If there’s one thing potato plants don’t like, it’s heat. If the temperature is too high, potato plants form significantly lower numbers of tubers or sometimes none at all. Biochemists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have now discovered the reason why. If the temperature r...
Medication that reaches the spot where it’s needed without placing strain on the rest of the body is no longer a vision of the future. FAU has successfully developed proteins that function like a shuttle and release medication directly in the place in the body where they are actually needed. The stu...
Axis formation is an important stage in embryonic development. This is when it is determined which side will develop into the head and which into the abdomen. If something goes wrong during axis formation the result is embryos with two abdomens or two heads. Researchers from Friedrich-Alexander-Univ...
Gastric cancer is one of the five most fatal types of cancer. According to the statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO), about 750,000 patients die each year after developing the disease. The main cause is thought to be the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori). At present, there are no...
Pressed into cubes, in the form of small crystals, in fizzy drinks, chocolate bars or in our coffee – we use sugar in vast quantities to sweeten drinks and foodstuffs. In Germany our sugar comes from sugar beet. Now researchers from the FAU, together with colleagues from other universities and from ...
Fundamental new insights into the functioning of the immune system and a new approach to treating autoimmune diseases: these are among the achievements of the transregional collaborative research centre TRR130 ‘B-cells: Immunity and Autoimmunity’, whose co-ordinator is Prof. Lars Nitschke of the Div...
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive tumour types because it starts forming metastases early. The cancer itself, however, is usually only discovered late. This leads to a high patient mortality rate. Researchers at FAU, among them Prof. Dr. Thomas Winkler, Professor of Genetics at the Dep...
Simulations reveal new insights into the function of a protein involved in cancer metastasis and AIDS.
Cholesterol may act as a selective glue that binds proteins into paired structures that enable human cells to respond to outside signals, according to a new study in PLOS Computational Biology.
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Viral infections may be involved in the pathogenesis of the lupus autoimmune disease. This was recently discovered by FAU researchers. Their research shows that messenger substances of the immune system trigger the disease when their production is not lowered after recovery from viral infection. The...
FAU researchers uncover how arsenic gets into the grain
Rice is a key food source in many parts of the world. However, it is not uncommon for it to contain arsenic. Biologists at FAU have now found an approach that could help to reduce the amount of arsenic found in rice.
Every day millions of p...
