze past neighbouring cells. The researchers found that motile cells work together to fluidise tumour tissue. Käs led the research project in cooperation…

Predator-prey relationships between bacteria could provide ideas for new antibacterial strategies. These observations might be useful for the future development of new antibacterial strategies. The team reports in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology on 12 February 2021. Bacterial groups in search of food We commonly know predator-prey relationships from the animal kingdom, but they are also a survival strategy of certain bacteria: bacterial predators actively kill bacteria of other species in order to feed on them. The predatory species…

European Laboratories aim to Create Common Standards Is the tissue healthy or pathologically altered? Is the antibiotic effective against a certain bacterium or is the bacterium resistant to it? Raman spectroscopy can help to answer such questions quickly and precisely. However, one challenge for the use of the light-based analysis method in everyday clinical practice is that the results can be highly sensitive to the measurement conditions. Approaches to solving this problem are now being provided by a large-scale European…

New MHH research collaboration aims to develop novel treatment for bacterial lung infections using universal human stem cells Healing the body with cells – this is the ambitious goal of scientists at Hannover Medical School (MHH). With this in mind, Professor Dr. Nico Lachmann and Dr. Robert Zweigerdt have initiated a research collaboration and license agreement with the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S, to combine academic knowhow with the translational power of the industry. The overall aim of the endeavor…

Measure what fuses The Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 enters human cells by membrane fusion after contact of its spike protein with the ACE2 receptor. New studies provide proof for a second role of the protein in COVID-19: Fusion of body cells. A research team of the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut has developed promising assays of how to measure these membrane functions. Smallest amounts of spike protein present in cell culture suffice to allow infected and non-infected cells to fuse and die. Virus particles with spike…

– made fast, accurate, and cheap The Wyss Institute’s eRapid electrochemical sensor technology now enables sensitive, specific and multiplexed detection of blood biomarkers at low cost. Many life-threatening medical conditions, such as sepsis, which is triggered by blood-borne pathogens, cannot be detected accurately and quickly enough to initiate the right course of treatment. In patients that have been infected by an unknown pathogen and progress to overt sepsis, every additional hour that an effective antibiotic cannot be administered significantly increases…

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a soft, stretchy skin patch that can be worn on the neck to continuously track blood pressure and heart rate while measuring the wearer’s levels of glucose as well as lactate, alcohol or caffeine. It is the first wearable device that monitors cardiovascular signals and multiple biochemical levels in the human body at the same time. “This type of wearable would be very helpful for people with underlying medical conditions…

A research team led by Prof. Dr. Maria von Korff Schmising from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research (MPIPZ) in Cologne investigated the genetic regulation of spike development in barley and wheat. As reported in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), they discovered different barley mutants with wheat-like spikes.  In plants, the ‘meristem’ refers to a type of tissue…

Researchers at University of Münster and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry have developed a method for determining the arrangement and density of individual proteins in cells. In this way, they were able to prove the existence of an adhesion complex consisting of three proteins. Cells of organisms are organized in subcellular compartments that consist of many individual molecules. How these single proteins are organized on the molecular level remains unclear, because suitable analytical methods are still missing. Researchers at…