DNA Chips as Storage Media of the Future

28-Aug-2023 - In the form of DNA, nature shows how data can be stored in a space-saving and long-term manner. Würzburg's chair of bioinformatics is developing DNA chips for computer technology. The hereditary molecule DNA can store a great deal of information over long periods of time in a very small space. ...

DNA Organization in Real-Time

How the motion of DNA controls gene activity

04-Jul-2023 - Despite being densely packed to fit into the nucleus, chromosomes storing our genetic information are always in motion. This allows specific regions to come into contact and thereby activate a gene. A group of scientists from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Princeton ...

New findings could pave the way to detecting the building blocks of life in our solar system

Detecting biomolecules on ocean moons

07-Dec-2022 - It would be technically possible for future space missions to detect DNA, lipids, and other bacterial components on ocean moons in our solar system – provided that these building blocks of life do exist beyond Earth. This is the conclusion that has now been reached by an international team of ...

1 million-year-old marine DNA found in Antarctic sediment

New technique helps decipher ‘who’ has lived in the ocean in the past and ‘when’

06-Oct-2022 - A new study led by the University of Tasmania – with the participation of the University of Bonn – discovered the oldest marine DNA in deep-sea sediments of the Scotia Sea north of the Antarctic continent. The material could be dated to one million years. Such old material demonstrates that ...

Moss repair team also works in humans

"If we could correct faulty sites in the genetic code with RNA editing methods, this would potentially also offer starting points for the treatment of hereditary diseases"

21-Sep-2022 - If everything is to run smoothly in living cells, the genetic information must be correct. But unfortunately, errors in the DNA accumulate over time due to mutations. Land plants have developed a peculiar correction mode: they do not directly improve the errors in the genome, but rather ...

Researchers generate the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome

“The complete blueprint is going to revolutionize the way we think about human genomic variation, disease and evolution”

04-Apr-2022 - Scientists have published the first complete, gapless sequence of a human genome, two decades after the Human Genome Project produced the first draft human genome sequence.According to researchers, having a complete, gap-free sequence of the roughly 3 billion bases (or “letters”) in our DNA is ...

Nucleosome breathing from atomistic time snapshots

Computer simulations visualize in atomic detail how DNA opens while wrapped around proteins

08-Jun-2021 - Researchers from the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht (The Netherlands) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster (Germany) used computer simulations to reveal in atomic detail how a short piece of DNA opens while it is tightly wrapped around the proteins that package our ...

Searching for the chemistry of life

Study shows possible new way to create DNA base pairs

06-Oct-2020 - In the search for the chemical origins of life, researchers have found a possible alternative path for the emergence of the characteristic DNA pattern: According to the experiments, the characteristic DNA base pairs can form by dry heating, without water or other solvents. The team led by Ivan ...

Structure of virus that infects bacteria in hot springs is revealed

06-Feb-2019 - Scientists have revealed the structure of a virus infecting bacteria that thrive in 160-degree hot springs in places like Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The discovery could lead to better targeted delivery of drugs into cells and new DNA sequencing technology, according to a study by ...

Theory unlocks the secret behind protein-membrane interactions

Understanding cell behavior better by elucidating how proteins work with cell membranes

28-Jan-2019 - Trillions of cells -- all different shapes and sizes -- form a human body's structure. Surrounding each cell is a membrane, jointly acting as hostess and security -- welcoming certain information into the cell while making sure its components don't spill out into the body's void. Much is known ...