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Bacteria are immortal as long as they keep dividing. For decades it has been assumed that a continuous, proteinaceous ring is necessary to drive the division of most microorganisms. An international team led by Silvia Bulgheresi, University of Vienna, revealed that the symbiont of the marine roundworm breaks the ring dogma and divides without. These findings have been published in the current issue of Nature Microbiology.
The chemical properties of atoms depend on the number of protons in their nuclei, placing them into the periodic table. However, even chemically identical atoms can have different masses 鈥� these variants are called isotopes. Although techniques to measure such mass differences exist, these have either not revealed where they are in a sample, or have required dedicated instrumentation and laborious sample preparation. Publishing in the prestigious open access journal Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Vienna report a new way for "weighing" atoms by atomic-resolution imaging of graphene, the one-atom-thick sheet of carbon.
Azure-winged magpies, an Asian bird species, take any opportunity to provide food to their group members, even without receiving any reward themselves. A team of cognitive biologists, lead by Lisa Horn and Jorg Massen from the University of Vienna, showed this type of prosocial behavior experimentally in a bird species for the first time. There are very few other animals that show such human-like generosity. The results of their study have been published in the scientific journal Biology Letters.
New insight about how cells dispose of their waste is now given by the group of Claudine Kraft at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna. They show the necessity of a regulation in space and time of a key protein involved in cellular waste disposal. Dysfunctions in the waste disposal system of a cell are linked to cancer and Alzheimer鈥檚 disease. The study is published in the renowned journal Molecular Cell.
Marine symbiotic bacteria may help to "fertilize" animal growth in the oceans. Microbiologist Jillian Petersen and colleagues from the University of Vienna and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology have discovered that chemosynthetic bacteria in marine animals can fix nitrogen as well as carbon. This is the first such symbiont known to be capable of nitrogen fixation.
"How do massive stars form?" is one of the fundamental questions in modern astrophysics, because these massive stars govern the energy budget of their host galaxies. Using numerical simulations, researchers at the University of T眉bingen in a collaboration with Eduard Vorobyov from the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Vienna revealed new components of the formation of massive stars, which were already known from the formation process of low-mass as well as primordial stars. The study has now been published in the peer-review journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The research team around Anton Zeilinger has succeeded in breaking two novel records while experimenting with so-called twisted particles of light. In one experiment, the scientists could show that the twist of light itself, i.e. the screw-like structure, is maintained over a free-space propagation of 143 kilometers, which could revolutionize future data transmission.
Microorganisms like bacteria and archaea play an indispensable ecological role in the global geochemical cycles. A research team led by ERC prizewinner Christa Schleper from the Department of Ecogenomics and Systems Biology at the University of Vienna succeeded in isolating the first ammonia-oxidizing archaeon from soil: "Nitrososphaera viennensis" - the "spherical ammonia oxidizer from Vienna". In the current issue of the renowned journal PNAS, the scientists present new results: They were able to detect all proteins that are active during ammonia oxidation 鈥� another important piece of the puzzle for the elucidation of the energy metabolism of Archaea.
Humans, as well as many other organisms, possess internal clocks. The exact timing, however, can differ between individuals 鈥� for instance, some people are early risers whereas others are "night owls". Neurobiologist Kristin Tessmar-Raible and her team at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna investigated that underlie such timing variations or "chronotypes". The non-biting midge Clunio marinus has two internal clocks, since it times its reproduction according to sun and moon. The team around Tessmar-Raible and Postdoc Tobias Kaiser were now able to identify relevant genes for this adaptation, and published their results in the current issue of "Nature".
"Till death do us part" 鈥� for marine bristle worms, these words are invariably true: Shortly after mating, the parent worms die, leaving thousands of newly fertilized eggs to develop in the water. This extreme all-or-nothing mode of reproduction demonstrates a general principle: Animals need to decide if they invest their available energy stores either in growth or in reproduction. Researchers around Florian Raible at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna were now able to solve a 60-year-old riddle and determine the molecule that orchestrates this decision in marine bristle worms. Their results are published in the journal eLife.
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