D-BSSE News

Researchers around Randall Platt have developed a method that lets them genetically modify each cell differently in animals. This allows them to study in a single experiment what used to require many animal experiments. Using the new method, the researchers have discovered genes that are relevant for a severe rare genetic disorder.

Mustafa Khammash receives the prestigious Advanced Grant currently awarded by the Swiss National Science Foundation rather than the European Research Council for his project "Theory and Design of Advanced Genetically Engineered Control Systems".

ETH Zurich and Roche are joining forces to advance the development of new methods that facilitate the search for medicines. By launching two programmes in Basel for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, D-BSSE together with Roche's IHB and pRED will train specialists for the biomedical challenges of our time.

Researchers from Basel and Zurich are creating a high-​resolution atlas that depicts the development of the human retina. One technique they use is a new method that allows them to visualise more than 50 proteins simultaneously.

Researchers at D-BSSE and colleagues have analysed the bird flu epidemic caused by the H7N9 strain that affected China from 2013 to 2017. New phylogenetic trees will help to improve monitoring of future bird flu epidemics.

Cancer patients might one day benefit from being administered immune cells from healthy donors. But as things stand, receiving donor cells can cause severe or even fatal immune reactions. A researcher from the Synthetic Immunology lab of Sai Reddy has now developed a technology that avoids these.

On the current list of Highly Cited Researchers, 21 have a connection to ETH Zurich. Tanja Stadler, Professor of Computational Evolution at D-BSSE, and three other ETH researchers appear on this list for the first time.

Researchers around Sai Reddy, head of the Synthetic Immunology group, have developed a method to explore the possibilities of how the pandemic virus could evolve. Thanks to their work, it may be possible to develop antibody therapies and vaccines that are more likely to be effective also against future viral variants.

Researchers from the Computational Biology group of Dagmar Iber have conducted a detailed study of neurulation – how the neural tube forms during embryonic development. They conclude that this happens less actively than previously thought. This also has implications for understanding defects such as spina bifida.

Researchers from ETH Zurich, University Hospital of Bern and the University of Bern have equipped gut bacteria with data logger functionality as a way of monitoring which genes are active in the bacteria. These microorganisms could one day offer a noninvasive means of diagnosing disease or assessing the impact of a diet on health.

Researchers around BSSE-professor Andreas Hierlemann have developed a cell culture test to detect substances that are directly or indirectly harmful to embryos. Based on an existing test used for developing new drugs and chemicals, the augmented version is designed to help reduce the number of animal experiments.

Niko Beerenwinkel, a Professor at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering at ETH Zurich in Basel, is working with colleagues from other research institutions to examine wastewater for traces of the coronavirus. He has detected the Delta variant in five out of six Swiss wastewater treatment plants examined, including ones in Zurich and Bern. Recently he spoke with ETH News.

Researchers from the Systems and Synthetic Immunology Lab led by Sai Reddy use machine learning methods to optimise the development of antibody drugs. This leads to active substances with improved properties, also with regard to tolerability in the body.

Scientists around D-BSSE professor Kobi Benenson are working to develop information-​processing switching systems in biological cells. Now, for the first time, they have developed an OR switch in human cells that reacts to different signals.

As part of a clinical study involving patients from the University Hospitals in Zurich and Basel, researchers are conducting a thorough and highly precise investigation into the molecular and functional properties of tumours. Their goal is to help physicians to better determine which treatment will best match every patient’s cancer and thus be most effective.

Researchers from the Bio Engineering Group led by Andreas Hierlemann have developed a new generation of microelectrode-​array chips for measuring nerve impulses, enabling studies of how thousands of nerve cells interact with each other.

Using algorithms to analyse the whole-​genome sequence of a tumour can make treatment more successful – and can even help determine how cells become cancerous. At D-BSSE, Niko Beerenwinkel and his group are developing machine learning methods and software that can identify and interpret the significant genetic diversity in tumours.

D-BSSE researchers can predict how tightly a cell’s protein synthesis machinery will bind to RNA sequences - even when dealing with many billions of different RNA sequences. This binding plays a key role in determining how much of a specific protein is produced. The scientists are developing their prediction model using a combination of synthetic biology experiments and machine learning algorithms. The interdisciplinary study is first-authored by Simon Höllerer and Laetitia Papaxanthos.

ETH researchers are developing and improving methods to detect the pandemic virus or virus-​specific antibodies. With the help of such tests, the scientists are also investigating the details of how the pathogen is spreading. A project overview including the COVID19-projects of Sai Reddy, Tanja Stadler, Niko Beerenwinkel and Barbara Treutlein.

The “lockdown light” decreed by the Swiss Federal Council has led to each person infected with Sars-​CoV-2 going on to infect only one person on average instead of two or three prior to the lockdown, as calculations by the team of Tanja Stadler have shown. This means the situation is stable, but the epidemic has yet to be contained.

Analyses of publicly available genome data provide clues to the beginnings of the coronavirus epidemic in China. Researchers from the D-BSSE group of Tanja Stadler used a statistical model they had developed in recent years.

Antibiotic resistance does not spread only where and when antibiotics are used in large quantities, researchers from Basel institutions and ETH Zürich conclude from laboratory experiments. Reducing antibiotic use alone is therefore not sufficient to curtail resistance, and should be done in conjunction with measures to prevent infection with resistant germs.

Researchers around D-BSSE Professor Randall Platt have refined the famous CRISPR-Cas method. Now, for the very first time, it is possible to modify dozens, if not hundreds, of genes in a cell simultaneously.

Both nature and technology rely on integral feedback mechanisms to ensure that systems resist external perturbations. D-BSSE researchers have now used synthetic biology to design a new mechanism of this sort from scratch. For the first time, they have introduced it into a living cell as an artificial genetic regulatory network. This will be a useful tool for cell therapy in medicine and for biotechnology.

D-BSSE scientists have developed a method with which they can quickly test a very large number of molecules for antibiotic effect. With it, they have already successfully discovered new antibiotic candidates produced by microorganisms. In the future, they will use their new technology to examine soil samples and the microbiome on human skin for medically useful microorganisms. Published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology the study decorates the cover of the May issue.

Many proteins with important biological functions are embedded in a biomembrane in the cells of humans and other living organisms. But how do they get in there in the first place? Researchers around D-BSSE Professor Daniel Müller investigated the underlying processes.  

At the start of the epidemic in West Africa, the Ebola virus did not change as rapidly as thought at the time. Researchers from D-BSSE and the University of Oxford explain why scientists misjudged the mutation rate at the time.