News from the Göttingen Campus

The research award is one of the most prestigious in Europe and endowed with 500,000 Swiss francs.
With this prize the Louis-Jeantet Foundation honors the director at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry for his pioneering work in the field of gene transcription. Transcription is a copying process enabling living cells to produce transcripts of their genes that then serve as blueprints for making proteins. Cramer’s research focuses on the molecular machines, called RNA polymerases, that control this fundamental process of…
Physicists from Göttingen University develop method in which beams are simultaneously generated and guided by "sandwich structure”
X-rays are usually difficult to direct and guide. X-ray physicists at the University of Göttingen have developed a new method with which the X-rays can be emitted more precisely in one direction. To do this, the scientists use a structure of thin layers of materials with different densities of electrons to simultaneously deflect and focus the generated beams. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances. To generate…
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization show that the secret to optimal micro-swimming is out there in the nature. They prove that a microswimmer can increase its swimming efficiency by learning the swimming techniques from an unexpected mentor: an air bubble.
Engineers have spent considerable efforts to improve the fuel economy of aircraft, cars or ships in the past decades. A similar process has been going on in biology, where swimming microorganisms have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to move efficiently. Many biological microswimmers like Paramecium use their small hair-like appendages to “slip” the fluid at their surface and gain locomotion. This general swimming technique however…
Physicists from Göttingen first to succeed in filming a phase transition with extremely high spatial and temporal resolution
Laser beams can be used to change the properties of materials in an extremely precise way. This principle is already widely used in technologies such as rewritable DVDs. However, the underlying processes generally take place at such unimaginably fast speeds and at such a small scale that they have so far eluded direct observation. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen…
Ancient tree slices and an improved C14 method provide a unique glimpse into our star's past.
An international research team, including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, has reconstructed solar activity up to the year 969 without gaps and with a high temporal resolution of only one year from measurements of radioactive carbon in tree rings. The data, which the team led by ETH Zurich recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience, not only impressively confirm the Sun’s known,…
The Sunrise III mission will look at the Sun from the stratosphere equipped with three new scientific instruments.
In the summer of 2022, the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise will embark on its third stratospheric flight. From the airborne observation site more than 35 kilometers above the Earth's surface, the observatory will enjoy a unique view of the Sun during the several-day flight from northern Sweden to Canada: around the clock, undisturbed by air turbulences in the Earth's atmosphere, and with access to the ultraviolet radiation from our star.…
Das Impfzentrum für die Mitarbeitenden der Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG) zieht nach der ersten Woche Arbeit eine positive Zwischenbilanz: Knapp 600 UMG Beschäftigte wurden geimpft, die neuen Räumlichkeiten am 14. Januar 2021 bezogen. Künftig können dort täglich 200 bis 300 Mitarbeitende geimpft werden. UMG wartet auf die nächste Lieferung des Impfstoffs.
Am Donnerstag, dem 14. Januar 2021, öffnete das UMG-eigene Impfzentrum seine Türen. Die Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG) hat in den neuen Räumen die Impfungen für ihre Mitarbeiter*innen fortgesetzt. Bereits am ersten Tag impften die Betriebsärzt*innen der UMG in einem ersten Schritt über 120 Mitarbeit*innen in der Reihenfolge fest vergebener Termine. Zusammen mit den bereits in der zurückliegenden Woche Geimpften werden bis zum Freitag über…
Research team led by Göttingen University investigates molecular basis of eye size variation in insects
The fascinating compound eyes of insects consist of hundreds of individual eyes known as “facets”. In the course of evolution, an enormous variety of eye sizes and shapes has emerged, often representing adaptations to different environmental conditions. Scientists, led by an Emmy Noether research group at the University of Göttingen, together with scientists from the Andalusian Centre for Developmental Biology (CABD) in Seville, have now shown…
Physicist from Göttingen University receives European Research Council Advanced Grant
Physicist Professor Jörg Enderlein from the University of Göttingen has been awarded an Advanced Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC has supported Enderlein's project – "Single-molecule, metal-induced energy transfer" – since the beginning of January 2021. The grant is worth a total of around 2.8 million euros and will run for five years. The ERC Advanced Grants scheme funds ground-breaking projects led by outstanding and…
Remdesivir is the first drug against Covid-19 to be conditionally approved in Europe and the United States. The drug is designed to suppress the rapid replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in human cells by blocking the viral copying machine, called RNA polymerase. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and the University of Würzburg have now elucidated how remdesivir interferes with the viral polymerase during copying and why it does not inhibit it completely. Their results explain why the drug has a rather weak effect. (Nature Communications, January 12, 2021)
“After complicated studies, we come to a simple conclusion,” Max Planck Director Patrick Cramer says. “Remdesivir does interfere with the polymerase while doing its work, but only after some delay. And the drug does not fully stop the enzyme.”  At the pandemic’s beginning, Cramer’s team at the MPI for Biophysical Chemistry had elucidated how the coronavirus duplicates its RNA genome. For the pathogen this is a colossal task as its genome…