Analyze odorous substances without errors

Comparative study confirms established method as gold standard

18-Feb-2025 - When analyzing odorants in foods or their raw materials, the formation of artefacts can significantly distort the results. Two researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich have now shown in a new comparative study that the choice of ...

Predicting the mode of action of new anti-cancer drugs with AI

Acceleration of the development of new cancer drugs

22-Nov-2024 - Plants, fungi and bacteria produce a variety of active substances that alter cell metabolism, sometimes to the point of cell death. This makes them promising candidates for new drugs against cancer and other diseases. Although a diverse range of bioactives exists, the further development of new ...

Towards new reaction pathways

Insights on molecular dynamics in the ultrashort time window following UV excitation

30-Oct-2024 - The Attosecond Science group at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science at DESY has developed a novel light source capable of producing extremely short pulses for the investigation of UV-induced molecular dynamics with unprecedented temporal resolution. Scientists from DESY and the University ...

Scientists from 33 European countries join forces to generate reference genomes for the continent's rich biological diversity

19-Sep-2024 - The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) pilot project reports its success in uniting scientists from across Europe to produce high-quality reference genomes for 98 species. This marks a significant milestone in the quest to create a high-quality reference genome database for all European ...

Harnessing Mutations: A Breakthrough in Fruit Fly Genetics

A game-changing technique, TF-High-Evolutionary (TF-HighEvo), allows large-scale assessment of de-novo mutations in multicellular organisms

16-Sep-2024 - Developed in collaboration with researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society and published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, this technique provides fresh insights into the evolutionary dynamics of gene ...

How to live 400 years

Genome of the longest-lived vertebrate decoded: It is huge and has special repair capabilities

12-Sep-2024 - The Greenland Shark (Somniosus microcephalus), an elusive dweller of the depths of the northern Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, is the world’s longest-living vertebrate, with an estimated lifespan of about 400 years. An international team of scientists has mapped the Greenland Shark’s genome for ...

Synthetic biology reveals the secrets of life without oxygen

ERC Advanced Grant for natural product researcher Christian Hertweck

15-Jul-2024 - The “AnoxyGen” project will decode novel active substances of anaerobes and elucidate their role in nature. Some of these could be useful for humans, animals and the environment. Christian Hertweck has been awarded one of the ERC Advanced Grants by the European Research Council (ERC). In the ...

Riddle of proteins in the brain solved

Erin Schuman awarded the Körber European Science Prize, worth one million euros

01-Jul-2024 - The American neurobiologist Erin Schuman is a pioneer in neurobiology. Schuman’s work has revolutionised our understanding of how individual brain cells – so called neurons – work. She discovered that and how proteins, as critical building blocks of the cells, are locally produced at the ...

Intricate processes in photosynthesis decoded using advanced electron microscopy technique

This enables breakthroughs in multiple areas of biological and chemical research

25-Jun-2024 - Using cryo-electron microscopy a team of scientists from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), the Swedish universities of Umeå and Uppsala and the University of Potsdam has succeeded in visualising atomic structures at an unprecedented resolution at the nanometre level underlying the process of ...

Testing how well biomarkers work

Researchers have developed a method to determine how reliably target proteins can be labeled using super-resolution fluorescence microscopy

02-May-2024 - Modern microscopy techniques make it possible to examine the inner workings of cells in astonishing detail. “We can now observe the arrangement and interaction of individual proteins under the microscope,” says Professor Ralf Jungmann, Chair of Molecular Physics of Life at LMU and Max Planck ...