news from the lab 2017

EPFL scientists have discovered gene variants that make children life-threatening susceptible to common-cold viruses. Although most children can handle viral respiratory infections like the common cold, about 2% of children become sick enough to require hospitalization. There are some known risk factors for this, but severe illness still affects 1 in 1000 previously healthy kids.

Researchers funded by the SNSF have discovered mutations that worsen respiratory infections among children. Their study explain the mechanism involved. Colds that are not linked to influenza are generally benign. Still, 2% of each generation of children have to go to hospital following a virulent infection.

The CRISPR-Cas system is an immune system that is found in many bacteria. It provides protection from viruses and other molecular parasites that can invade the bacterium and take over its genome. In these systems, the immunity is mediated by a complex multi-protein molecular machinery that uses RNA molecules as molecular guides to recognize the invader and target it for destruction.

EPFL scientists have identified rank in social hierarchies as a major determining factor for vulnerability to chronic stress. They also show that energy metabolism in the brain is a predictive biomarker for social status as well as stress vulnerability and resilience. Stress is a major risk factor for a range of psychopathologies.

A research group at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has developed a new method to measure the half-life of RNA molecules. The study revealed that commonly used methods provide distorted results and that RNA molecules live an average of only two minutes, ten times shorter than previously assumed.

Spines and thorns keep hungry mammals at bay - or at least, that's the conventional wisdom. However, ETH researchers have now shown that spiky growths on plants make life difficult for caterpillars too. This finding could be important for crop breeding. "Caterpillars can occasionally be skewered by the spines," says Rupesh Kariyat, a scientist at ETH Zurich's Institute of Integrative Biology.

What some have been aware of for a long time, others find hard to believe: Those who are concerned about the well-being of their fellow human beings are happier than those who focus only on their own advancement. Doing something nice for another person gives many people a pleasant feeling that behavioral economists call a warm glow .

More and more people suffer from allergies and asthma. In the past decades, these diseases have massively increased in industrialized countries. Today, about 30 percent of children have allergies - with the exception of farm children. Among farm children, the disease is increasing less dramatically than in the case of their friends who live in the same village, but not on a farm.

About 20 centimeters in length, the Swiss reptile was small and juvenile, but its skin was already strongly armored with variously formed smooth, jagged or even thorny osteoderms. Its skeleton indicates a life on land, even though the animal was found together with fish and marine reptiles in the 241 million year old calcareous deposits of the Prosanto Formation near Ducanfurgga at an altitude of 2,740 meters south of Davos in the canton Grisons, Switzerland.

Similar to other neurodegenerative disorders, Alzheimer's is a disease in which the cognitive abilities of afflicted persons continuously worsen. The reason is the increasing loss of synapses, the contact points of the neurons, in the brain. In the case of Alzheimer's, certain protein fragments, the β-amyloid peptides, are suspected of causing the death of neurons.

Predicting when and how species arise is now possible with a new theoretical model using genome-wide data, developed by SIB and University of Bern researcher Simon Aeschbacher and colleagues.

The disappearance of a large part of the terrestrial megafauna such as saber-toothed cat and the mammoth during the ice age is well known. Now, researchers at the University of Zurich and the Naturkunde Museum in Berlin have shown that a similar extinction event had taken place earlier, in the oceans.

EPFL scientists show how some pathogenic bacteria - such as the mycobacteria that cause tuberculosis - use a previously unknown mechanism to coordinate their division. The discovery could help develop new ways to fight them. Most rod-shaped bacteria divide by splitting into two around the middle after their DNA has replicated safely and segregated to opposite ends of the cell.

Stem cells are considered biological allrounders because they have the potential to develop into the various body cell types.

Stem cells persist in the adult mammalian brain and generate new neurons throughout life.

EPFL researchers propose a new approach of performing in vitro tests on nanoparticles that could enhance a correlation to in vivo results. This involves reproducing in the lab the dynamic and fluidic variations that these particles experience in the human body. Before new nanoparticles or other nanomedicines can be injected into the human body, a whole series of tests must be conducted in the laboratory, then in living cells, and in the end on humans.

The mastication halters indicate that horses fragment their food with the same rhythmic chewing movements as ruminants do during rumination (Image: UZH).

Transport proteins in the cells of our body protect us from particular toxins. Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Basel have now determined the high-resolution three-dimensional structure of a major human transport protein.

Sex is one of the most essential characteristics of an individual - not only for humans, but also for animals and plants.

Most people know from their own experience that just a single sleepless night can lead to difficulty in mastering mental tasks the next day. Researchers assume that deep sleep is essential for maintaining the learning efficiency of the human brain in the long term. While we are awake, we constantly receive impressions from our environment, whereby numerous connections between the nerve cells - so-called synapses - are excited and intensified at times.