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Food supplements are available in a lot of places - in drugstores, health food shops, pharmacies and on the Internet - and the market is booming. Many of these products contain plant extracts whose ingredients are supposed to have healthy benefits - provided they do actually contain what they claim. Because nowhere near all of these so-called botanicals deliver what they promise.

Light is used for various purposes in nowadays applications. For example, data can be transmitted with light and nanoscopic structures can be created by light. To enable such applications, light must be structured. To do this, its properties - intensity (brightness), phase (position in oscillation-cycle) and polarization (direction of the oscillation) - are "tailored".

The bodies of animals and humans are innervated by a network of nerve cells which are connected through long extensions. The nerve cells use these so-called axons and dendrites to communicate with one another. During early development, nerve cells grow a large number of axons and dendrites. To make the connections specific, redundant extensions are removed at a later stage in a process called "pruning".

Dr. Francesco Catania is head of the working group "Evolutionary Cell Biology" at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity at the University of Münster. His group uses bioinformatics and experimental approaches to investigate how the interaction of cells and organisms with their environment leads to the emergence of new properties.

Titin is a "titanically large" protein - the largest in the human body - which enables elastic movements of our muscles, including the heart. Mutations in the titin gene ( TTN ) that impair this function are the most frequent cause of a heart muscle disease known as dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), which is characterized by a weak pump function.

The neurons, located in the brain are interconnected in a complex pattern and establish special communication points, the synapses. All neurons require a constant environment in order to function reliably. To ensure this, the brain is surrounded by the so-called blood-brain barrier. It ensures, for example, that the nutrient balance always remains the same and that harmful influences do not reach the neurons.

Planetologists from Münster investigate origin of heavy bombardment of the Moon 3.9 billion years ago / Publication in "Science Advances" The lunar surface is covered by numerous craters that date back to the impacts of asteroids. Age determinations on lunar rocks formed during these impacts show a surprising clustering at ages of about 3.9 billion years before present, or about 500 million years after the Moon was formed.

Last summer, archaeologists from the University of Münster discovered a previously unknown sanctuary from the Roman era during excavation work in the ancient town of Doliche in south-eastern Turkey. Over a period of nine weeks, the team - headed by Prof. Engelbert Winter and Prof. Michael Blömer from the Asia Minor Research Centre -uncovered parts of a large temple notable not only for its size but also for its unusual form.

Plants are not entirely at the mercy of their herbivore enemies. Often, chemical defences ensure that the plants are inedible, or even toxic, and as a result insects and other hungry animals steer clear of them. A new study has shown, for the first time, that the degradation of plants' defence substances by insects' digestive enzymes can influence the insects' preference for certain food plants.

Researchers develop imaging methods to examine bodily processes from the individual building blocks to the whole system / Proof-of-principle study on SNAP-tag technology published in the journal "Chemical Communications" Video in English, subtitles available in English and German. Processes and structures within the body that are normally hidden from the eye can be made visible through medical imaging.

A comprehensive analysis of white blood cells in the tissue surrounding the brain / Study published in the journal "Nature Neuroscience" The brain holds numerous unsolved medical mysteries. Only a few years ago it was discovered that the outer layer of the meninges is interlaced with lymphatic vessels.

"You can't see the wood for the trees" is a phrase which we certainly don't associate immediately with the medical examination and analysis of testicles. But in a certain way it applies here, too: testicles consist of many different types of cells, and up to now this complex quality prevented these types from being isolated and then analysed.

Although Dr. Christian Maas does his research only on the computer, it's sometimes as if he were standing in a laboratory. "I do experiments," he says. By means of his virtual experiments, geophysicist Maas is investigating a question that couldn't be answered in any lab in the world: the question of the how the Earth came into being.

Nanocontainers made of biological materials use natural processes to enter cells and release their cargo / Study published in the journal "Advanced Science" Nanocontainers can transport substances into cells where they can then take effect. This is the method used in, for example, the mRNA vaccines currently being employed against Covid-19 as well as certain cancer drugs.

A team of German and American researchers from Augsburg, Münster, Edmonton, West Lafayette and Munich have detected the rolling movement of a nano-acoustic wave predicted by the famous physicist and Nobel prize-winner Lord Rayleigh in 1885. In a study published in the journal "Science Advances", the researchers use a nanowire inside which electrons are forced onto circular paths by the spin of the acoustic wave.

Researchers investigate which material properties support vessel formation / Study published in the journal "Nature Communications" Using lab-created tissue to heal or replace damaged organs is one of the great visions for the future of medicine. Synthetic materials could be suitable as scaffolding for tissue because, unlike natural tissues, they remain stable in the organism long enough for the body to form new natural structures.

Measurements of biomechanical properties inside living cells require minimally invasive methods. Optical tweezers are particularly attractive as a tool. It uses the momentum of light to trap and manipulate microor nanoscale particles. A team of researchers led by Cornelia Denz from the University of Münster has now developed a simplified method to perform the necessary calibration of the optical tweezers in the system under investigation.

Current research shows that environmental pollution is a phenomenon found not only in modern times. Even in ancient times people suffered from lead poisoning. The Romans widely used this heavy metal as a material for their water pipes and sometimes even for sweetening wine. There is a fair amount of evidence for the extent and the influence of this contamination, and its impact on the global atmosphere can be tracked on the basis of Arctic ice core analyses.

Scientists at the University of Münster provide new insights into interactions between platelets and white blood cells in mice / Study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine Treating patients with acute respiratory failure is a constant challenge in intensive care medicine. In most cases, the underlying cause is lung inflammation triggered by a bacterial infection or - more rarely, despite being frequently observed at present due to the corona pandemic - a viral infection.

Some species of ants make life easier for themselves: they live in the colonies of other ant species, exploiting their hosts' resources. This form of social parasitism has evolved several times independently in ants. An international team of researchers headed by biologist Dr. Lukas Schrader at the University of Münster has now shown that these social parasites have lost some parts of their genomes.