news 2022

No memory without a brain? That's not quite true, as shown by an Agroscope study of woodland strawberry: heat and other stress situations influence the DNA of the plants. The resulting changes can help forearm strawberries against subsequent stress situations - they -remember-. With ongoing climate change, plants are faced by stress situations more frequently and at shorter intervals: heat, drought, intense precipitation events, but also cold and altered soil salinity.

A research team from ETH Zurich and WSL travelled to Spitsbergen this summer to take a closer look at the phenomenon of Arctic greening. Project manager Sebastian Dötterl discusses research in the face of polar bears, strikes and war. Coronavirus, war and a pilots' strike First, the coronavirus pandemic delayed the start of the project by more than a year.

Are would-be parents carrying a genetic risk of serious illnesses that they could potentially pass on to their children? In the USA, doctors recommend that couples have genetic screening before trying to conceive. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now shown that a maximal variant of this test detects the risk in 44 percent of couples who are related by blood, and in just 5 percent of other couples.

Overweight increases the risk of an imbalance in sugar metabolism and even of diabetes. A research group at the University of Basel has now shown the opposite is true as well: deficits in the body's insulin production contribute to overweight. Poor nutrition, too little movement and too many pounds on the scale - lifestyle influences the risk of metabolic diseases like diabetes.

Scientists have discovered a rare gene in the tumors of some colorectal cancer patients. This finding could lead to more accurate diagnoses and, eventually, personalized treatments that target the protein expressed by the gene. Colorectal cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer in the Western world, especially in people over 50.

A new study by researchers reveals how a malfunctioning protein complex can lead to the buildup of toxic forms of Tau, a protein involved in Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease are associated with atypical proteins that form tangles in the brain, killing neurons.

Researchers have developed a model that explains how nerve cells in the brain connect during development. Their model reveals that the crucial factor is progressive cell division. This process leads naturally to the formation of molecular addresses that lets neurons navigate. The human brain is by far the most complex organ that nature has ever produced: 100 billion nerve cells, each connected to other cells via several contact points, ensure that our skill set includes the capacity for remarkable brainpower.

How do frogs protect themselves from predators? Some species rely on cognitive predator evasion, using their large brains and strong hind legs. For species exposed to high predation pressure, however, this strategy takes too much energy, and effective camouflage to avoid being detected in the first place may be preferable.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and EPFL are expanding the emerging field of single-cell analysis with a ground-breaking method: Live-seq makes it possible to measure the activity of thousands of genes in a single cell without having to isolate and destroy it. Modern biology is increasingly seeking to understand why individual cells behave differently.

A new technique keeps cells alive during extraction to track the activity of thousands of genes across time. The breakthrough method is called Live-seq and was jointly developed by scientists at EPFL and ETH Zurich. RNA sequencing allows scientists to study the expression of genes in a cell. Since messenger RNA (mRNA) is generated from a DNA gene, that information can be used to identify the original gene sequence and thus measure the activity of thousands of genes (i.e.

Flowers are sexual structures of plants that are normally assumed to have evolved in harmony with their mutualistic pollinators such as bees, butterflies and honeybirds. However, a new study involving the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL shows that herbivorous insects play a central role.

Researchers at the University of Bern have investigated how organic, biodynamic and conventional management in vineyards affects insect fauna. They were able to show that organic - and to a lesser extent biodynamic - management provides better habitat conditions for insects than conventionally managed vineyards.

Most vaccines require constant refrigeration during shipment to remain effective. An international research team led by ETH Zurich has now developed a special hydrogel that vastly improves the shelf life of vaccines, even without refrigeration. The development could save many lives and lower the cost of cold chains.

By demonstrating that ketamine induces only a brief increase in dopamine and does not alter neuronal communication, a team from the UNIGE suggests that its therapeutic use may be safe. Commonly used in medicine as an anaesthetic, ketamine is also increasingly prescribed to relieve depressive symptoms.

The worldwide distribution of one of the most important cereal pathogens is the result of human activity. Researchers at the University of Zurich have traced the history and spread of wheat powdery mildew along wheat trade routes and found that mixing of genetic ancestries of related powdery mildew species played a central role in the evolution and adaptation of the pathogen.

Researchers of the Wellcome Sanger Institute and ETH Zurich have created the first full connectivity map of the human immune system, showing how immune cells communicate with each other and ways to modulate these pathways in disease. The immune system is made up of specialised cells, some of which individually travel through the body to scan for signs of injury or disease.

Scientists at the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI) and the University of Bern report on a Vesicular Stomatitis Virus (VSV)-vectored COVID-19 vaccine candidate. Their work shows that intramuscular immunization of mice with VSV-vectored COVID-19 vaccines is inducing strong antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein if the vector has been complemented with a specific protein.

Similar to humans, chimpanzees use communication to coordinate their cooperative behavior - such as during hunting. When chimpanzees produce a specific vocalization, known as the -hunting bark-, they recruit more group members to the hunt and capture their prey more effectively, researchers at the University of Zurich and Tufts University have now shown.

Non-invasive brain stimulation can restore optimal motor skill acquisition in people with diminished learning capabilities, e.g. due to age. The study was carried out by scientists at EPFL. Even though we don't think about it, every movement we make in our daily life essentially consists of a sequence of smaller actions in a specific order.

The steadily worsening climate crisis caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere makes the search for ideas to store CO2 increasingly important. Prof. Ben Engel's team at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel together with colleagues from the Universities of Frankfurt and Marburg, has now shed light on the structure of an enzyme that reveals a new way of storing CO2.