Press Releases - August 2006
Archive
28 August 2006 - EMBL
A switch between life and death
Cells in an embryo divide at an amazing rate to build a whole body, but this growth needs to be controlled. Otherwise the result may be defects in embryonic development or cancer in adults. Controlling growth requires that some cells divide while others die; their fates are determined by signals that are passed from molecule to molecule within the cell. Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg have now discovered how one of these signaling pathways controls the life and death of cells in the fruit fly. The study will be published in this week's issue of the journal Cell.
25 August 2006 - EMBL
A wandering eye
Eyes are among the earliest recognisable structures in an embryo. Researchers from the EMBL in Heidelberg have now discovered that cells are programmed to make eyes early in development and individually migrate to the right place to do so.
17 August 2006 - ESO
Far Away Galaxy Under The Microscope
An international group of astronomers have discovered large disc galaxies akin to our Milky Way that must have formed on a rapid time scale, only 3 billion years after the Big Bang. In one of these systems, the combination of adaptive optics techniques with the new SINFONI spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) resulted in a record-breaking resolution of a mere 0.15 arcsecond, giving an unprecedented detailed view of the anatomy of such a distant proto-disc galaxy.
16 August 2006 - ESA
Europe rediscovers the Moon with SMART-1
Now Europe too can say it has been to the Moon. In the early morning of 3 September this year (at 07:41 Central European Summer Time, as currently estimated), the European Space Agency's SMART-1 mission will end its exploration adventure through a small impact on the lunar surface.
10 August 2006 - ESO
Stars Too Old to be Trusted?
Analysing a set of stars in a globular cluster with ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers may have found the solution to a critical cosmological and stellar riddle. Until now, an embarassing question was why the abundance of lithium produced in the Big Bang is a factor 2 to 3 times higher than the value measured in the atmospheres of old stars. The answer, the researchers say, lies in the fact that the abundances of elements measured in a star's atmosphere decrease with time.
9 August 2006 - EMBL
EMBL scientists found start-up company to develop anti-cancer drugs
Today EMBL scientists, EMBL's commercial affiliate, EMBL Enterprise Management Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM) and EMBL's venture vehicle, EMBL Ventures GmbH, announce the foundation of Elara Pharmaceuticals GmbH, a start-up company that will translate basic research findings into new anti-cancer drugs. Elara is a spinout company dedicated to drug development and will follow-up on promising small molecule leads that have shown powerful anti-cancer actions in screening experiments. Elara receives seed funding from EMBL Ventures and has been granted exclusive license rights to selected discoveries made at EMBL.
6 August 2006 - EMBL
Alleviating the burden of Multiple Sclerosis
Depression, coordination and speech problems, muscle weakness and disability are just a few of the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy and the Department of Neuropathology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Göttingen, Germany, have now discovered that these symptoms are aggravated by a specific signal in cells in the nervous system. The study, which will appear in this week's online issue of Nature Immunology, suggests that blocking the proteins that regulate the signal might be an efficient strategy for new therapies against MS.
4 August 2006 - ESO
The 'Planemo' Twins
The cast of exoplanets has an extraordinary new member. Using ESO's telescopes, astronomers have discovered an approximately seven-Jupiter-mass companion to an object that is itself only twice as hefty. Both objects have masses similar to those of extra-solar giant planets, but they are not in orbit around a star - instead they appear to circle each other. The existence of such a double system puts strong constraints on formation theories of free-floating planetary mass objects.
3 August 2006 - ESO
A Sub-Stellar Jonah
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have discovered a rather unusual system, in which two planet-size stars, of different colours, orbit each other. One is a rather hot white dwarf, weighing a little bit less than half as much as the Sun. The other is a much cooler, 55 Jupiter-masses brown dwarf.