2019

IMSB reached the milestone of 30 mass spectrometers in operation! These are key for the analysis of proteins, metabolites, and lipids in complex systems. This makes IMSB one of the worldwide largest research units of this kind, and a premier site for systems biology.

A shiny Agilent 6546 QTOF was just installed! This is part of a long-standing collaboration with Agilent.

The IMSB labs of Paola Picotti, Uwe Sauer and Mattia Zampieri are part of the just granted National Center of Competence in Research to fight antibiotic-resistant bacteria (NCCR AntiResist). It is a collaboration with colleagues at the Biozentrum and University Hospital Basel and the ETH Department of Biosystems in Basel. The aim is to find new antibiotics and develop alternative strategies to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria by linking basic research directly with clinical research.

The paper, published in Biosensors and Bioelectronics, reports on a smart phone compatible biosensor-device that uses engineered yeast cells to detect endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the environment. Congratulation to Nadine Lopsiger, Jonathan Venetz and colleagues on this nice piece, which emanated from a fruitful collaboration with the group of Prof. W. Stark.

Congratulations to Paola and her great team, whose amazing work in recent years made this possible!

Ruedi Aebersold delivered his farewell lec­ture in an almost complete Audimax, entitled “Opportunities created, opportunities seized, and opportunities missed”. 

At the D-BIOL master graduation ceremony five of our students were from the major in systems biology. Congratulations to all of them!

Our non-tenure track Assistant Professor Manfred Claassen will start as a tenured Professor at the University of Tübingen (Germany) January 2020. We will miss you Manfred! 

Ruedi Aebersold on his 30-years long journey dedicated to advancing protein research.

The Zamboni lab has been tasked by the PHRT EC to provide metabolomics in support of the personalized health initiative in Switzerland. Together with the PHRT Center for Proteoform Analysis, it will provide a one-stop shop for clinical mass spectrometry in Switzerland.

Our patent on PARALLEL FUNCTIONAL TESTING OF SYNTHETIC DNA PARTS, PATHWAYS, AND GENOMES was granted by EP and enters nationalization.

Former graduate student Martin Soste studied mechanisms of genes that modulate alpha-Syn toxicity. He used the lab's "sentinel assay" to monitor the activation state of ~200 pathways in yeast and found that blocking the biosynthesis of diacylglycerol, a precursor of lipid droplets, rescued cells from toxicity. Read the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2019.07.010

Our research on digital genome design technology was featured in a news article in NZZ am Sonntag.

Microbes need to coordinate utilization of nutrients but the triggering signals remain unclear. A recent "Nat Comm" paper by the Zampieri & Sauer groups (IMSB) developed a computational approach to identify the intracellular signals that prioritize amino acid over glucose degradation from dynamic exo-metabolome data.

In this project, we will systematically characterize the function of unknown membrane proteins and their role in the cell's response to environmental conditions.

Beat Christen discussed how computer algorithms are used to encoding new abilities into artificial DNA and the convergence between the digital and biological worlds at the WEF in Dalian. Check out the presentation on Youtube.

Gigabases Switzerland AG develops genome design algorithms to breed novel pathways and organisms that replace chemistry with sustainable biological processes

A summary of the first half of 2019. Read more

Former lab member Juan Gerez (now in the Riek lab) found a new ubiquitin ligase complex that targets internalized alpha-synuclein fibrils for degradation. https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/495/eaau6722.full  

Paola has been awarded the EMBO gold medal. It is awarded every year to young scientists who have made outstanding contributions to life sciences in Europe. Congratulations to Paola!