news from the lab 2016

02. Scientists at EPFL solve a longstanding problem with modeling Parkinson's disease in animals. Using newfound insights, they improve both cell and animal models for the disease, which can propel research and drug development. Parkinson's disease is characterized by the appearance of protein clumps within neurons in the brain, called Lewy bodies.

Stem cells can both trigger and cure diseases. During the past five years, the National Research Programme "Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine" (NRP 63) has investigated their potential. Diabetes, heart attacks, cartilage replacement, wound healing, brain tumours, Parkinson's disease: twelve research groups working on the National Research Programme "Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine" (NRP 63) have examined various diseases.

As hybrid plants provide a very high agricultural yield for only one generation, new hybrid seeds need to be produced and used every year. However, natural cloning via seeds might enable the efficiency of such plants to be passed on unchanged. For the first time in experi-ments, researchers from the University of Zurich have now demonstrated that this nearly 80-year-old idea actually works.

Errors in the formation of neurons can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders such as microcephaly, an abnormally small brain. Prof. Clemens Cabernard's team at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has examined a protein that is involved in the development of microcephaly. As the scientists report in "Cell Reports", this protein plays an important role in the cell division of neural stem cells and fulfills two very different tasks.

Up to now Alzheimer's disease has not been recognised as transmissible. Now researchers at the University of Zurich and the Medical University Vienna demonstrated Alzheimer-type pathology in brains of recipients of dura mater grafts who died later from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

ETH researchers have developed a new water filtration system that is superior to existing systems in many respects: it is extremely efficient at removing various toxic heavy metal ions and radioactive substances from water and can even be used in gold recovery.

ETH scientists are researching the unusual secretions of the hagfish. Over the next three years, the researchers try to find out how this natural hydrogel can be harnessed for human use.

11. EPFL scientists have developed a new method that turns cells into stem cells by "squeezing" them. The method paves the way for large-scale production of stem cells for medical purposes. Stem cells are now at the cutting edge of modern medicine. They can transform into a cells of different organs, offering new ways to treat a range of injuries and diseases from Parkinson's to diabetes.

Protein deposits in cells, such as those associated with diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, can also be beneficial - at least for yeast cells, as biochemists at ETH Zurich have discovered. The researchers found a new form of age-associated deposits in these cells, and they are now asking us to rethink our views on ageing and dementia.

A last meal provides new insights: The fossilized food remains of the extinct predatory fish Saurichthys reflect its spiral-shaped intestine. The spiral valve in fossils from Southern Switzerland is similar to that of sharks and rays. Paleontologists from the University of Zurich have thus closed a gap in the knowledge concerning the evolution of the gastrointestinal tract in vertebrates.