It is hard to imagine how two meters of DNA can be squeezed into a tiny cell nucleus – analogous to packing a fishing line stretching across the length of Switzerland into an Emmentaler cheese wheel. And all this without…

Parkinson's disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders. In Switzerland, about 15,000 people are affected. Because of the worldwide rise in life expectancy, a rapid increase in Parkinson's cases is expected…

In times of “home office”, lock downs and closed gyms, endurance sports is back in trend again. Jogging, biking or swimming keeps you healthy and makes your muscles fit. With regular training, the musculature adapts to be…

Parkinson’s disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases worldwide. This disease is typically accompanied by motor defects such as the tremor of arms and legs, slowness of movements and muscle rigidity, which…

Bacteria may be small, but they have a remarkable ability to adapt. They colonize a wide variety of habitats – from the human gut to hot springs – and respond with great flexibility to changes in their environment. One…

Over the past decade, biology has entered the era of "big data". Today’s high-throughput technologies generate vast datasets that capture the identities and multi-dimensional characteristics of cells. Using single-cell RNA…

Reaching for an apple or bringing a spoon to the mouth—these seemingly simple actions rely on highly complex processes in the brain. A key player in this orchestration is a deep-seated brain region known as the basal…

To which extent is Nextstrain currently being used for research into the SARS-CoV-2 virus? We have more data on SARS-CoV-2 than ever before for a single virus. There are now six million fully sequenced virus genomes…

The research group of Markus Affolter is investigating the growth of the wings of the fruit fly Drosophila to understand which processes control organ development and growth. Proteins that control such growth processes are…

Did the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool like ChatGPT surprise you personally? I think we were all surprised by the rapid pace of this development and above all by the quality and versatility of this chat…