In the process of metastasis, the movement of cancer cells to different parts of the body, a specific master regulator gene plays a central role: a transcription factor named Sox4 activates a sequence of genes and triggers the formidable process. This finding is reported by researchers from the University of Basel and from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Cancer Cell. Inhibition of Sox4 and subsequent processes may prevent metastasis in cancer patients.
The fusion of blood vessels during the formation of the vascular system follows a uniform process. In this process, the blood vessels involved go through different phases of a common choreography, in which the splitting and the rearrangement of endothelial cells play a critical role. Markus Affolter`s research group at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has been able to demonstrate this in a living organism, the zebrafish.
Medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) allow the thymus to ensure that the body’s T cells are able to distinguish between potentially harmful foreign antigens and those that are produced by the body itself. A Swiss-Japanese research team suggests that mTECs do not share a common progenitor with cortical-thymic TECs (cTECs) that produce T cells, but may actually evolve from them.
Researchers at the University of Basel have found evidence that the inheritance of resistance in water fleas against a given bacterium is based on a few genes. A single change in these genes can completely reverse the outcome of an infection, thus lending empirical support to a key assumption of co-evolutionary models.
Even with a greater muscle mass, a sprinter cannot win a marathon. His specially-trained and strengthened muscles will fatigue faster than the endurance-trained muscles of a long distance runner. A research group at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum shows that during endurance exercise the protein PGC-1α shifts the metabolic profile in the muscle.
