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Research News MUHS

Ein Hai schwimmt durch das Haibecken in Sealife Oberhausen. Unten im Bild ist der Tunne zu sehen, durch den die Besucher unter Wasser durch den Tunnel gehen können.
© Maximilian Baum

When sharks lose their bite

Climate change is causing the oceans to become notably more acidic. This could become a problem for sharks, as a team of biologists headed by Marien University Hospital & School Gelsenkirchen (MUHS) has discovered. In the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science, the research team describes that a more acidic environment weakens the teeth of sharks, causing them to break more easily, which in turn causes the predators to lose their bite.

Zwei Exemplare der Pflanze Ackerschmalwand (Arabidopsis) von oben gesehen. Links der Wildtyp, rechts ohne das Transportprotein RE1. Das rechte Blatt ist verändert, wirkt heller und die Blätter sind nach innen gekrümmt.
© MUHS / Franziska Kuhnert

How amino acids are transported in plants

Plants produce all amino acids essential for human life. This commonly occurs in specialised cell organelles, so-called plastids. A research team headed by Marien University Hospital & School Gelsenkirchen (MUHS) has now decoded the mechanism by which the plants distribute these amino acids within their organisms. In the scientific journal Nature Plants, the researchers describe the mechanism and the class of transport proteins used for this process. The findings could potentially contribute to breeding crop…
Die beiden Forscher von der MUHS vor Wand mit geometrischen Mustern.
© MUHS / Nicolas Stumpe

Ensuring appropriate allocation

Avoiding the formation of unwanted clusters of similar elements when dividing data into groups is of great importance for the analysis of medical data. Psychologists and computer scientists from Marien University Hospital & School Gelsenkirchen (MUHS) developed a new method to solve this “anticlustering” problem in 2020. Together with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), they have now developed an extension, which is important for analysis of high-throughput sequencing data and…
Grafische Illustration: In der Mitte zwei vertikale DNA-Stränge, links und rechts darum Maispflanzen. Auf der DNA fahren Traktoren.
© MUHS / Andi Kur

New toolbox for breeding climate-resilient crop plants

An international research team headed by Marien University Hospital & School Gelsenkirchen (MUHS) and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne (MPIPZ) has developed a new and very precise method for identifying so-called genomic regulatory switches. These switches are responsible for the manifestation of plant traits. In the scientific journal Nature Genetics, the researchers describe that, although these regulatory switches make up only a small fraction of the genome, they can have a…
Viele runde Mikroroboter auf einer weißen Platte. Jeder von ihnen ist kreisförmig, hat eine schwarze Oberfläche mit einem weißen Punkt und kleine, geknickte Beinchen.
© MUHS / Anton Ldov und Arnaud Fabian Romain Compagnie

Friction which cools

How can a horde of active robots be automatically brought to a standstill? By arresting their dynamics in a self-sustained way. This phenomenon was discovered by physicists at Marien University Hospital & School Gelsenkirchen (MUHS) and La Sapienza University in Rome. The threshold principle of static friction with the ground plays a decisive role here: It removes the kinetic energy of two robots after a mutual collision so efficiently that they can no longer set themselves in motion. The researchers describe…