news 2020

How the T-cell response changes in chronic virus infections "The Covid-19 pandemic clearly demonstrates the importance of understanding how the immune system reacts to virus infections," says Dr. Kilian Schober. Together with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from Medicine, Biology and Bioinformatics, he is investigating how important agents in the body's immune system known as T lymphocytes or T cells react when a virus invades the organism and how the immune response changes when the infection becomes chronic.

One goal of science is to find physical descriptions of nature by studying how basic system components interact with one another. For complex many-body systems, effective theories are frequently used to this end. They allow describing the interactions without having to observe a system on the smallest of scales.

Molecular switches - they are the molecular counterparts of electrical switches and play an important role in many processes in nature. Such molecules can reversibly interconvert between two or more states and thereby control molecular processes. In living organisms, for example, they play a role in muscle contraction but also our visual perception is based on the dynamics of a molecular switch in the eye.

Scientists from the international XENON collaboration under participation of the University of Münster announced today that data from their XENON1T, the world's most sensitive dark matter experiment, show a surprising excess of events. The scientists do not claim to have found dark matter. Instead, they say to have observed an unexpected rate of events, the source of which is not yet fully understood.

Electrons in "chiral crystals", solid-state materials with definite "handedness", can behave in unexpected ways. An interdisciplinary team from research institutions in Germany and China has realized now a theoretically predicted peculiar electronic state in a chiral compound, PtGa, from the class of topological materials.

Research team with Göttingen participation develops concepts to promote biodiversity Forests, especially in the tropics, are home to the world's greatest biodiversity, but are threatened by increasing land use. An international research team with participation of the University of Göttingen has investigated how high the proportion of forest in cultivated landscapes must be in order to protect the greatest number of animal and plant species that depend on this habitat.

Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin publish two experimental studies in journal Astrobiology No 101/2020 from Jun 16, 2020 Instruments on-board future space missions are capable of detecting amino acids, fatty acids, and peptides, and even identify ongoing biological processes on ocean moons in our Solar System.

How do animals adapt their behaviour during life in order to assure survival and reproduction? This is a question of great interest for behavioural biologists worldwide. An essential step is to examine hormonal mechanisms which have a fundamental impact on the animal's behaviour and thus make adaptations to various social situations possible.

Following the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Europe and North America in March 2020, many people around the world began hoarding goods such as toilet paper. Some companies reported an increase in toilet paper sales of up to 700 percent, despite calls from governments to refrain from "panic buying". Which groups of people primarily hoarded all the toilet paper? Psychologists from the universities of St. Gallen and Münster and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig investigated this question.

Research team from Göttingen University investigates the land-use history of agroforestry systems The cultivation of coffee, cocoa and vanilla secures the income of many small-holder farmers and is also a driver of land-use change in many tropical countries. In particular, cultivation in agroforestry systems, in which these crops are combined with trees that provide shade, is often considered to have great potential for ecologically sustainable cultivation.

A mysterious cloud containing radioactive ruthenium-106, which moved across Europe in autumn 2017, is still bothering Europe's radiation protection entities. Although the activity concentrations were innocuous, they reached up to 100 times the levels of what had been detected over Europe in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident.

Research team discover new natural products that bacteria in water use to regulate the growth of competing organisms Life The sheer endless expanses of the oceans are hostile deserts - at least from the perspective of a bacterium living in water. Tiny as it is, its chances of finding sufficient nutrients in the great mass of water would seem to be vanishingly small.

International researchers demand the active protection and support of diversity, equity and inclusion in science In the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists are facing great challenges because they have to reorient, interrupt or even cancel research and teaching.

Geoscientists show that it is not erosion but an equilibrium of forces in the Earth's crust that controls the "growth" of mountains / Study in "Nature" Which forces and mechanisms determine the height of mountains? Researchers at the University of Münster and the German Research Centre for Geoscience (GFZ) in Potsdam have now found a surprising answer: It is not erosion and weathering of rocks that determine the upper limit of mountain belts, but rather an equilibrium of forces in the Earth's crust.

That visible light holds the character of a wave can be demonstrated in simple optics experiments, or directly witnessed when rainbows appear in the sky. Although the subtle laws of quantum mechanics, that is, wave mechanics, ultimately govern all the processes of electron transportelectrons in solids, their wave-like nature of the electrons is not often apparent to the casual observer.

Highly flexible or spiky nanosystems by Berlin researchers open the door for new antiviral options against influenza viruses No 098/2020 from Jun 11, 2020 Berlin researchers have applied two new strategies based on multivalent nanosystems for making influenza A viruses (IAV) innocuous. The decisive factor in the development of these new strategies against influenza was the cooperation between scientists from different disciplines - chemistry, physics, virology, and imaging - the collaborative partners of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt University Berlin, and the Robert Koch Institute.

Experiments on zebrafish: fibroblasts produce important enzyme-processing proteins triggering growth in vessels / Study in "Nature Communications" When an embryo develops, a wide variety of proteins and enzymes trigger a series of biochemical reactions. The development of the lymphatic vasculature is crucially dependent on one specific protein - the growth factor VEGF-C.

Cystic fibrosis is the most frequent severe inherited disorder worldwide. Every year, hundreds of families are confronted with this diagnosis - and to date, there is no cure for this disease that mainly affects the respiratory system. Besides supportive treatments, a lung transplant is often the only option to save a patient's live.

Metabolic processes are especially complex in plants due to their obligate sessile life style - which is why scientists discover more and more new and surprising connections that occur within their cells. An important metabolic route that has occupied plant scientists for decades is the so-called oxidative pentose-phosphate pathway by which carbohydrates are converted to reduction power.

Protecting nerve cells from losing their characteristic extensions, the dendrites, can reduce brain damage after a stroke. Neurobiologists from Heidelberg University have demonstrated this by means of research on a mouse model. The team, led by Hilmar Bading in cooperation with Junior Professor Dr Daniela Mauceri, is investigating the protection of neuronal architecture to develop new approaches to treating neurodegenerative diseases.