Research

A research team at FAU and Universitätsklinikum Erlangen have unlocked a mechanism in which liver cancer cells take a substance formed by benign liver cells and use it for their malignant growth. The Walter-Siegenthaler-Gesellschafft für Fortschritte in der Inneren Medizin has awarded the lead author of the study Dr. Peter Dietrich with their Science Award 2020 in recognition of this work.

Infections with the human T-lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1) are transmitted via bodily fluids that contain cells. A research group led by Dr. Andrea Thoma-Kreß from the Chair of Clinical and Molecular Virology at FAU is currently investigating the HTLV-1 virus at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project with approximately 2.3 million euros.

The Joint Science Conference (GWK) of the German federal states has just announced that FAU will receive funds to establish a National Centre for High Performance Computing (NHR). The NHR will open on 1 January 2021, as part of a nationwide network with seven other centres. The federal and state governments will provide a total of up to 625 million euros in funding.

Which photophysical properties does carbyne have? This was the subject of research carried out by scientists at FAU, the University of Alberta, Canada, and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which has led to a greater understanding of the properties of this unusual form of carbon.

Tendon injuries are increasing around the world. To support the development of new therapeutic and diagnostic methods for tendon injuries using nanomedicine, the EU Horizon 2020 Framework programme is funding the P4 FIT consortium with approximately four million euros over the next four years. Fried...

Researchers at FAU and the Graz University of Technology are hoping to improve the imaging of cell metabolism using a special technique.

How do killer whales communicate? A team of researchers at FAU set out to find answers. In order to find out how whales communicate, the researchers used deep learning to analyse the audio recordings and then compared these with the animals’ behaviour.

Coral reefs are hotspots of biodiversity. As they can withstand heavy storms, they offer many species a safe home. A team of researchers from FAU and the University of Bayreuth have now discovered that a very specific type of ‘cement’ is responsible for the stability of coral reefs – by forming a hard calcareous skeleton, coralline red algae stabilise the reefs, and have been doing so for at least 150 million years.

Working together with researchers from the University of Tübingen, the University of Tromsø, the UC Davis and the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich, biologists from FAU have discovered how tomato plants identify Cuscuta as a parasite. The plant has a protein in its cell walls that is identified as 'foreign' by a receptor in the tomato.

Organic solar cells are cheaper to produce and more flexible than their counterparts made of crystalline silicon, but do not offer the same level of efficiency or stability. During his doctoral thesis, Andrej Classen, who is a young researcher at FAU, demonstrated that increases in efficiency can be achieved using luminescent acceptor molecules.