For some pathogens, attack is the best form of defense – they enter immune cells of the human body. However, if they are detected in their hidden niche, the infected cell kills itself to re-expose the pathogens. A research group at the University of Basel has reported that a protein called gasdermin forms permeable pores in the cell membrane and thus triggers the suicide of the immune cell.
Chemists at the University of Basel have succeeded in using computer simulations to elucidate transient structures in proteins. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, the researchers set out how computer simulations of details at the atomic level can be used to understand proteins’ modes of action.
For the first time, researchers at the University of Basel have coupled the nuclear spins of distant atoms using just a single electron. Three research groups from the Department of Physics took part in this complex experiment, the results of which have now been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The start-up company T3 Pharmaceuticals, a spin-off of the Biozentrum, University of Basel, is the Business Plan winner of the competition held by Venture. The vision of the young enterprise is to improve the lives of cancer patients through innovative treatment approaches.
Scientists at the University of Basel and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) have discovered why acute leukemias with the same genetic abnormality vary in their aggressiveness based on their cellular origin. They found that the cancer inducing alteration is particularly devastating if it occurs in early hematopoietic stem cells expressing certain genes involved in cell migration and tissue invasion.
Chemists from the Universities of Basel and Zurich have come one step closer to generating energy from sunlight: for the first time, they were able to reproduce one of the crucial phases of natural photosynthesis with artificial molecules.
The inflammasome plays an important role in our body‘s immune defense. This protein complex initiates an emergency program in the immune cells when invaded by a pathogen. In “Nature Communications”, a research team from the University of Basel’s Biozentrum reports that a specific inflammasome protein forms long filaments to amplify the inflammatory reaction.
Reliable information can be obtained on the progression of dementias by measuring specific proteins in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid. A test of this kind is especially significant to the development of new therapies.
An international consortium led by researchers at the University of Basel has developed a method to precisely alter the quantum mechanical states of electrons within an array of quantum boxes.