Healthcare industry

Article - 01/08/2010

Manfred Kist – 25 years of fascination for a stomach bacterium

Helicobacter pylori is a genus of bacteria that inhabits the human stomach. The bacteria can cause duodenal and gastric ulcers and are also linked to the development of gastric cancer. Prof. Dr. Manfred Kist from the Freiburg University Medical Centre has spent around 25 years of his scientific career on investigating H. pylori a bent rod-shaped bacterium.

Article - 15/07/2010

A special focus on intercellular mediators

Transmembrane proteins constitute around one third of all cellular proteins. Around half of all drugs that are currently on the market target the function of a specific class of transmembrane proteins, i.e. the G-protein coupled receptors. However, little is yet known about how transmembrane proteins are integrated into the membranes and how they are folded. Dr. Jörg H. Kleinschmidt hopes to shed light into the mechanisms of membrane protein…

Article - 14/06/2010

Mycoplasma bacteria as models for minimal cells

Bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma are one of the smallest self-replicating cells and serve as model organisms in synthetic biology research for investigating essential life functions as well as being used as chassis for novel, tailor-made biosyntheses. Researchers from Heidelberg are among the groups who focus predominantly on investigating mycoplasma bacteria as minimal organisms.

Article - 11/06/2010

Recycling of bacterial cell wall constituents

Bacterial cells are focused on growth and proliferation. These processes are initiated by cellular enzymes that break up the cell wall material murein introduce new material and degrade material that is no longer needed. And all this in large amounts about 50 per cent of murein are degraded and newly formed turnover per cell generation. Dr. Christoph Mayer and his team from the University of Constance have shown that the cells carry out effective…

Press release - 17/03/2010

Bacterial balance that keeps us healthy

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, working within the European project MetaHIT and in collaboration with colleagues at the Beijing Genomics Institute at Shenzhen, China, established a reference gene set for the human gut microbiome – a catalogue of the microbe genes present in the human gut. Their work proves that high-throughput techniques can be used to sequence environmental samples, and…

Article - 15/03/2010

Cystic fibrosis therapy is making good progress

Thirty years ago cystic fibrosis CF formerly also known as mucoviscidosis was considered to be a disease that only affected children. Hardly any children with this hereditary metabolic disease ever reached early adulthood. Since then both the therapy and the life expectancy of CF patients have improved considerably. Dr. Gerd Döring from Tübingen is investigating the occurrence of respiratory tract defects that are common in CF patients.

Dossier - 15/03/2010

Vaccine development

As the recent discussion on the pros and cons of swine flu vaccinations has shown vaccinations are not very popular in Germany. However people tend to forget that no other medical development has helped people to the same extent as immunisation with vaccines has done. Examples include the discovery of the cow pox vaccination by Edward Jenner in 1796 and all the programmes that have been set up by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation…

Article - 13/03/2010

Assembling life from building blocks?

As part of its “Bioethics Forum”, the German Ethics Council recently held a meeting in Berlin to inform the public about the fundamentals of synthetic biology and potential ethical problems and consequences in terms of our ideas about life and mankind in general arising from the progress made in this new field of research.

Press release - 09/03/2010

Insilico: co-designer of innovative cell factory for fine chemicals

A new BMBF joint project to transfer systems biology research directly into practical applications is profiting from Insilico Biotechnology’s expertise. The goal is to make Pseudomonas bacterial strains fit for commercial use in the field of industrial biocatalysis. The project will run for three years, coordinated by BASF and financed with approx. EUR 5.5 million. Insilico Biotechnology is the second partner from industry, while all others are…

Press release - 28/01/2010

Kenta and Rentschler to develop antibodies against hospital-acquired infections

The young Swiss company Kenta Biotech will work with the Laupheim-based contract manufacturer Rentschler to develop a fully human monoclonal antibody against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Press release - 21/01/2010

Membrane-coat proteins: bacteria have them too

Although they are present almost everywhere, on land and sea, a group of related bacteria in the superphylum Planctomycetes-Verrucomicrobia-Chlamydiae, or PVC, have remained in relative obscurity ever since they were first described about a decade ago. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered that these poorly-studied bacteria possess proteins thought to exist only in eukaryotes –…

Press release - 18/01/2010

Measurement instead of culture – rapid detection of Legionella

There has been an unusually high frequency of Legionella infections in the city of Ulm in the period since mid-December 2009. The search for the source of the infection is well underway, although the use of traditional detection methods make it a time-consuming process. New screening methods developed by the Fraunhofer IPM could considerably reduce the time required to detect the source of infection.

Article - 05/11/2009

The abatement of phytopathological fungi

In the past, fungal infestation of agricultural crops has been known to affect the fate of entire nations, and nowadays it still continues to pose a threat to the world’s food supply. There is huge need for the development of new environmentally friendly agricultural fungicides, as fungi are fast becoming resistant to standard fungicides. Scientists are concentrating on the use of fungus-derived natural substances as the specific targets of…

Article - 22/10/2009

On the track of fascinating diatoms

Diatoms make a considerable contribution to the production of oxygen and biomass in the worlds oceans and aquatic ecosystems. However up until now little is known about the molecular biology and chemistry of these eukaryotic algae. Prof. Peter Kroth and his team at the University of Constance are hoping to shed more light on these algae. The team has recently been involved in the deciphering of the Phaeodactylum tricornutum genome research that…

Article - 10/09/2009

Chaperone research using baker’s yeast and bacteria

Protein misfolding and aggregation can lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers. Prof. Elke Deuerling at the University of Constance is investigating the molecular helpers the chaperones and the key role that they have in protein folding. Deuerling uses the bakers yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the bacterium Eschericia coli for her studies. Her studies involving E. coli have now shown that ribosome-associated chaperones are…

Dossier - 26/08/2009

Model organisms

Given that everything is very individual in nature, how can a biologist come up with general statements about how life functions? The answers can only be found using models that represent the entire whole. Modern research uses representative species from the kingdom of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals to glean information about fundamental biological principles. How can the knowledge gained be transferred to other organisms, including humans?…

Microbial cells long gave researchers the impression that they were in a state of complete disorder. Prof. Dr. Peter Graumann from the University of Freiburg investigates cell division in bacteria and knows that even microbes are highly organised.

In contrast to the USA human granulocytic anaplasmosis infection rarely occurs in Germany. Dr. Friederike von Loewenich at the Freiburg Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hygiene are investigating the reason for this discrepancy.

Mobile DNA elements are able to change their position in the genome and mobilise entire gene groups as well as switch genes on and off. Professor Bodo Rak and his team at the University of Freiburg are investigating the effect of mobile DNA fragments on the evolution of E. coli bacteria.

In a collaborative project scientists in Stuttgart and Heidelberg succeeded in cutting the production costs for highly complex peptide arrays by a factor of 100 at the same time as being able to increase the number of functional peptides by a factor of 20.

Burst bark mucus secretions blackened leaves crop failures - these all represent huge ecological and economic damage and are known as fire blight. Fire blight is an example of how global trade and traffic leads to the spread of a pathogen across almost the entire world.

In Germany every year 800000 people contract community acquired pneumonia and 50000 die of it. A new foundation based in Ulm is hoping to contribute to a better understanding of this unpleasant disease and to improve the therapy to combat it.