Using EMBL´s scientific services, researchers from the Institute of Advanced Biosciences (UGA/CNRS/Inserm) in Grenoble identified Altiratinib, which is already used to treat glioblastoma, as a potential drug to stop toxoplasmosis infection with reduced side effects. The studies are also opening up bi-therapy treatments options against malaria. The researchers have benefitted from EMBL Grenoble’s scientific services and expertise in structural biology for drug repurposing studies targeting apicomplexan parasites. EMBL Grenoble’s scientific services, particularly the automated beamline MASSIF-1 jointly operated with the ESRF, have been particularly useful to run these studies.

Researchers use lab and field combined study to measure how nutrition impacts queen fecundity of honeybees

When a surface is getting wet, also the composition of the liquid plays a role in the wetting process. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) found that phase separation within the wetting liquid directly affects the dynamics of spreading. Their findings may be important in various applications, including tissue engineering, biology and semiconductor manufacturing. The study was recently published in the scientific journal PNAS.

The stronger and more aggressive sex dominates the weaker sex. This simplistic view of male-female dominance relationships is common but falls short of the complexity of how dominance hierarchies are established in animal societies. A team of scientists with participation of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin (Leibniz-IZW) now compared intersexual dominance hierarchies of nine group-living mammals using a set of standardised methods and behaviours. They found that the species ranged from being strictly male to strictly female dominated, and that hierarchies were robust with respect to the method applied to construct them. They also found that in female-dominated societies, animals mostly relied on submissive signals and gestures to establish and maintain dominance, whereas in male-dominated societies, they mostly used aggressive behaviours. The results were published in the open access journal “Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution”.