Throughout our body there is a dense, widely ramified network of blood vessels. It is estimated to be about 150,000 kilometers in length. The vessels supply all cells, even those in most far away regions of the body with…

Resolving the dynamic organization of mitochondria Mitochondria are vital cellular organelles which perform an armada of metabolic, biosynthetic and signaling functions. While initially perceived as isolated, static…

Bacteria are masters of survival. Pathogens, for example, produce a range of molecules enabling them to infect their hosts and to evade the immune defense. The entero-pathogenic bacterium Salmonella enterica Typhimurium uses…

Role of type IV secretion systems in the establishment of chronic bacterial infections The aim of our studies is to gain a molecular understanding of the function of type IV secretion (T4S) systems in establishing persistent…

Since his time as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Marek Basler has been fascinated by a tiny bacterial injection apparatus, the so-called type 6 secretion system (T6SS). This nanomachine works like…

The extension of the program followed an evaluation by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The assessment of the NCCR AntiResist , a program marked by its innovative, multidisciplinary approach to antibiotic…

At the end of 2019, physicians in Wuhan, China, described a cluster of pneumonia associated with an unknown virus. Only two weeks later scientists had determined that the pathogen is a new type of coronavirus that is related…

You are what you eat, and the influence of the neighbours: the biology of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in the cystic fibrosis airways Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic human pathogen, and displays a particular…

Development of neuronal circuits and cognitive functions The ability to navigate the world and create memories of everyday events relies on the activity of neurons that, in mammals, are located in the entorhinal cortex and…

Unraveling the functioning and evolution of genome-wide regulatory networks Gene regulatory networks underlie much of the characteristic complex behaviors of biological systems. They allow single-celled organisms to "act on…