Bacteria beyond Earth?

Signs of life detectable in single ice grains emitted from moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter

27-Mar-2024 - The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are prime candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Washington, Seattle, shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary ...

Following Proteins on Their Journey

"This new technique represents a breakthrough in studying individual proteins in cells"

13-Mar-2024 - A research team led by biochemist Professor Helge Ewers from Freie Universität Berlin has developed a new technique for the light-mediated release and investigation of proteins in live cells. The technique makes use of a laser pulse to control the release of tagged protein molecules within a ...

Quantitative analysis of cell organelles with artificial intelligence

The analysis of cryo-X-Ray-microscopy data still requires a lot of time: AI now identifies structures at high accuracy within a few minutes

21-Jul-2023 - BESSY II's high-brilliance X-rays can be used to produce microscopic images with spatial resolution down to a few tens of nanometres. Whole cell volumes can be examined without the need for complex sample preparation as in electron microscopy. Under the X-ray microscope, the tiny cell organelles ...

New findings could pave the way to detecting the building blocks of life in our solar system

Detecting biomolecules on ocean moons

07-Dec-2022 - It would be technically possible for future space missions to detect DNA, lipids, and other bacterial components on ocean moons in our solar system – provided that these building blocks of life do exist beyond Earth. This is the conclusion that has now been reached by an international team of ...

New research sheds light on the role of proteins and how synapses work

17-Aug-2016 - Synapses are the power junctions that allow living creatures to function. Popularly associated with learning and memory, they play a more fundamental role in our existence by regulating everything from breathing, sleeping and waking and other bodily functions. Loss of synapses and synapse ...

Investigating micelles, as easy as ABC

08-Apr-2009 - German scientists have used cryogenic transmission electron microscopy to investigate the fluorinated domains within ABC triblock copolymer micelles. Christoph Böttcher from Freie Universität Berlin, André Laschewsky from Universität Potsdam, and their colleagues, have shown using ...

Metallosupramolecular assemblies: Unravelling the truth

22-Jan-2009 - Christoph Schalley and his colleagues from Freie Universität Berlin use electrospray ionization Fourier-transform ion-cyclotron-resonance (ESI-FTICR) to provide new insights into metallo-supramolecular reaction mechanisms. ESI-FTICR mass spectroscopy (MS) can be used on isolated compounds to ...