Huntington’s disease is an hereditary neurodegenerative disease featured by alterations in movement, cognitive deficiency and psychiatric disorders resulting from the degeneration of neurons in the striatum nucleus of the brain. A study led by researchers of the Institute of Neurosciences of the UB (UBNeuro) has characterized one of the neuronal circuits involved in the development of the disease: the connection of the secondary motor cortex (M2) in the dorsolateral striatum nucleus (DSL). The study, published in the journal eLife, shows…

New method bridges in situ microscopy with single cell omics. Scientists can now select individual cells from a population that grows on the surface of a laboratory dish and study their molecular contents. Developed by University of Toronto researchers, the new tool will enable a deeper study of stem cells and other rare cell types for therapy development. The method is the first to marry cell microscopy with omics platforms to link the cells’ physical parameters that are visible by…

New complex for damage detection in DNA identified Our body can repair damage to our DNA that can lead to the development of cancer by means of repair complexes. But how does the repair machinery recognize the damage? Scientists from the University of Würzburg and the University of Kent have now identified a complex that plays an important role in damage recognition in nucleotide excision repair. Due to its key position, the complex represents a starting point for research on…

Bacteria are considered to be true experts in survival. Their rapid adaptive response to changing environmental conditions is based, among other things, on two competing signaling molecules. As the “Yin and Yang” of metabolic control they decide on the lifestyle of bacteria, as reported by researchers from the University of Basel. The new findings also play a role in the context of bacterial infections. Whether they are pathogens, deep-sea microbes or soil-dwelling organisms, in order to survive, microorganisms must be…

A genetic disposition that plays a role in the development of the heart in the embryo also appears to play a key role in the human immune system. This is shown by a recent study led by the University of Bonn. A genetic disposition that plays a role in the development of the heart in the embryo also appears to play a key role in the human immune system. This is shown by a recent study led by the University…

New insights into a mechanism that reduces the ice formation ability of bacterial ice-nucleating proteins in an acidic environment. Because of mild winters, ski resorts produce artificial snow to supplement the natural snowfall or extend the ski-season. Ice-nucleating proteins, extracted from the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae, can make ice better than any other known material and are already used in snow making. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now unraveled why an acidic environment can inhibit ice…

Sometimes an image gives those who can read it correctly a deeper insight into what they can see. In many scientific disciplines, the key to extracting meaningful information from large three-dimensional images, obtained from X-ray tomography or optical microscopy, is segmentation, a tedious and time-consuming task if done manually. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), Heidelberg University, the KIT and the Technical University of Darmstadt now present Biomedisa, an easy-to-use open-source online platform…

Researchers investigate combination of carbon ion and immunotherapy It is still a glance into the future: The combination of carbon ion and immune therapy could become an effective tool in the fight against cancer. Promising results for the potential benefit of this treatment combination have now been published. The authors are an international team of researchers, led by the Department of Biophysics at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, and including the Parthenope University of Naples and the Japanese…

At high concentrations, reactive oxygen species – known as oxidants – are harmful to cells in all organisms and have been linked to ageing. But a study from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has now shown that low levels of the oxidant hydrogen peroxide can stimulate an enzyme that helps slow down the ageing of yeast cells. One benefit of antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, is that they neutralise reactive oxygen species – known as oxidants – which…

Chemists at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis in Rostock discovered the molecular mechanism of a photocatalyst that completely breaks down organic contaminants in wastewater with the help of sunlight. Worldwide, for example, more and more residues of drugs such as anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics or contraceptives are entering treatment systems where they are difficult to remove. Laboratories are increasingly working on photocatalytic solutions, but knowledge of the active principles is incomplete. Researchers around Angelika Brückner and Jabor Rabeah at LIKAT have…

To ensure that sepsis patients receive appropriate antibiotics as quickly as possible, Fraunhofer IGB researchers have developed a diagnostic procedure that uses high-throughput sequencing of blood samples and delivers results much faster than conventional culture-based techniques. Thanks to the latest single-molecule sequencing techniques, this process has now been further improved so that pathogens can be identified after just a few hours. The basic methodology is currently being tested in a multi-center study with several hundred patients. Sepsis – also known…

It appears that autophagy protects our neurons in the brain, but evidently for entirely different reasons than previously assumed, as researchers from the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) and Charité in Berlin have now shown. When the scientists used a genetic trick to switch off autophagy-mediated “cellular waste disposal”, instead of detecting protein deposits, as expected, they found elevated levels of the endoplasmic reticulum, a system composed of membrane sacs which acts, among other functions, as a calcium store. This…

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen are developing a user-friendly method to reconstruct and analyze SSU rRNA from raw metagenome data. First the background: Microbiologists traditionally determine which organisms they are dealing with using the small subunit ribosomal RNA or in short SSU rRNA gene. This marker gene allows to identify almost any living creature, be it a bacterium or an animal, and thus assign it to its place in the tree of life. Once…

Researchers at FAU and the Graz University of Technology are hoping to improve the imaging of cell metabolism using a special technique. The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in modern medicine allows accurate imaging of the soft tissue in the human body, thus enabling changes such as tumours to be diagnosed. However, several medical conditions cause changes to occur in the cell metabolism before substantial changes to the structure of the tissue can be detected with MRI. A team…

Blue phosphorus, an atomically thin synthetic semiconductor, becomes metallic as soon as it is converted into a double layer. This has been discovered by an interdisciplinary team led by Prof Thomas Heine from TU Dresden and Prof Gabriel Merino from the Mexican research institute Cinvestav Merida. The scientists are first to describe the possibility of constructing nanoscale, highly efficient transistors consisting of only one element. The results of these investigations were published as highlight article in the current issue of…

For the first time, scientists have visualized a new class of molecular gates that maintain pH balance within brain cells, a critical function that keeps cells alive and helps prevent stroke and other brain injuries. These gates, called proton-activated chloride channels (PAC), nest within cell membranes and regulate the passage of small molecules called chloride ions into and out of cells. This allows cells to sense and respond to their environment. “Proton-activated chloride channels have only recently been described but…