In the AqQua project Hereon is involved in monitoring global populations of organisms in water. Plankton and organic particles take up carbon from the atmosphere, transporting it from the water’s surface to the deep sea. As a result, the Earth’s climate is heavily influenced by life in the water. The AqQua project aims to determine how many of these microscopic organisms exist globally, how they are distributed, and how these patterns are changing due to climate change. Researchers are analyzing…

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have succeeded in elucidating the structure of specific photoreceptors. With their help, it may be possible to switch cellular activities on and off using light. This capability could become an important tool in biological research and medical applications. Researchers in biology and medicine have long dreamed of controlling the activities of cells without, for example, having to use chemicals. After all, in a structure as complex as an entire organism, unwanted side-effects can often arise. The ideal solution…

…represents a breakthrough for tissue-interfaced bioelectronics. New material from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering can create better brain-machine interfaces, biosensors, and pacemakers. The ideal material for interfacing electronics with living tissue is soft, stretchable, and just as water-loving as the tissue itself—in short, a hydrogel. Semiconductors, the key materials for bioelectronics such as pacemakers, biosensors, and drug delivery devices, on the other hand, are rigid, brittle, and water-hating, impossible to dissolve in the way hydrogels have traditionally been…

Particularly beneficial for rural U.S. areas, developing countries. Researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso have created a portable device that can detect colorectal and prostate cancer more cheaply and quickly than prevailing methods. The team believes the device may be especially helpful in developing countries, which experience higher cancer mortality rates due in part to barriers to medical diagnosis. “Our new biochip device is low-cost — just a few dollars — and sensitive, which will make accurate…

Scientists have discovered how the antiviral protein TRIM25 finds and binds viral RNA to activate an immune response. Every second of every day, our body is under attack. The invading agents are viruses, bacteria, parasites, toxins – living and non-living entities that might negatively impact our body’s functioning. What keeps us safe is a squad of patrolling superheroes – proteins that form an essential part of our innate immune system, the body’s first line of defence against invaders. A new…

Experiments at KIT show virtually no PFAS emissions when household waste containing Fluoropolymers is incinerated according to European standards. In contrast to fluoropolymers, which are also referred to as “polymeric PFAS” and are considered to be non-mobile and non-bioaccumulative, used e.g. in medical products, semiconductors, aerospace, automotive and chemical processing, “low-molecular PFAS” are integrated in a wide range of dispersive consumer applications. They are found, for instance, as water-repellent impregnation in textiles, garments, paper (pizza boxes, burger boxes, baking backpaper)….

A team led by chemist Prof Frank Glorius has synthesised so-called heteroatom-substituted cage-like 3D molecules. The innovative structures could help address key challenges in drug design by serving as more stable alternatives to traditional, flat, aromatic rings. As its name suggests, ring-shaped “cage molecules” resemble a cage, and it is this three-dimensional structure that makes them significantly more stable than related, flat molecules. Consequently, they could be of interest to drug developers as they represent a possible alternative to conventional…

Researchers from the University of Bonn have trained an AI process to predict potential active ingredients with special properties. Therefore, they derived a chemical language model – a kind of ChatGPT for molecules. Following a training phase, the AI was able to exactly reproduce the chemical structures of compounds with known dual-target activity that may be particularly effective medications. The study has now been published in Cell Reports Physical Science. Anyone who wants to delight their granny with a poem…

Future studies that manipulate this RNA could help treat neurodevelopmental diseases in humans. Study focused on ‘Goldilocks Gene’ CHD2 that causes autism and epilepsy Deletion of long non-coding RNA CHASERR produces too much CHD2 protein in the cell, leaving patients wheelchair-bound, nonverbal and with intellectual delays Patient’s dad from study: ‘We intuitively understood this was a lot bigger than just Emma’ ‘It is mind-boggling that we only know what 1% of the human genome does’ When a gene produces too…

Scientists from Bremen, Germany, characterize novel enzymes from deep-sea microbes with a key function in the ethane degradation process, revealing surprises in the metabolism of these organisms. Seeps on the deep seafloor naturally emit alkanes, which are pollutants that are potentially dangerous to life and act on global warming. Fortunately, the sediments around the seeps host microbes that act as a biological filter: They consume most of the alkanes before their release into the oceans and our atmosphere. This so-called…

Politecnico di Milano’s study on the cover of Angewandte Chemie. Research opens up new possibilities for clean energy production. Against the backdrop of the energy transition and the fight against climate change, a study conducted by Politecnico di Milano’s Department of Energy heralds in new ways of using greenhouse gases. Blazoned on the front cover of the prestigious scientific journal Angewandte Chemie, the research offers a new key to understanding how to improve the efficiency of processes that convert greenhouse…

Spinal canal stenosis – a bony narrowing of the spinal canal – can be agonizing. If it presses on the spinal cord, it comes to chronic pain and paralysis. Surgical intervention is often the only solution: In Germany alone, 111,000 cases are treated every year. However, since stenosis is close to the spinal cord, bony decompression, in which the constrictions are removed using high-speed milling, is risky. A new robot-assisted, optically monitored laser surgery system developed at the Fraunhofer Institute…

Plants adapt their water consumption to environmental conditions by counting and calculating environmental stimuli with their guard cells. Plant researchers from Würzburg report this in ‘Current Biology’. Plants control their water consumption via adjustable pores (stomata), which are formed from pairs of guard cells. They open their stomata when there is a sufficient water supply and enough light for carbon dioxide fixation through photosynthesis. In the dark and in the absence of water, however, they initiate the closing of the…

Imaging technique developed at the MHH enables regional imaging of lung function without radiation exposure and breathing stops. Recognizing and assessing lung diseases is a medical challenge. Conventional computed tomography (CT) is well suited to depicting the structure of the lungs in high resolution. However, it provides little information about lung function and also exposes patients to radiation. The lung function test is well established, but only provides values for the entire lung, i.e. it only tells us whether the…

…tested as safe and effective in phase Ib clinical trial. The MERS coronavirus—MERS stands for “Middle East Respiratory Syndrome”—causes severe respiratory diseases with a high mortality rate. To date, there is neither a vaccine nor a specific treatment. The safety, immunogenicity and optimal dosing regimen of the MVA-MERS-S vaccine candidate developed at the DZIF have now been investigated in a phase Ib study in healthy individuals who were previously infected with the related coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The study, led by Prof…

Approximately 400 times in a woman’s life, a mature egg makes the “leap.” It is released into the fallopian tube, ready for fertilization by the sperm. Researchers led by Melina Schuh, Christopher Thomas, and Tabea Lilian Marx from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Multidisciplinary Sciences have now succeeded in visualizing the entire process of ovulation in mouse follicles in real-time. The new live imaging method developed by the team allows for the process to be studied with high spatial…