The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded both Prof. Dr. Johanna Pausch, Junior Professor of Agricultural Ecology at the University of Bayreuth, and Prof. Dr. Matteo Bianchini, Chair of Inorganic Active Materials for Electrochemical Energy Storage at the University of Bayreuth, an ERC Starting Grant. Pausch will receive € 1.5 million and Bianchini € 1.8 million for their respective research projects over the next five years.
Plants, like other organisms, can be severely affected by heat stress. To increase their chances of survival, they activate the heat shock response, a molecular pathway also employed by human and animal cells for stress protection. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now discovered that plant steroid hormones can promote this response in plants.
The research neutron source Hein Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is playing an important role in the investigation of mRNA nanoparticles similar to the ones used in the Covid-19 vaccines from vendors BioNTech and Pfizer. Researchers at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) used the high neutron flux available in Garching to characterize various formulations for the mRNA vaccine and thus to lay the groundwork for improving the vaccine's efficacy.
Lichens colonise all regions of the earth, from the poles to the equator. They are a symbiosis of fungi and algae. Secondary metabolites, so-called “lichen substances” produced by the fungal partner play a central role to maintain this symbiosis. An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Bayreuth, the University of Hohenheim, and the Bavarian State Natural Science Collections has now discovered how different climatic conditions influence the chemical properties of lichen substances and thus the evolution and global distribution of lichens. They present their research results in "Ecology Letters".
More and more studies worldwide are looking into the effects of microplastics, especially with regard to the environment and health. They often use spherical polystyrene microparticles and have arrived at partly contradictory results. An interdisciplinary research team at the University of Bayreuth has discovered a reason for this. Commercially available, supposedly identical polystyrene particles differ significantly, depending on the manufacturer, in terms of their structure and properties. Therefore, their interactions with living cells have different consequences for cell metabolism. The scientists have presented their study in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.
Vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been made possible by an unprecedented worldwide collaboration. But medications against Covid-19 have as yet seen only partial success. With the support of the Bavarian Research Foundation, a Munich research team has developed a protein which has reliably prevented infection by the virus and its variants in cell culture tests.
The German Research Foundation (DFG) recently announced that the Collaborative Research Center "From the Fundamentals of Biofabrication to Functional Tissue Models" (SFB-TRR 225) will be funded for another four years. In this research network, the University of Bayreuth cooperates with the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the University of Würzburg. The spokesperson for the Bayreuth site is Prof. Dr. Thomas Scheibel, Chair of Biomaterials. Working groups at the three partner universities are jointly researching the fundamentals of biofabrication with the long-term goal of producing functional tissue models for novel and pioneering biomedical applications.
The cells of a certain tumour type, called neuroblastoma, divide very rapidly. This rapid division can have potentially fatal consequences for them. A new study shows how neuroblastoma cells deal with this dilemma.
In part of a recent human study led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), it was found that after eating a curry dish containing pepper, piperine - an alkaloid responsible for the pungency of pepper - was present in the milk of breastfeeding women. The findings help decipher mechanisms that shape our food preferences from infancy.
Monarch butterflies employ a sun compass on their long-distance migration. Surprisingly, a new study shows that the compass is only established during flight.
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