news 2022

Researchers at the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich cultivate "missing link" microorganism How did the complex living things on earth come into being? This is one of the great unanswered questions in biology. A collaboration between the research groups of Christa Schleper at the University of Vienna and Martin Pilhofer at ETH Zurich has brought the answer one step closer.

A long-necked dinosaur from northern Germany was a so-called nest fledger Europasaurus was a long-necked, herbivorous dinosaur on four legs. The dinosaur lived in the late Jurassic period about 154 million years ago on a small island in what is now northern Germany. Researchers from the Universities of Vienna and Greifswald have now examined fossil skull remains of Europasaurus using computer tomography.

Leukemic cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (L-CTCL) is a rare type of skin cancer that presents varied clinical features and symptoms. In a recently published study by the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the Medical Universities of Vienna and Graz, the researchers managed to integrate the genomic data from affected patients with pharmacologic studies.

Scientists have discovered for the first time a bacterium in Lake Gossenköllesee in Tyrol that uses two different mechanisms to obtain energy from light. This could be an adaptation to the very pronounced change of seasons in the Alps. The change of seasons is clearly noticeable in the Alps. Moderate temperatures with a high exposure to light in summer give way to months with great cold and only little sunlight in winter.

New study shows how babies order visual perceptual impressions While adults sort visual impressions at lightning speed, babies have to learn this first. This ability is important for finding their way in everyday life. Until now, it was unclear whether visual perception in the brains of babies is fundamentally different from that of adults before language acquisition.

Monoamines are neurotransmitters in the central and peripheral nervous systems and they also transmit signals between cells and the brain. This transmission is followed by their reuptake into the cells by means of transporters. While the specific monoamine transporters have already been well studied, not enough is known about the organic cation transporters, which are high-capacity monoamine transporters.

Biologists rewrite "family history" of fungi You can't choose kinship. This also applies to a special group of fungi that could not be more different: Whether they grow in native forests, live in the guts of insects or are found in trees in the Amazon. Until now, they were not considered to be related to each other because of their different appearance and their dissimilar life strategies.

In a recent study, researchers from Joanna Loizou's group from CeMM, the Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Medical University of Vienna investigated the POL? enzyme and the role it plays in DNA repair. Inhibiting POL? represents a new approach for developing specific therapies, in particular for patients with BRCA1 mutations.

The autonomic nervous system is known as the control centre for involuntary bodily processes such as the beating of our hearts and our breathing. The fact that this part of the nervous system also has the ability to spontaneously restore muscle function following a nerve injury was discovered by a research group at MedUni Vienna's Department of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery as part of their study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

In an animal model, a study, led by EPFL Lausanne with the participation of MedUni Vienna's Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, has identified a class of neurons that provides the crucial impetus for restoring walking ability after spinal cord injuries resulting in paralysis. This study was recently published in the leading journal "Nature".

Various conditions such as postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis can lead to an alteration in maternal behaviour and disrupt the mother-child bonding process. A research team led by Daniela Pollak from MedUni Vienna's Center for Physiology and Pharmacology has conducted a study in which they were able to identify the neuronal circuits in the brain that are activated during the learning of maternal behaviour.

New method enables measurement of glycolipids; now, for example, the relevance in cancer will be investigated So-called glycolipids, or "sweet-fatty" molecules, are a relatively unknown group among the body's diverse lipids. A method developed by an Austrian team led by chemist Evelyn Rampler of the University of Vienna has now provided deeper insights into the functioning of certain glycolipids, which are located, among other things, on the surfaces of stem cells.

Malignant tumours in the head and neck region are very heterogeneous and therefore difficult to treat. In addition, the lack of prognostic markers is a significant impediment to personalised treatment. A joint study by MedUni Vienna and the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Applied Metabolomics focused on the development and identification of specific markers to improve risk assessment for patients.

By Birgit Baustädter Researchers at TU Graz have for the first time reproduced the function of vision on a detailed model of the mouse brain. Until now, brain structures could be modelled, but it was not possible to perform specific functions.

Organ damage occurs in up to 70 percent of patients in the first few months following stem cell transplant. The precise reasons for this potentially life-threatening reaction have long been the subject of scientific research. Researchers led by Georg Stary from the Department of Dermatology at MedUni Vienna and Vienna General Hospital in collaboration with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Rare and Undiagnosed Diseases have recently identified bacterial proliferation on the skin as a factor associated with the occurrence of the complication.

A study group at MedUni Vienna has identified a regulatory loop controlled by leptin, by which this adipocyte-derived hormone regulates hepatic lipid metabolism via the autonomic nervous system. The study provides evidence that this adipose tissue-brain-liver axis, previously identified in animal models, also exists in humans and is opening up new approaches for treating metabolic diseases such as fatty liver disease.

It is now well known that viruses can cause infectious diseases ranging from COVID-19 to AIDS to Ebola. However, medical science also assumes that viruses play a role in about ten percent of cancers. An international research team led by MedUni Vienna and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna has now shown that human papillomavirus 42 (HPV42) drives the development of a particular type of skin cancer.

Early detection of Alzheimer's disease is critical if patients are to receive timely and appropriate care and potential treatments and preventive measures are to be used to the best possible effect. Scientists have so far identified several important risk factors that may trigger or accelerate dementia.

Researchers at MedUni Vienna have discovered that neurons have an emergency back-up system to enable them to remain functional even when their energy supply is disrupted. As in many areas of technology, an emergency back-up serves to compensate for any energy supply failures experienced by neurons. The results of the study have now appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Mammalian sounds in general may be more flexible than previously thought Researchers at the University of Vienna used an acoustic camera that can visualize sound pressure to study the sounds made by Asian elephants. The animals utter their low-frequency sounds mostly from the trunk, or simultaneously from the mouth and trunk, and only rarely from the mouth alone.