News Archives
Although the announcments are in English, most links are in German!
The invisibility cloak of a fungus...
A fungal pathogen uses an enzyme to hide from the human immune system / Study in PNAS
Our immune system is good - very good! It confidently protects us from pathogens, only in exceptional cases do they succeed in infecting us. While viruses and bacteria do this relatively regularly, fungi only very rarely succeed. They are simply very easy for our immune system to recognize because their cells are surrounded by a solid cell wall of chitin and other complex sugars. Chitin is, so to speak, the alarm signal for our immune system, to which it reacts with a whole arsenal of defensive weapons...
22. January 2020 | WWU (bmm)
Patterns matter!
Deciphering the sugar code…
Not only DNA and proteins, complex sugars also speak their own language/study in JACS
Chitosans are probably the most versatile and promising functional biopolymers. Chitosans can make plants resistant to diseases, promote their growth, and protect them from heat or drought stress. Under chitosan dressings, even large wounds can heal without scars, chitosan nanoparticles can transport drugs across the blood/brain barrier, and chitosans can replace antibiotics in animal fattening as antimicrobial and immunostimulating feed additives. But of course, chitosans are not miracle cures either: there are many different chitosans, and for each application you have to find exactly the right one if it is to work. Unfortunately, we still understand far too little which chitosan has which effect and how the different chitosans unfold their effects. Only when we understand this, when we understand the "language" of chitosan, we can use it in a targeted way. Researchers from Münster have
now come a long way towards achieving this goal...
07. May 2019
WHY DOES DANDELION NEVER FALL ILL?
Dandelion possesses eleven polyphenoloxidases, of which four are in truth tyrosinases.
Dandelion - everyone knows it, gourmets love it, gardeners hate it. And biologists are intrigued. Dandelion is one of the very rare plants that almost never fall ill. But why? If we knew this, we might be able to protect our roses from rust, our potatoes from late blight, and our wine from mildew. Dandelion is a latex producing plant and we remember from childhood that we were always told: dandelion latex is toxic (which is true though most of the times, no more than a little belly ache ensues). Maybe the latex is protecting dandelion from pathogens? It has long been known that besides the well-known bitter compounds, latex also contains an enzyme which is a polyphenoloxidase. Polyphenoloxidases are common to many plants, they oxidize diphenolics in the presence of oxygen, and the resulting quinones are “toxic” - one may also say: they are antimicrobial - because they are highly reactive: They react with other biomolecules, inactivating them. However, the quinones also react with themselves, yielding a brown polymer (a giant molecule) - in sort of a detoxification reaction protecting the plant from its own toxic compounds. We know this browning reaction not only from dandelion, but also from apples and bananas which turn brown quickly on air, protecting wounds from penetrating pathogens...