Humans depend on farming for their very survival but this activity takes up more than one third of the world’s landmass and endangers 62% of all threatened species globally. However, agricultural landscapes can support, rather than damage, biodiversity, but only through a global transition to agroecological production. An international team of over 360 scientists from 42 countries, led by the University of Göttingen and Westlake University in…

With over 1.2 million people affected in Germany alone and over 50 million people worldwide, Alzheimer's disease, also referred to simply as Alzheimer's, is one of the greatest medical and social challenges of our time. Due to pathological changes in the brain, patients become increasingly forgetful and disoriented as the disease progresses. In the worst cases, even close relatives are no longer recognized and simple household tasks can no longer…

All living organisms need energy to survive. This energy is provided by small molecular powerplants within the cells of our body – the mitochondria. These organelles have a unique structural design to carry out this essential task: They consist of a smooth outer membrane and a highly folded inner membrane. However, the mechanisms by which the inner membrane adapts its unique shape, has largely remained a mystery until now. A team of scientists…

Warmblood fragile foal syndrome is a severe, usually fatal, genetic disease that manifests itself after birth in affected horses. Due to the defect, the connective tissue is unstable. Under force, for instance, the skin tears from the tissue underneath and the joints can suffer dislocation. A research team from the Universities of Göttingen and Halle has now been able to prove that the disease did not stem from the English thoroughbred stallion…

At the end of March, a patient with severe Covid-19 symptoms was admitted to an Iranian hospital. Because the patient also had poor blood values, the doctors prescribed the haematopoietic growth factor Epo. Seven days after the start of treatment, the patient was able to leave the hospital. Another indication of the protective role of Epo in the case of Covid-19 comes from South America, where severe illness is rarer in higher-lying regions than…

Sowing strips of wildflowers along conventional cereal fields and the increased density of flowers in organic farming encourage bumblebees as well as solitary wild bees and hoverflies. Bumblebee colonies benefit from flower strips along small fields, but in organic farming, they benefit from large fields. This research was carried out by agroecologists from the University of Göttingen in a comparison of different farming systems and landscape…

Worldwide there is a growing demand for animal products for human nutrition, despite vegan and vegetarian diets becoming more popular in Western countries. Changing diets necessitate a substantial amount of protein as an input for animal production. Future protein feedstuffs will need to become independent of arable land in order to avoid further land use changes, such as deforestation. The cultivation of insects as well as microalgae are…

Many scientific studies rely on fluorescent probes for highlighting specific structures in cells. For a long time, immunofluorescence of fixed cells and tissues dominated the field of fluorescence microscopy leading to the development of compatible fluorescent dyes. Recently, however, more attention is directed towards imaging of living cells. This imposes new restrictions on fluorescent dyes – they have to be cell-permeable and should not…

Solar activity fluctuates in a rhythm of about eleven years, which is reflected among other things in the frequency of sunspots. A complete magnetic period lasts 22 years. Scientists have long been puzzling over what causes this cycle. It must be related to the conditions beneath the "skin" of our star: A layer of hot plasma - electrically-conductive gas - extends from the surface to 200,000 kilometers below. The plasma within this convection…

The nearest exoplanets to us provide the best opportunities for detailed study, including searching for evidence of life outside the Solar System. In research led by the University of Göttingen, the RedDots team of astronomers has detected a system of super-Earth planets orbiting the nearby star Gliese 887, the brightest1 red dwarf star in the sky. Super-Earths are planets which have a mass higher than the Earth’s but substantially below those of…