D-BSSE News

Pregnancy and motherhood lead to brain remodeling. Researchers at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, and the Systems Physiology Lab of Andreas Moor, have now discovered in experiments with mice that distinct pools of stem cells in the adult brain are turned on during pregnancy. They give rise to specific types of olfactory bulb neurons, the team reports in the journal Science.

Every day, millions of cells die in our body. Other than generally assumed, cells do not simply burst at the end of their lives but rather, a specific protein serves as a breaking point for cell membrane rupture. Researchers led by Sebastian Hiller at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, in collaboration with D-BSSE group leader Daniel Müller have now been able to elucidate the exact mechanism at the atomic level.

Researchers from Basel hospitals, the University of Basel, the BSSE-​Computational Biology group led by Niko Beerenwinkel and colleagues from the University of Teheran developed an analytical method to detect genes involved in the development of cancer. Using this approach, they were able to identify a number of new cancer genes, including one that plays a role in breast cancer. Their study was published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.