Researchers at Kiel University have studied the evolutionary history of the longevity gene APOE. To do this, they analysed data obtained from human skeletons that are up to 12,000 years old.

A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has induced stem cells to emulate the development of the human heart. The result is a sort of “mini-heart” known as an organoid. It will permit the study of the earliest development phase of our heart and facilitate research on diseases.

Human tissue models instead of animal experiments? What is already possible for some questions still faces major hurdles for more complex contexts and applications. In a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, and the Translational Center for Regenerative Therapies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC, Würzburg, scientific principles and biomaterials for the standardized production of valid tissue models are to be developed.

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 methods is currently revolutionising our understanding of cellular heterogeneity. These technologies can detect rare or even new cell types by extracting and sequencing the genetic information from the cells based on ribonucleic acid chains.

Bone is the second most commonly transplanted tissue after blood, with about two million bone transplants performed worldwide each year – but often with only moderate therapeutic success. Cell-based therapies could provide an alternative approach to transplantation. Together with colleagues from Paracelsus Medical Private University (PMU) Salzburg, researchers at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) have now demonstrated that human progenitor cells can regenerate large bone defects and form new mineralized tissue. The researchers have published the findings from their work in the journal Science Translational Medicine*.

Damage in the human genome can be repaired. But this works better in germ cells, sperm and eggs, than in normal body cells. Responsible for this is the DREAM protein complex, which prevents the activation of all available repair mechanisms. A research team at the University of Cologne has now shown that normal body cells can also be repaired better once this complex has been deactivated. In the long run, the scientists hope to develop better therapies to prevent cancer and aging-associated diseases. They describe their results in ‘Nature Structural & Molecular Biology’

Human beings are bilaterally symmetrical. As such, our brains are made of two halves called hemispheres, that communicate with each other with specialized fiber tracts running across the midline. While each hemisphere tends to deal with the senses (vision, hearing, touch) and motor control of the opposite side of the body, we are generally not aware of this partitioning of function, thanks to constant inter-hemispheric communication. In humans, the two hemispheres are also specialized for certain functions: language areas, for example, are typically in the left hemisphere.

Human activities are accelerating biodiversity change and promoting a rapid turnover in species composition. A team of researchers has now shown that more widespread species tend to benefit from anthropogenic changes and increase the number of sites they occupy, whereas more narrowly distributed species decrease. Their results, which were published in Nature Communications, are based on an extensive dataset of over 200 studies and provide evidence that habitat protection can mitigate some effects of biodiversity change and reduce the systematic decrease of small-ranged species.

The human immunodeficiency virus HIV-1 is able to infect various tissues in humans. Once inside the cells, the virus integrates its genome into the cellular genome and establishes persistent infections. The role of the structure and organisation of the host genome in HIV-1 infection is not well understood. Using a cell culture model based on brain immune microglia cells, an international research team led by scientists from Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) now defined the insertion patterns of HIV-1 in the genome of microglia cells.

Resistance to HER2-targeted therapies can be a problem when treating patients with HER2-positive (HER2+) breast cancer. Therefore, the identification of new therapies for this patient group is important. Researchers at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environments and Human Factors in Dortmund (IfADo) have already shown that the enzyme EDI3 is associated with changes in the metabolism of cancer cells. Their most recent results reveal that inhibiting EDI3 may be a new therapeutic target in patients with therapy-resistant ER-HER2+ breast cancer.

The pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus escapes elimination from surface cells of the human lung by binding to a human protein. In doing so, it is able to nest in so called phagosomes, confined areas in the lung cells, and thus prevents cell processes that would kill the fungus from being set in motion. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (Leibniz-HKI) have thus discovered a possible new target against the fungal infection.

A sense of fairness has long been considered purely human – but animals also react with frustration when they are treated unequally by a person. In a study with long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), researchers at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) have now confirmed an alternative explanatory approach. A combination of social disappointment with the human experimenter and some degree of food competition best explains their behavior in an ‚inequity aversion‘ experiment.

When you hear the word microbiome, the chances are you will think of the gut. But the microbiome is so much more, namely the total of all microorganisms living on and in the human body. Skin, lungs or the digestive system, the mouth, throat, nose or the genital tract: they are all home to tiny living organisms such as bacteria, viruses or fungi. When the balance is correct, they are beneficial to human health. But what does the ideal microbiome look like? And what influence do quintillions of invisible organisms have on human health and disease?

