Beige fat cells with a “Sisyphus mechanism”

A new class of fat cells makes people healthier: The cells consume energy and produce heat through seemingly pointless biochemical reactions.

16-Aug-2024 - Fat cells come in three colours: white, brown, and beige. White fat cells store fat in our body as an energy reserve. We need these cells, but having too many creates health problems. Brown fat cells are particularly active in infants. They produce heat and thus maintain the baby’s body ...

Researchers identify key differences in inner workings of immune cells

As well as improving our understanding of the immune system, these findings could also potentially lead to better cancer therapies

12-Jun-2024 - Using machine-learning methods, researchers at ETH Zurich have shown that more than half of all killer T cells exhibit nuclear invaginations, or folds in the cell’s nuclear envelope. Thanks to this particular cellular architecture, such cells are able to mount a faster and stronger response to ...

Cells as computers

Such reprogrammed cells could perform medical tasks in our bodies, such as diagnosing diseases or providing treatment

10-Mar-2021 - Scientists at ETH Zurich are working to develop information-​processing switching systems in biological cells. Now, for the first time, they have developed an OR switch in human cells that reacts to different signals. Biological cells might one day be equipped with artificial genetic programs ...

Healthy organelles, healthy cells

02-Oct-2019 - It has recently become clear just how important membraneless organelles are for cells. Now biochemists at ETH Zurich have discovered a novel mechanism that regulates the formation of these organelles. This has laid the foundation for more targeted research into diseases such as Alzheimer’s or ...

Redundancies in T cells

19-Jun-2019 - Researchers at ETH Zurich have discovered redundancies in the biochemical signalling pathways of immune cells. This finding has important implications for advances in cancer immunotherapy, among other areas. Oncologists have had great success with cancer immunotherapy in recent years, especially ...

How proteins become embedded in a cell membrane

14-Feb-2019 - Many proteins with important biological functions are embedded in a biomembrane in the cells of humans and other living organisms. But how do they get in there in the first place? Researchers in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich investigated the matter. Nearly a ...

Cold leads to slimmer offspring

11-Jul-2018 - Exposure to cold prior to conception causes the resulting offspring to have more brown adipose tissue, which protects against excess weight and metabolic disorders. Scientists studying mice have discovered that this information is passed on by the sperm, and there is a similar correlation in ...

Designer cells: artificial enzyme can activate a gene switch

A new kind of chemistry in living organisms

24-May-2018 - Complex reaction cascades can be triggered in artificial molecular systems: Swiss scientists have constructed an enzyme than can penetrate a mammalian cell and accelerate the release of a hormone. This then activates a gene switch that triggers the creation of a fluorescent protein. The findings ...

New weapon against Diabetes

12-Dec-2016 - ETH Researchers have used the simplest approach yet to produce artificial beta cells from human kidney cells. Like their natural model, the artificial cells act as both sugar sensors and insulin producers. Researchers led by ETH Professor Martin Fussenegger at the Department of Biosystems ...

Bringing artificial enzymes closer to nature

31-Aug-2016 - Scientists at the University of Basel, ETH Zurich in Basel, and NCCR Molecular Systems Engineering have developed an artificial metalloenzyme that catalyses a reaction inside of cells without equivalent in nature. This could be a prime example for creating new non-natural metabolic pathways ...