Bacteria Borrow Viruses to Spread Their Own Defences

Pseudomonas fluorescens exposed to sterile compost filtrate acquired multiple mobile genetic elements carrying anti-phage defence genes

07-Nov-2025 - A team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology has discovered a new class of bacterial mobile genetic elements that use giant viruses—known as jumbo phages—to move between cells. The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), uncovers an unexpected ...

Is Musical Enjoyment in Our Genes?

11-Apr-2025 - Does our ability to enjoy music have a biological basis? A genetic twin study, published in Nature Communications, shows that music enjoyment is partly heritable. An international team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and for ...

What drives our cravings for food and drink?

New research shines light on how the brain interprets nutritional and hydration needs and turns them into action

02-Apr-2025 - To ensure we get the calories and hydration we need, the brain relies on a complex network of cells, signals, and pathways to guide us when to eat, drink, or stop. Yet, much about how the brain deciphers the body’s needs and translates them into action remains unknown. Researchers from the Max ...

Harnessing Mutations: A Breakthrough in Fruit Fly Genetics

A game-changing technique, TF-High-Evolutionary (TF-HighEvo), allows large-scale assessment of de-novo mutations in multicellular organisms

16-Sep-2024 - Developed in collaboration with researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society and published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, this technique provides fresh insights into the evolutionary dynamics of gene ...

Deciphering the secrets of spinal cord regeneration protein by protein

"With this understanding, we hope to develop new therapeutic approaches for spinal cord injury in humans in the future"

14-Nov-2023 - Scientists have long sought to understand how certain animals, such as zebrafish, are able to regrow nerve fibers and regain lost motor function after spinal cord injury. In humans, these injuries are irreparable and result in permanent loss of function, such as paralysis. An international team ...

Is there a connection between musical engagement and mental health problems?

Musically Active People Have a Slightly Higher Genetic Risk for Certain Mental Illnesses

09-Feb-2023 - Intuitively, people commonly believe that making music is good for their mental health. Music therapies also rely on a positive influence of music on mental health problems. However, compared to musically inactive people, musicians more often seem to suffer from depression and anxiety disorders. ...

A building block for liver fitness in old age

Researchers discover cellular protection against epigenetic changes

14-Sep-2022 - The liver can regenerate even in old age and remains surprisingly fit, even though the chromatin in its cells undergoes major remodeling due to epigenetic changes, as researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne have now discovered. One possible reason why the ...

Light drives injection

By coupling a bacterial injection system with a light-controlled molecular switch, scientists are able to inject proteins into eukaryontic cells

15-May-2020 - When bacteria such as Salmonella or Yersinia cause fever, diarrhoea or abdominal pain, tiny "injection needles" are at work: their type 3 secretion system, or T3SS for short, shoots bacterial virulence proteins directly into the eukaryotic host cells. Researchers have thought of using bacterial ...

The discovery of ancient Salmonella

Oldest reconstructed bacterial genomes link agriculture and herding with emergence of new disease

25-Feb-2020 - Using Salmonella enterica genomes recovered from human skeletons as old as 6,500 years, an international team of researchers illustrates the evolution of a human pathogen and provides the first ancient DNA evidence in support of the hypothesis that the cultural transition from foraging to farming ...

Does the brain accumulate trauma?

Molecular similarities in mice and humans exposed to trauma

05-Sep-2019 - Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental illness that can develop after experiencing a traumatic event. Greater awareness of PTSD emerged when large numbers of soldiers returning from the Iraq war reported symptoms. Other traumatic events such as experiencing childhood or sexual abuse, a ...