news 2016

Manuela Baccarini and her team at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna are one step closer to unravelling the mechanisms behind liver cancer. The researchers discovered that RAF1, a protein known as an oncogene in other systems, unexpectedly acts as a tumour suppressor in hepatocellular carcinoma.

"Till death do us part" - for marine bristle worms, these words are invariably true: Shortly after mating, the parent worms die, leaving thousands of newly fertilized eggs to develop in the water. This extreme all-or-nothing mode of reproduction demonstrates a general principle: Animals need to decide if they invest their available energy stores either in growth or in reproduction.

Structural health monitoring records the current "state of health" of structures and infrastructure. This allows "illnesses" to be diagnosed at an early stage and treated. Like people, structures and infrastructure age. To prevent serious illnesses such as a heart attack, we humans, for example, can undergo health screening at regular intervals.

Microorganisms like bacteria and archaea play an indispensable ecological role in the global geochemical cycles. A research team led by ERC prizewinner Christa Schleper from the Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology at the University of Vienna succeeded in isolating the first ammonia-oxidizing archaeon from soil: "Nitrososphaera viennensis" - the "spherical ammonia oxidizer from Vienna".

New insight about how cells dispose of their waste is now given by the group of Claudine Kraft at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna. They show the necessity of a regulation in space and time of a key protein involved in cellular waste disposal.

Breast milk contains the optimal mix of nutrients for a healthy development of the baby. Certain complex carbohydrates known as human milk oligosaccharides are among the most important contributors The Institute of Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering at TU Graz is researching in cooperation with the Austrian Center of Industrial Biotechnology ( acib ) how these might be produced industrially.

Knowing decisions before they are taken? Preventing stress before it occurs? Interesting new applications in the field of neuro-information systems are explored at TU Graz. Neuro-information systems ( NeuroIS ) investigates the neuro-physiological foundations related to the design, use and impact of information and communication technology.

Basic research on brown fat cells could open up more effective therapies for obesity. Juliane Bogner-Strauss and her team yield new findings at TU Graz. Fat cells are not all the same. We possess both white and brown fat cells, and they carry out different tasks in our body. Whereas white fat cells store fats ingested in our food and constantly grow in the case of excess caloric intake, brown fat cells are good "burners".

The genetic information we receive from our parents in the form of chromosomes are mosaics assembled from the two copies of chromosomes each parent has. This reshuffling of chromosome pieces happens via a cut and paste mechanism. How such cuts - or breaks - in our genetic material are repaired is the research interest of Verena Jantsch and her group at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna.

Despite prevalent myths in public about autism about their lack of empathic concern for others and propensity for condoning harmful behavior, so far the relation between their empathic capacity and moral evaluations remains sparsely studied. New research shows that the seemingly callous attitudes in autism are not a feature of autism per se but are due to an understudied aspect of their personality called alexithymia, which is characterized by emotional processing difficulties.

From the coating of electronic or pharmaceutical products to thin plastic films - a new technique developed by TU Wien enables coating processes to be quality controlled in real time. When covering large areas with very thin layers of exactly the right thickness in the micrometre or nanometre range, it is easy to make mistakes.

Our immune system constantly fights off bacteria and viruses and while doing so needs to find a critical balance between overand under-reaction, similar to Daedalus and Icarus in Greek mythology who must neither fly too high nor too low to escape their captivity. How this balancing act is regulated at the molecular levels was so far poorly understood.