news 2016

Chemists are investigating a substance class for biological and pharmaceutical applications Annette Rompel and her team of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Vienna are investigating so-called polyoxometalates. These compounds exhibit a great diversity and offer the scientists a wide range of applications.

"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.

Humans, as well as many other organisms, possess internal clocks. The exact timing, however, can differ between individuals - for instance, some people are early risers whereas others are "night owls". Neurobiologist Kristin Tessmar-Raible and her team at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna investigated that underlie such timing variations or "chronotypes".

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".

Marine symbiotic bacteria may help to "fertilize" animal growth in the oceans. Microbiologist Jillian Petersen and colleagues from the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology have discovered that chemosynthetic bacteria in marine animals can fix nitrogen as well as carbon.

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.

uni:view magazin Videos Presse Social Media Azure-winged magpies, an Asian bird species, take any opportunity to provide food to their group members, even without receiving any reward themselves. A team of cognitive biologists, lead by Lisa Horn and Jorg Massen from the University of Vienna, showed this type of prosocial behavior experimentally in a bird species for the first time.

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.

One of the benefits of living together is gaining new information from group members. Once a group member starts displaying a new behavior, this behavior frequently spreads to the rest of the group. In a recent study on ravens, Cognitive Biologists Christine Schwab and Thomas Bugnyar from the University of Vienna together with Ipek Kulahci and Daniel Rubenstein from Princeton University and William Hoppitt from Leeds University showed that being socially connected to others is critical in gaining new information.

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.

Viruses smuggle their genetic material into our cells. How this actually works is currently being investigated at TU Wien (Vienna) using a new combination of analysis methods. Cold viruses cause us irritation by penetrating into our cells and transporting their RNA into the cytoplasma of the infected cells.

Being called a "bird brain" should be considered a compliment: An international team of scientists including Tecumseh Fitch of the University of Vienna has found out that birds have a more efficient neural architecture, allowing them to fit many more neurons into smaller brains than can mammals. More neurons means more computing power.

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".

Virtually all membrane proteins have been reported to be organized as clusters on cell surfaces, when in fact many of them are just single proteins which have been counted multiple times. A method developed at TU Wien (Vienna) can now distinguish between both cases. Light cannot be used to image any structures smaller than half its wavelength - for a long time, this was considered to be the ultimate resolution limit in light microscopy.

Scientists from Austria, Finland and Hungary are using laser scanners to study the day-night rhythm of trees. As it turns out, trees go to sleep too. Most living organisms adapt their behavior to the rhythm of day and night. Plants are no exception: flowers open in the morning, some tree leaves close during the night.

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.

What is it that walnut leaves, mushrooms and Coreopsis have in common? An enzyme that is also responsible for the browning reaction in bananas or apples is present in all of them in large amounts. For the first time, chemists from the University of Vienna around Annette Rompel have analysed the structure of the enzyme in the leaves of Coreopsis.

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.

Ravens anticipate what other ravens can see, cognitive biologists Thomas Bugnyar and Stephan Reber of the University Vienna found out in collaboration with the philosopher Cameron Buckner (University of Houston, Texas). Bugnyar and his team show for the first time unequivocally that animals do not rely on behavioural cues to pass an attribution task.