When someone is confronted with ‘foreign’ material, be it viruses, bacteria, fungi, but also donor organs following transplantation, immune cells called T cells come into action to inactivate and destroy the ”foreign”…

IMCF OMERO Image Management System OMERO is a biological image data management system designed to support the vast amount of imaging data a scientist may work with and to provide easy ways of accessing, showing and working…

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…

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…

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…

The incidence of liver cancer, also known as hepatocellular carcinoma, is steadily increasing. In the last twenty years, the number of cases has almost doubled in Switzerland. Hepatocellular carcinoma is usually diagnosed at…

A challenging journey… Yuping Li, new Professor of Infection and Immunity at the Biozentrum, is a rather quiet person. The pressure and stress she has experienced in her life are not immediately apparent. Particularly, being…

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…

We are constantly exposed to a wide range of sensory stimuli, from loud noises to whispers. In order to efficiently process these diverse stimulus intensities, the brain needs to strike a balance in its responsiveness. An…

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.…