April 6, 2021 We are pleased to announce the latest FMI winners of prestigious research fellowships, including EMBO, Maria Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and Boehringer Ingelheim Funds (BIF).

The brain's emotion-processing center — the amygdala — is one of several brain regions involved in social behavior.

In eukaryotes, histones are often modified and evicted at site of DNA double-strand breaks in order to facilitate end-resection and break repair. Together with the protein analysis facility of the FMI, the Gasser group has quantified massive changes in the chromatin associated proteome in response to DNA damage.

The generation of antibodies in B-cells takes place in a dynamic structure that forms during infections, the germinal center (GC).

FMI group leader Prisca Liberali, who is also a Professor at the University of Basel, receives the Friedrich Miescher Award 2021 for her research on design principles of tissue organization.

Just like people, cells get stressed too. A sudden drop in oxygen, overheating, or toxins can trigger a cascade of molecular changes that lead cells to stop growing, produce stress-protective factors, and form stress granules - proteins and RNA molecules huddled together into membrane-less organelles.

How do molecules involved in activating our immune system discriminate between our own DNA and foreign pathogens? Researchers from the Thomä group, in collaboration with the EPFL, deciphered the structural and functional basis of a DNA-sensing molecule when it comes in contact with the cell's own DNA, providing crucial insights into the recognition of self vs.

Spotlight on FMIers is a new series that showcases the lives, work and passions of the institute's researchers and support staff. In the first interview of the series, Esther Griesbach, a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Jeffrey Chao, tells us about herself, the fascination with RNA and what she learned about embarking on a new research journey in COVID times.

During development, scores of molecular signals prod cells to take on specialized identities and functions.

Chromatin remodelers are needed to take nucleosomes away from DNA in order to make room for transcription factors to bind, and regulate the activity of our genes.

FMI Director Emeritus and Group Leader Emeritus, Susan Gasser, has been elected director of the Foundation of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer (ISREC) by the Foundation Council. The ISREC Foundation has contributed to significant discoveries in oncology, and actively and substantially participates in the fight against cancer.

Transposons are foreign DNA elements capable of random insertion into the genome, an event that can be very dangerous for a cell.

Susan Gasser is a world-leading scientist in the field of genome biology and has been involved in guiding science policy and institutes across Europe. She was the FMI Director for 15 years, from 2004 until 2019.

The requirements of real biological neural networks are modest compared to the complex deep neural networks used in machine learning, which come with substantial memory and energy demands.