science wire

Silvia Arber - group leader at the FMI and at the Biozentrum, University of Basel - and a team of international experts receive 8 million Swiss Francs from the Aligning Science Across Parkinson's (ASAP) initiative to investigate Parkinson's.

Fear protects us by making us alert to danger, but the persistence of fearful memories can lead to serious mental conditions. Now, an international team of researchers co-led by Andreas Lüthi has found that the activity of different cells in the brain's threat-detector hub regulates the switch between high and low fear states.

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).

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).

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. The Zenke group have developed a new method in machine learning called Neural Tangent Transfer to make a sparse neural network which performs almost as well as densely connected deep neural network on various learning tasks, but at a heavily reduced computing cost.

The Keller group had previously shown that the coupling of sensory and motor experience was critical for normal sensorimotor processing. The researchers have now identified the particular subset of cortical neurons responsible for computing mismatches between what we expect to see based on movement and what we actually see, and are likely essential for helping us distinguish between self-generated and externally generated sensations.

Loading of replicative helicases onto DNA is a key event during the initiation of chromosomal DNA replication.

The FMI is a partner of the pan-European LifeTime initiative. In two publications, researchers involved with the initiative - including FMI group leader Susan Gasser - present a detailed roadmap of how to leverage the latest scientific breakthroughs and technologies over the next decade, to track, understand and treat human cells throughout an individual's lifetime.

Molecular glue degraders are a new class of drugs that work by facilitating an interaction between a disease-causing target protein and a ubiquitin ligase complex, tagging the target protein for degradation.

Organoid" was launched today. It aims at validating organoids as faithful models of human biology, combining single-cell profiling and organoid technology.

In a video (5'35'') combining interviews and figures, the team behind the latest collaboration from the Thomä and Schübeler labs - Alicia Michael, Ralph Grand and Luke Isbel - explain how they developed an assay identifying where the preferable sites for the transcription factor-DNA binding motif on the nucleosome were, so that they could build transcription factor-nucleosome complexes.

April 8, 2020 On April 8, 1970, the founding charter of the FMI was signed. For 50 years, the FMI has stayed true to its initial mission: To promote basic research in the fields of biochemistry and medicine, and to train young scientists.

Genes that time the transition to adulthood are well-studied in the roundworm C. elegans, and at least partially conserved in mammals, where they regulate the onset of puberty.

Michael Stadler has been leading the FMI Computational Biology technology platform since 2008. In an interview, he explains how the platform is set up and how it supports the FMI research groups, he shares what he likes most about his job, and he talks about the future of computational biology.

Animal development is a unidirectional process that steers undifferentiated cells of the early embryo into specialized cell types such as brain, muscle or skin cells. Once differentiated, there is almost no way back. A notable exception is the de-differentiation of mature into immature cell types during injured tissue regeneration.

The European Research Council has awarded one of the prestigious ERC Synergy Grants - the most competitive funding scheme from ERC - to a joint research project of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, the ETH Zurich and the University of Bristol. The interdisciplinary team wants to investigate the molecular mechanisms of viral infection, which will contribute to fundamental knowledge about cellular regulation and new concepts for broad-spectrum anti-viral therapy.

The European Research Council has awarded one of the prestigious ERC Synergy Grants - the most competitive funding scheme from ERC - to a joint research project of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, the ETH Zurich and the University of Bristol. The interdisciplinary team wants to investigate the molecular mechanisms of viral infection, which will contribute to fundamental knowledge about cellular regulation and new concepts for broad-spectrum anti-viral therapy.

A highlight at the FMI Annual Meeting 2019, which has taken place last week in the Swiss Alps (Grindelwald), was the Award Ceremony: the winners of the Ed Fischer Prize for best thesis, the Max Burge

Deubiquitinases (DUBs) play a general role removing protein-degrading ubiquitins throughout the cell and are not typically known for specificity. Analyzing the two protein complexes BRISC and BRCA1-A, which have the same DUB core but play different roles in human biology, the Thomä group - in a collaboration with the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research (NIBR) - showed that DUBs can have diversified targeting and regulatory functions.

DNA has become the icon of modern bioscience but few people realize that it was Friedrich Miescher, who - almost a century before Watson and Crick - laid the chemical groundwork for the molecular breakthroughs that followed. Today, 150 years after Miescher's first 'discovery' of DNA, we want to highlight his remarkable work.

April 8, 2019 Guillaume Diss joined the FMI as a new Quantitative Biology group leader on March 1. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms whereby genetic variation translates into phenotypic variation - for example, in diseases.

Five of our postdocs were recently awarded the prestigious EMBO and Maria Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Fellowships.