Daurian redstarts move their nesting sites closer to or even inside human settlements when cuckoos are around. In doing so, they actively protect their nest against brood parasitism, as cuckoos avoid human settlements. An international team of scientists showed both observational and experimental evidence for this anti-parasitism strategy in a population of Daurian redstarts in northeastern China. Their research illustrates how the breeding behavior of two interacting bird species co-evolves. It also gives us a glimpse on how urbanization can affect interspecific interactions.

When cells exchange metabolic products with other cells, they live longer. This new finding comes from a research team at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, which made the discovery in a study using yeast cells. The fact that these exchanges directly impact cell lifespans could play a significant role in future research into human aging processes and age-related diseases. The study appears in the latest issue of Cell*.

How can you trace a single diseased cell in an intact brain or a human heart? The search resembles looking for a needle in a haystack. The teams of Ali Ertürk at Helmholtz Munich and LMU Munich and Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried near Munich have now developed a new technology named DISCO-MS that solves the problem. DISCO-MS uses robotics technology to obtain proteomics data from ‘sick’ cells precisely identified early in the disease.

In search of new biomarkers for nutrition and health studies, a research team from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich (LSB) has identified and structurally characterized three metabolites that could be considered as specific markers for individual coffee consumption. These are degradation products of a group of substances that are formed in large quantities during coffee roasting but are otherwise rarely found in other foods. This and the fact that the potential biomarkers can be detected in very small amounts of urine make them interesting for future human studies.

The TGF-ß cellular signaling network, essential to various functions in all metazoans and involved in many severe human pathologies like autoimmune diseases and cancer, is more flexible than previously thought. Researchers at the MPI for Neurobiology of Behavior and the MPI for Biology discovered an unknown genetic variability in this signaling pathway amongst different nematode species resulting in morphological and behavioral variations. This fresh view on the TGF-ß machinery, published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, is important for understanding the evolution of signaling pathways, their adaptability to acquire novel functions and for new strategies to control parasitic nematodes.

Researchers from Dresden and Vienna reveal link between connectivity of three-dimensional structures in tissues and the emergence of their architecture to help scientists engineer self-organising tissues that mimic human organs.

Neurons fire electrical impulses, and synapses ensure their transmission. These principles, which operate in the human brain, can now also be used as building blocks in artificially produced circuits to create systems that are capable of learning. However, so-called „neuromorphic electronics“ also offer the potential to create an interface between the artificial and biological domains. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now come a step closer to this goal by creating artificial neurons that can operate directly and in real-time in a biological environment.

The gene-silencing complex HUSH might be involved in complex disorders affecting the brain and neurons. However, its mechanism of action remains unclear. Researchers from the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) now uncover the in vivo targets and physiological functions of a component of the HUSH gene-silencing complex and one of its associated proteins. The work, conducted in laboratory mouse models and human brain organoids, links the HUSH complex to normal brain development, neuronal individuality and connectivity, as well as mouse behavior. The findings are published in Science Advances.

Professor Nikolai Kuhnert and his team from Jacobs University were able to show that a compound in coffee inhibits the interaction between the spike protein of the coronavirus and the ACE-2 Receptor of the human cell. This could potentially prevent infections.

Researchers at the Hector Institute for Translational Brain Research (HITBR) at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) investigate molecular networks resulting in human neuronal longevity.

Martinsried. Researchers discovered that prions, which are naturally occurring protein clumps in yeast, are involved in the toxicity of the disease-related protein Huntingtin. They found that the actual toxic form of the Huntingtin protein is not large aggregates, as previously suspected, but smaller intermediates, so-called oligomers. Those intermediates arise through specific interactions with prions. The researchers now suspect similar relationships in human disease. The study was published in the journal Molecular Cell and is an achievement of the team led by Ulrich Hartl at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB).

What exactly are the molecular interactions between the virus causing COVID-19 and its human host? How might our genetic differences cause different disease courses? And how do still-emerging virus variants differ in their host-virus interactions? To get to the bottom of these questions, an international team of researchers has generated a systematic map of molecular contacts between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its human host.