Several phages extensively decorate their DNA building blocks, providing an effective protection against various host and phage-produced restriction systems. These modifications allow the phages to di...

When Streptococcus pneumoniae produces low amounts of the second messenger cyclic di-AMP (c-di-AMP), they do not survive in the presence of competence-stimulating peptide (CSP), which is used for tra...

Rubisco catalyzes the CO2 fixation step in the dark reactions of photosynthesis. Transgenic expression of better-performing Rubisco orthologs in plants or discovery of improved mutants of Rubisco via ...

The NOSTER Science Microbiome Prize has been established to reward innovative research by young investigators working on the functional attributes of the microbiota of any organism that has potential ...

Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) at Forschungszentrum Jülich houses some of the world`s most advanced electron microscopes and tools for nanocharacterisation. U...

Among the simplest organisms known to age, Escherichia coli bacteria suffer a functional decline as misfolded proteins accumulate into aggregates retained by the mother cell upon division. This mechanism places the loss of proteostasis as a conserved hallmark of aging. However, subsequent studies found no deleterious effects of harboring aggregates. By quantifying single-cell fitness and damage dynamics, we found that it is not the mere presence of an aggregate that drives a fitness decline, but the intracellular space it occupies. Yet, aging cells undergo a gradual enlargement that could allow them to sustain stable growth despite harboring intracellular damage. Cell enlargement thus emerges as another cross-domain aging phenotype, but with curiously opposite effects: protective in bacteria, whereas generally deleterious in eukaryotes. Our findings, therefore, offer a connection between damage dynamics, aging, and cell size regulation at the single-cell level, while tracing new parallels between bacterial and eukaryotic aging.

Developmental biology

Eukaryotic cells are highly compartmentalized, enabling sophisticated division of labour. For example, genetic information is stored in the nucleus while energy is produced in mitochondria. Despite th...

An analysis of AlphaFold protein structure predictions shows that while in many cases the predictions are highly accurate, there are also many instances where the predicted structures or parts of pred...

The Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH) and the Faculty of Biosciences invite applications for a   Tenure Track Professors...