Protein interactions: who is partying with whom and who is ruining the party?

New method for investigating protein interaction networks - also of interest for pharmaceutical research

18-Oct-2024 - Inside cells, it's like in a packed dance club: hundreds are partying. Some keep to themselves, others make their way through the crowd, chatting to everyone they meet. Some just say a quick hello, others stay with their best friends. In this club, there are all kinds of different interactions ...

Harnessing the organisation of the cell surface

07-Dec-2021 - Scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new method to determine how proteins are organised on the surface of cells. Insights gained with the technology could lead to the development of novel drugs to fight cancer. Biological cells have multiple functions, and they need to communicate with each ...

Healthy organelles, healthy cells

02-Oct-2019 - It has recently become clear just how important membraneless organelles are for cells. Now biochemists at ETH Zurich have discovered a novel mechanism that regulates the formation of these organelles. This has laid the foundation for more targeted research into diseases such as Alzheimer’s or ...

Cancer control: Structure of important transport protein solved

Discovery of promising binding site

21-Jun-2019 - For the first time, Bernese researchers have been able to solve the structure of a transport protein and thus to describe the functional mechanism that plays a significant role in the survival of cancer cells. This is an important step towards developing effective inhibitors and fight tumor ...

Bringing information into the cell

30-Apr-2019 - Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have elucidated an important part of a siganalling pathway that transmits information through the cell membrane into the interior of a cell. This siganalling pathway is of great significance for all mammals, since it is involved in various important ...

New Method Refines Cell Sample Analysis

Innovation in the field of biomedicine

06-Aug-2018 - Researchers at the University of Zurich have developed a novel method which increases more than tenfold the number of proteins that can be visualized per sample, making it possible to generate a comprehensive map of cellular organization across the various cellular states. This highly ...

New tool for structural biology

New method of crystallising large membrane proteins

08-Mar-2018 - ETH researchers have developed a new method of crystallising large membrane proteins in order to determine their structure. This will be of benefit to biological research and the pharmaceutical industry. Membrane-embedded proteins are an essential part of cells and any form of life. They not only ...

Measuring molecular interactions

Previously unknown interactions between proteins and small metabolic molecules discovered

02-Feb-2018 - ETH researchers have used a new approach to discover previously unknown interactions between proteins and small metabolic molecules in bacterial cells. The technique can also be used to test the effect of medications. Science now has a new “omics” – an interactomics, which deals with the ...

The first precise measurement of a single molecule's effective charge

Discovery could pave the way to new diagnostic tools

16-Jan-2018 - For the first time, scientists have precisely measured the effective electrical charge of a single molecule in solution. This fundamental insight of an SNSF Professor could also pave the way for future medical diagnostics. Electrical charge is one of the key properties that allows molecules to ...

More inflexible than imagined

29-Aug-2017 - Oligosaccharides – chains of sugar building blocks – are essential for biological cells. Scientists had thought that these molecules were freely mobile, but an international research team has now shown that such sugar molecules can form rigid structures, previously found only in DNA and ...