Autism occurs in about one percent of the population and is characterized by alterations in communication, repetitive behavior and social difficulties. There are numerous genetic factors involved in the development of…

Congenital muscular dystrophy is a rare hereditary disease which cannot be cured. The more than 30 known forms of this neuromuscular disease differ in the type of genetic defect and in the severity of disease progression.…

In response to last year’s call for SNSF Advanced Grants 232 researchers submitted applications. 24 of these projects were awarded the Swiss National Science Foundation grant, totaling 50 million Swiss francs in funding.…

Fats are highly diverse molecules that serve as fuel and energy storage, and they constitute the building blocks for cell membranes, hormones and messengers. Despite the diversity of fats, all the fatty acids contained…

With its hundreds of thousands of nerve cells, the vertebrate brain is the most complex organ in the animal kingdom. During vertebrate evolution not only have the number of neurons and consequently the volume of the brain…

Each living cell grows and divides, thus generating new offspring. This process is also known as the cell cycle. Strictly speaking, it describes a periodic repetition of two coordinated cycles: the duplication of a cell’s…

In certain infectious diseases, antibiotics are less effective than expected, as seen in infections caused by Salmonella bacteria, which can lead to illnesses such as typhoid fever. For many years, researchers believed that…

How organs develop and how they grow to the right size and shape are fundamental questions in developmental biology. The morphogen Dpp is a signaling molecule controlling the development of different organs with regard to…

The neurobiologist Prof. Silvia Arber receives the Brain Prize together with Prof. Ole Kiehn from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Prof. Martyn Goulding from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA. The…

The brain is malleable well into adulthood. Brain plasticity is not only due to the formation of new nerve connections. Stem cells present in the adult brain also generate new nerve cells. For more than a hundred years,…