Fat cells help repair damaged nerves

30-Nov-2023 - Damage to the body’s peripheral nerves can cause pain and movement disorders. Researchers at the Leipzig University have recently investigated how damaged nerves can regenerate better. They found that fat tissue strongly supports the Schwann cells needed for repair during the healing process. The ...

Making rare cell types visible

Researchers are developing a new method

06-Apr-2023 - The human body contains more than 30 trillion cells. Until recently, the sheer number of cells in the organism meant that approaches to understanding human diseases and developmental processes based on the analysis of single cells were a futuristic vision. The development of new sequencing ...

Rare discovery: How a gene mutation causes higher intelligence

“It’s very rare for a mutation to lead to improvement rather than loss of function”

11-May-2022 - When genes mutate, this can lead to severe diseases of the human nervous system. Researchers at Leipzig University and the University of Würzburg have now used fruit flies to demonstrate how, apart from the negative effect, the mutation of a neuronal gene can have a positive effect – namely ...

How to Retard Time for Cells

Heavy water makes biological clocks tick more slowly

07-Jun-2021 - Scientists at Leipzig University, in collaboration with colleagues from Germany and England, have succeeded in reversibly slowing down cellular processes. A team of biophysicists led by Professor Josef Alfons Käs and Dr Jörg Schnauß were able to show in experiments that cells can be transferred ...