The world’s fastest whole-body PET/CT scanner is being put into service today at Bern University Hospital’s Inselspital Department of Nuclear Medicine. This scanner of the latest generation opens up new dimensions in research, diagnostics and therapy planning. The manufacturer (Siemens Healthineers) chose Bern as the location for the first installation worldwide because of its top-class research, its proven concept for networked operation and its role as a leading center in medicine. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a diagnostic imaging procedure…

Scientists determine the structure of glass-shaping protein in sponges. Sponges are some of the oldest animals on Earth. They live in a wide range of waters, from lakes to deep oceans. Remarkably, the skeleton of some sponges is built out of a network of highly symmetrical glass structures. Researchers from TU Dresden and the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland are the first to determine the three dimensional (3D) structure of a protein responsible for glass…

Reduced food intake, known as dietary restriction, leads to a longer lifespan in many animals and can improve health in humans. The molecular mechanisms underlying the positive effects of dietary restriction are still unclear. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing have now found one possible explanation in fruit flies: they identified a protein named Sestrin that mediates the beneficial effects of dietary restriction. By increasing the amount of Sestrin in flies, researchers were able to extend…

Data from Greenland and Antarctica show: under ice trace elements are mobilised at higher rates than previously assumed. Trace elements such as iron, manganese and zinc are an integral part of the biogeochemical processes on the Earth’s surface. As micronutrients, they play an essential role for the growth of all kinds of organisms and thus the Earth’s carbon cycle. Below ice sheets, which cover around ten percent of the Earth’s land surface, larger quantities of these substances are mobilised than…

Research team at Kiel University uses Aurelia aurita as an example to demonstrate the relationship between microbial colonization and reproduction in marine cnidarians The body tissue of all multicellular living beings is colonized by an unimaginably large number of microorganisms. Host organisms and microbes have developed together from the very beginning of the evolutionary history of multicellular life. The natural microbiome, i.e. the totality of these bacteria, viruses and fungi that live in and on a body, therefore plays a…

In the COVID-19 pandemic, 57 million people have already been infected worldwide. In the search for vaccines and therapies, a precise understanding of the virus, its mutations and transmission mechanisms is crucial. A recent study by the research group of Principal Investigator Andreas Bergthaler at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, in the renowned journal Science Translational Medicine, makes an important contribution to this. The high quality of epidemiological data in Austria, together…

Rice scientists’ atomic resolution protein models reveal new details about protein binding. Knowing precisely where proteins are frustrated could go a long way toward making better drugs. That’s one result of a new study by Rice University scientists looking for the mechanisms that stabilize or destabilize key sections of biomolecules. Atom-scale models by Rice theorist Peter Wolynes, lead author and alumnus Mingchen Chen and their colleagues at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics show that not only are some specific…

Bioinformaticians at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany together with colleagues from Finland and the USA, have now developed a unique method with which all metabolites in a sample can be taken into account, thus considerably increasing the knowledge gained from examining such molecules. The team reports on its successful research in the renowned scientific journal “Nature Biotechnology”. Everything that lives has metabolites, produces metabolites and consumes metabolites. These molecules arise as intermediate and end products from chemical processes in an…

Some viruses can get inside cells via a mechanism that involves sulfur organic molecules. Chemists at UNIGE have discovered effective inhibitors and blocked the uptake of SARS-CoV-2. The cell membrane is impermeable to viruses: to get inside and infect a cell, they use a range of strategies to exploit the cellular and biochemical properties of the membranes. The thiol-mediated uptake of organic molecules similar to alcohols, where oxygen is replaced by a sulphur atom, is one of the entry mechanisms,…

In response to the critical shortage of nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Radiology at University of South Florida (USF) Health in Tampa set out to design, validate and create NP swabs using a point-of-care 3D printer. Results of the first clinical trial of 3D-printed NP swabs for COVID-19 testing are being presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “To date, USF Health has printed more than 100,000 3D…

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is indispensable in medical diagnostics. However, MRI units are large and expensive to acquire and operate. With smaller and cost-efficient systems, MRI would be more flexible and more people could benefit from the technique. Such mini MRI units generate a much weaker signal that is difficult to analyze, though. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and the Center for Biostructural Imaging of Neurodegeneration have now developed a method amplifying the signal so…

Catching deadly diseases like cancer early on is key to improving patient survival odds. However, diseases are much harder to diagnose in their preliminary stages because people often haven’t developed symptoms yet and only trace amounts can be found in their bodies. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering want to make it easier to catch diseases earlier in the process, improving patient outlooks and taking some of the load off the medical system. The researchers have created an approach…

Researchers have developed a chip that is powered wirelessly and can be surgically implanted to read neural signals and stimulate the brain with both light and electrical current. The technology has been demonstrated successfully in rats and is designed for use as a research tool. “Our goal was to create a research tool that can be used to help us better understand the behavior of different regions of the brain, particularly in response to various forms of neural stimulation,” says…

Hydrogen can be produced with renewable energies in a climate neutral way and could make a major contribution to the energy system of the future. One of the options is to use sunlight for electrolytic water splitting, either indirectly by coupling a solar cell with an electrolyser or directly in a photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell. Light-absorbing semiconductors serve as photoelectrodes. They are immersed in an electrolyte solution of water mixed with strong acids or bases, which contains high concentration of protons…

A repetitive DNA sequence that causes health risks when it malfunctions can now be watched inside living cells using a synthetic tool. A new synthetic probe offers a safe and straightforward approach for visualizing chromosome tips in living cells. The probe was designed by scientists at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Science (iCeMS) and colleagues at Kyoto University, and could advance research into aging and a wide range of diseases, including cancers. The details were published in the Journal of…

– and preparation for “SARS-CoV3” For the first time, an international research alliance has observed the RNA folding structures of the SARS-CoV2 genome with which the virus controls the infection process. Since these structures are very similar among various beta corona viruses, the scientists not only laid the foundation for the targeted development of novel drugs for treating COVID-19, but also for future occurrences of infection with new corona viruses that may develop in the future. The genetic code of…