Lab News & Scientific Highlights

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Highlighting the significance of structural analysis of biomolecules

Biology

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 has been awarded to Jacques Dubochet of Switzerland, U.S.-based German scientist Joachim Frank, and Richard Henderson of the United Kingdom for the development of structural analysis of single biological molecules by means of cryo-electron microscopy. The awarding of the prize underscores the fundamental significance of structural analysis of biomolecules for modern biology – a research area where the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI plays a leading role in Switzerland.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.

In start-up companies, getting it done is a matter of survival

Biology Medical Science Health Innovation

A pharmaceuticals manager at Roche for a long time, now he is the founder of a biotech firm on the campus of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI: Michael Hennig knows the trends in the medical sector. In this interview he explains why the medicine of the future needs the innovation power of publicly funded research, and why he chose to locate his start-up leadXpro so close to PSI.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.

In cold water

Health Innovation Medical Science Biology

Martin Ostermaier wanted to break out of the comfort zone of science. Now, instead of pipettes, the biochemist is dealing with investors and patent law.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.
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A three-dimensional movie of structural changes in bacteriorhodopsin

Snapshots of bacteriorhodopsinBacteriorhodopsin is a membrane protein that harvests the energy content from light to transport protons out of the cell against a transmembrane potential. Nango et al. used timeresolved serial femtosecond crystallography at an x-ray free electron laser to provide 13 structural snapshots of the conformational changes that occur in the nanoseconds to milliseconds after photoactivation. These changes begin at the active site, propagate toward the extracellular side of the protein, and mediate internal protonation exchanges that achieve proton transport.

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In the focus of the protons

Medical Science Health Innovation Radiopharmacy

At the PSI, researchers work with radioactivity every day in order to develop advanced treatment methods for patients. Naturally, they take special safety precautions working with a material that decays. It's a race against time. To make sure everything functions smoothly, a dedicated work group takes care of the infrastructure.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.

Catching proteins in the act

Media Releases Large Research Facilities SwissFEL Biology Health Innovation

Proteins are indispensable building blocks of life. They play a vital role in many biological processes. Researchers have now been able to show how the ultrafast processes by which proteins do their work can be studied with free-electron X-ray lasers such as SwissFEL at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. Free-electron X-ray lasers generate extremely short and intense pulses of X-ray light. Currently there are just two such facilities in operation, worldwide. The results were published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.

Designer nuclide for medical applications

Medical Science Health Innovation Radiopharmacy

Researchers at the PSI have for the first time used a cyclotron to produce the radionuclide scandium-44 in a quantity and concentration as needed for medical treatment. With that, they have achieved the first precondition for scandium-44 to be used one day for medical tests in hospitals.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.

To starve a tumour

Health Innovation Biology

PSI researcher Kurt Ballmer-Hofer is concerned with the question of how tumours could be starved by preventing the development of blood vessels. After 40 years of research that yielded many fundamental insights about the formation of blood vessels, one of the key molecules has been found; further research is expected to enable clinical applications.

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Ceci est un texte de l'archive des communiqués de presse du PSI. Le contenu peut être obsolète.

Centriolar CPAP/SAS-4 Imparts Slow Processive Microtubule Growth

Centrioles are fundamental and evolutionarily conserved microtubule-based organelles whose assembly is characterized by microtubule growth rates that are orders of magnitude slower than those of cytoplasmic microtubules. Here, we bring together crystallographic, biophysical, and reconstitution assays to demonstrate that the human centriolar protein CPAP (SAS-4 in worms and flies) binds and "caps" microtubule plus ends by associating with a site of β-tubulin engaged in longitudinal tubulin-tubulin interactions.

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