Fats are essential for our body. The core components of all fats are fatty acids. Their production is initiated by the enzyme ACC. Researchers at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum have now demonstrated how ACC assembles into distinct filaments. As the researchers report in “Nature,” the type of filament formed controls the activity of the enzyme and thus fatty acid production.
Researchers have developed an artificial tissue in which human blood stem cells remain functional for a prolonged period of time. Scientists from the University of Basel, University Hospital Basel, and ETH Zurich have reported their findings in the scientific journal PNAS.
The way in which the phase-out of nuclear power plants in Germany is currently planned could negatively influence the safety of the facilities. Those involved could increasingly favor their own interests as the shutdown date approaches.
Complex reaction cascades can be triggered in artificial molecular systems: Swiss scientists have constructed an enzyme than can penetrate a mammalian cell and accelerate the release of a hormone. This then activates a gene switch that triggers the creation of a fluorescent protein. The findings were reported by researchers from the NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering, led by the University of Basel and ETH Zurich.
A little-explored group of immune cells plays an important role in the regulation of intestinal bacteria. Changing metabolic states of the microbes have an effect on defense cells at different stages of alert or rest, as researchers from the Department of Biomedicine at the University and University Hospital of Basel report in the journal "Mucosal Immunology."
For 250 years, the extensive set of manuscripts and papers lay in the University Library’s basement. Now, linguists from the University of Basel are providing access to Johann Jakob Spreng’s Grosses Glossarium der deutschen Sprache (Great Glossary of the German Language) for the first time.
A medicinal plant frequently used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) – Evodia rutaecarpa – contains substances that can cause cardiac arrhythmia. This is what researchers from the Universities of Basel, Vienna and Utrecht have recently found out.
Physicists from the University of Basel have observed the quantum mechanical Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox in a system of several hundred interacting atoms for the first time. The phenomenon dates back to a famous thought experiment from 1935. It allows measurement results to be predicted precisely and could be used in new types of sensors and imaging methods for electromagnetic fields.
The research group of Alex Schier, Director of the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has investigated more closely how a single embryonic cell develops into a heart, nerve or blood cell. For the first time, the researchers have been able to reconstruct the developmental trajectories of individual embryonic cells. Their results also suggest that cells can change their path during their maturation process.
