Genetics
A new attempt for Horizon Europe
Politics
ETH Board
The Europe dossier continues to occupy Parliament in the current winter session. The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council is proposing to double the cohesion contribution  if the EU allows Switzerland to participate fully in Horizon Europe and Erasmus+ by mid-2022. The Council of States is also discussing the moratorium on genetic engineering. It is discussing exceptions for procedures in which no foreign DNA is introduced into organisms.
A cryptography game-changer for biomedical research at scale
Research
EPFL
Personalized medicine is set to revolutionize healthcare, yet large-scale research studies towards better diagnoses and targeted therapies are currently hampered by data privacy and security concerns. New global collaborative research has developed a solution to these challenges, described in Nature Communications.
Cells, cylinders and a vision of the future
Research
Eawag
The "gene scissors" CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to precisely modify genes in order to study their function in an organism. A researcher at Eawag has now succeeded for the first time in establishing the gene scissors for a fish cell line of rainbow trout. This means that, as of now, genetically modified cell lines can be produced. These allow alternatives to ecotoxicological tests on living animals.
“Junk” DNA plays a key role in speciation
Research
ETH Zurich
Researchers propose a new framework for how satellite DNA, sometimes called “genomic junk,” is essential in the organization of chromosomes in cells. They suggest this quickly-evolving DNA is one reason different species are unable to successfully interbreed.
Faulty regulation of an architect gene can lead to rare bone disease
Research
EPFL
EPFL researchers found that, if expressed too early during embryonic development, one of the genes that orchestrate the formation of limbs can lead to a rare disorder of bone growth.
What the new pangenome reveals about bovine genes
Research
ETH Zurich
When researchers at ETH Zurich compared the reference genomes between several breeds of domestic cattle and closely related wild cattle, they discovered genes with previously unknown functions.
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