Protein interactions: who is partying with whom and who is ruining the party?

New method for investigating protein interaction networks - also of interest for pharmaceutical research

18-Oct-2024 - Inside cells, it's like in a packed dance club: hundreds are partying. Some keep to themselves, others make their way through the crowd, chatting to everyone they meet. Some just say a quick hello, others stay with their best friends. In this club, there are all kinds of different interactions ...

Under control to the very end – how our cells kill themselves

Using highly sensitive microscopes and NMR spectroscopy, the mechanism has been elucidated down to the level of individual atoms

24-May-2023 - Every day, millions of cells die in our body. Other than generally assumed, cells do not simply burst at the end of their lives but rather, a specific protein serves as a breaking point for cell membrane rupture. Researchers at the University of Basel have now been able to elucidate the exact ...

Hydrogen peroxide as a target in the fight against cancer?

Pancreatic cancer cells contain high levels of hydrogen peroxide

10-Feb-2023 - Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are reputed for their involvement in carcinogenesis. Results from a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie have now shown that the level of one such ROS, hydrogen peroxide, is significantly higher in pancreatic cancer cells, unlike the level of other ...

Sustainable scents from the mountain of the gods

ETH Zurich chemist Michailidou could see herself founding her own start-​up: “That would be a dream come true”

15-Nov-2022 - ETH Zurich chemist Freideriki Michailidou is developing novel processes for the sustainable production of fragrance ingredients. As a first step, she studied the scents of rare aromatic plants that grow only on Mount Olympus in Greece. How a product smells affects how we respond to it. So it ...

AI offers a faster way to predict antibiotic resistance

Huge new data set combines mass spectrometry data with information on antibiotic resistance

14-Jan-2022 - A study under co-leadership of the ETH Zurich has shown that computer algorithms can determine antimicrobial resistance of bacteria faster than previous methods. This could help treat serious infections more efficiently in the future. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are on the rise all over the ...

Malaria detectable in olfactory cocktail

17-May-2018 - ETH researchers have discovered odour profiles typical of people infected with acute or asymptomatic malaria. This is a first promising step towards a low-cost diagnostic test that can be used in the field in developing countries. Malaria is still a deadly disease in tropical and subtropical ...

High-precision magnetic field sensing

Highly sensitive sensor may find widespread use in medicine and other areas

05-Dec-2016 - Researchers from the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, which is operated jointly by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, have succeeded in measuring tiny changes in strong magnetic fields with unprecedented precision. In their experiments, the scientists magnetised a water droplet inside ...

The device with the fine nose

02-Feb-2016 - When it comes to measuring the smallest traces of volatile chemical compounds in the air, the analysis devices in Pablo Sinues' laboratory are among the most sensitive in the world. They can find the proverbial needle in a haystack: the detection limit for airborne volatile compounds is around a ...

Making sure antibiotics work as they should

10-Oct-2014 - A team of ETH Zurich researchers led by professors Nenad Ban and Ruedi Aebersold have studied the highly complex molecular structure of mitoribosomes, which are the ribosomes of mitochondria. Ribosomes are found in the cells of all living organisms. However, higher organisms (eukaryotes), which ...

Proteome atlas for the tuberculosis pathogen

17-May-2013 - Photographers know the problem all too well: with the naked eye, you can see which branch a bird is sitting on, but spotting the bird in the blur of branches through the telephoto lens for high-magnification images requires considerable skill. It is a similar story for researchers who are looking ...