Scientists from Göttingen compare cognitive skills of different primate species. Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans are our closest relatives, and like us they have relatively large brains and they are very intelligent. But do animals with larger brains really perform better in cognitive tests? A research team from the German Primate Center (DPZ) – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen has for the first time systematically investigated the cognitive abilities of lemurs, which have relatively small brains compared to other…

Kiel research team is using the nematode model Caenorhabditis elegans to gain new insights into the regulation of the innate immune response All higher organisms have an immune system that constitutes a biological defense mechanism to protect the body from pathogens and foreign substances. It consists of a complex network of different organs, cell types and molecules that recognizes and fights harmful substances and pathogenic microorganisms. Invertebrates rely exclusively on the innate immune system, which protects the integrity of the…

The cells that make up our body are tiny, each of them measuring only micrometers in diameter. The ensemble of chromosomal DNA molecules that encode the genome, on the other hand, measures almost 2 meters. In order to fit into cells, chromosomal DNA is folded many times. But the DNA is not merely squeezed into the nucleus in a random manor but folded in a specific and highly regulated structure. The spatial organization of chromosomal DNA enables regulated topological interactions…

Researchers have sequenced the genome of Alexander Fleming’s penicillin mould for the first time and compared it to later versions. Alexander Fleming famously discovered the first antibiotic, penicillin, in 1928 while working at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, which is now part of Imperial College London. The antibiotic was produced by a mould in the genus Penicillium that accidentally started growing in a Petri dish. Now, researchers from Imperial College London, CABI and the University of Oxford have sequenced the…

New method could jump-start creation of tiny medical devices for the body. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new method of 3D-printing gels and other soft materials. Published in a new paper, it has the potential to create complex structures with nanometer-scale precision. Because many gels are compatible with living cells, the new method could jump-start the production of soft tiny medical devices such as drug delivery systems or flexible electrodes that can…

By far the most important process in cell development is how cells divide and then enlarge in order to multiply. A research team headed by Freiburg medical scientist Prof. Dr. Robert Grosse has now discovered that bundled fibers of actin within a cell nucleus play an important part in how they enlarge after division. Fibers of the structural protein actin stabilize the outer form of the cell and transport substances into a cell. The mechanisms that influence the growth of…

Human intestinal organoids grown from stem cells used to model congenital disorder in babies. Scientists at Cincinnati Children’s used human intestinal organoids grown from stem cells to discover how our bodies control the absorption of nutrients from the food we eat. They further found that one hormone might be able to reverse a congenital disorder in babies who cannot adequately absorb nutrients and need intravenous feeding to survive. Heather A. McCauley, PhD, a research associate at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical…

Widespread fungal disease in plants can be controlled with a commercially available chemical that has been primarily used in medicine until now. This discovery was made by scientists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the University of the State of Paraná in Brazil. In a comprehensive experiment the team has uncovered a new metabolic pathway that can be disrupted with this chemical, thus preventing many known plant fungi from invading the host plant. The team reported on their study…

Fralin Biomedical Research Institute scientists’ finding has implications for brain diseases. Hard skulls help protect our brains from physical injuries. In addition to a tough outer shell, brains have internal defenses, including a powerful shield called the blood-brain barrier that defends brain cells from substances in the bloodstream that are toxic and dangerous to nerve cells. If the blood-brain barrier is breached, then health problems arise. Now, in a study with potential impacts on a variety of neurological diseases, Virginia…

Kiel research team provides new insights into the role of the eisosomes as membrane building blocks in fungi The red mould Neurospora crassa belongs to the group of sac fungi and serves researchers as a common model organism that allows a comparatively simple analysis of genetic information and the functions associated with it. The fungus has been the subject of scientific research for decades and its genetic information contained in around 10,000 genes has been completely decoded since the beginning…

The stem cells tasked with creating and maintaining biological tissues have a difficult job. They have to precisely divide to form new specialized cells, which are destined to different fates even though they contain identical DNA. An obvious question then is: How do the cells divide in all the right ways to produce a healthy tissue? This was the grand motivating question for Andrew Muroyama, a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Stanford University biologist Dominique Bergmann, as he monitored…

A scientific first This work, published in Cell and led by the UNC-Chapel Hill lab of Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, sets the stage for the discovery of new kinds of antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, and treatments for substance use disorders. Psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline cause severe and often long-lasting hallucinations, but they show great potential in treating serious psychiatric conditions, such as major depressive disorder. To fully investigate this potential, scientists need to know how these…

Rubbery electronics offer promise for new applications A medical robotic hand could allow doctors to more accurately diagnose and treat people from halfway around the world, but currently available technologies aren’t good enough to match the in-person experience. Researchers report in Science Advances that they have designed and produced a smart electronic skin and a medical robotic hand capable of assessing vital diagnostic data by using a newly invented rubbery semiconductor with high carrier mobility. Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook…

Landshut University of Applied Sciences project develops device that transmits the medical devices’ acoustic alarm signals directly to the rescue services’ headsets When injured people have to be rescued by rescue helicopter after an accident, every second is precious. One problem for rescue teams during such missions though is that they cannot immediately hear the medical devices’ alarm signals due to the high noise level in the helicopter and are therefore often only able to react with a time delay….

“Honey, I shrunk the detector”: Researchers have developed the world’s smallest ultrasound detector Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed the world’s smallest ultrasound detector. It is based on miniaturized photonic circuits on top of a silicon chip. With a size 100 times smaller than an average human hair, the new detector can visualize features that are much smaller than previously possible, leading to what is known as super-resolution imaging. Researchers at Helmholtz…

How is conceptual knowledge represented in the brain such that we can flexibly use it to interpret unfamiliar information or to infer relations we’ve never directly experienced? One means of organizing conceptual knowledge would be in a kind of internal map. Thus, the map would have to be dynamically defined along those feature dimensions that are currently relevant to the concept. Stephanie Theves and Christian Doeller of MPI CBS in Leipzig together with Guillén Fernández of the Donders Institute Nijmegen,…