New Max Planck Institute in Göttingen Combines Natural and Medical Sciences

Largest institute in the Max Planck Society

05-Jan-2022 - The Göttingen-based Max Planck Institutes (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and Experimental Medicine have merged as of January 1, 2022. This will establish a new MPI, the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. It will cover a much broader spectrum of research, thus promoting ...

Molecular mechanisms of corona drug candidate Molnupiravir unraveled

Mutations in the genome stop the virus

18-Aug-2021 - The United States recently secured 1.7 million doses of a compound that could help to treat Covid-19 patients. In preliminary studies, Molnupiravir reduced the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and the ...

Highly potent and stable nanobodies stop SARS-CoV-2

Alpacas provide blueprints for mini-antibodies

30-Jul-2021 - A team of researchers has developed mini-antibodies that efficiently eliminate the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and its dangerous new variants. The so-called nanobodies bind and neutralize the virus up to 1000 times better than previously developed mini-antibodies. In addition, the researchers were ...

Errors at the start of life

The process of combining maternal and paternal genetic information is surprisingly error-prone

14-May-2021 - Only one in three fertilizations leads to a successful pregnancy. Many embryos fail to progress beyond early development. Cell biologists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany), together with researchers at the Institute of Farm Animal Genetics in ...

New microscopy method resolves fluorescent molecules with resolution at the nanometer scale

22-Mar-2021 - Scientists working with Stefan Hell at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and the Heidelberg-based MPI for Medical Research have developed another light microscopy method, called MINSTED, which resolves fluorescently labeled details with molecular sharpness. ...

Why remdesivir does not fully stop the coronavirus

15-Jan-2021 - Remdesivir is the first drug against Covid-19 to be conditionally approved in Europe and the United States. The drug is designed to suppress the rapid replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human cells by blocking the viral copying machine, called RNA polymerase. Researchers at the Max Planck ...

World record resolution in cryo-electron microscopy

Novel technique visualizes individual atoms in a protein with cryo-electron microscopy for the first time

23-Oct-2020 - A crucial resolution barrier in cryo-electron microscopy has been broken. Holger Stark and his team at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry have observed single atoms in a protein structure for the first time and taken the sharpest images ever with this method. Such ...

Dissecting protein assemblies

New molecular details from mitochondria

14-Aug-2020 - Super-resolution MINFLUX nanoscopy, developed by Nobel laureate Stefan Hell and his team, is able to discern fluorescent molecules that are only a few nanometers apart. In an initial application of this technique to cell biology, researchers led by Stefan Hell and Stefan Jakobs have now optically ...

How the coronavirus multiplies its genetic material

Researchers solve structure of viral copy machine

30-Apr-2020 - When someone becomes infected with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen proliferates rapidly in the cells of the infected person. To do so, the virus has to multiply its genetic material, which consists of a single long RNA strand. This task is performed by the viral “copy machine”, the ...

Predicting slippery spots for the ribosome

Researchers develop a thermodynamic model to study frameshifting

18-Dec-2019 - In the genetic blueprint for proteins, the information for each amino acid is encoded by codons. A codon consists of three consecutive building blocks of messenger RNA (mRNA), a base triplet that encodes exactly one amino acid. During protein synthesis, adaptor molecules - called tRNAs - ...