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…

All organisms need energy to live. We get energy from various components of our food. Our body uses a part of this energy directly and stores the rest. While glucose serves as an immediately available energy source, fats are…

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…

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…

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.…

In modern medicine, personalized therapies are becoming increasingly important – particularly in the treatment of genetic diseases. One such promising approach is the use of so-called antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs). These…

In Switzerland, it is not uncommon for a patient to develop an infection during a hospital stay. One reason for this is insufficient hygiene, as shown recently in a study by the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products,…

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,…