Norse World is a new database which will make it easier for researchers to study perceptions of the surrounding world in Medieval Scandinavian literature. The new tool is a digital resource aimed at researchers in fields such as language history and philology, comparative literature, manuscript studies and digital humanities. It will be freely available to both researchers and the public.
Through random mutation the sequences of our proteins slowly change over time, usually without affecting function. But sometimes new functions will be invented in this process. Scientists at Uppsala University have studied such a case in molecular detail. The results are published in Science Advances and show how several factors conspire to shape a plastic protein-protein interaction.
Selfish genes are genes that are passed on to the next generation but confer no advantage on the individual as a whole, and may sometimes be harmful. Researchers at Uppsala University have, for the first time, sequenced (or charted) two selfish genes in the fungus Neurospora intermedia that cause fungal spores to kill their siblings.
Retroviruses have colonised vertebrate hosts for millions of years by inserting their genes into host genomes, enabling their inheritance through generations as endogenous retroviruses (ERVs). Researchers from Uppsala University now provide new knowledge about the long-term associations of retroviruses and their hosts by studying ERV variation and segregation in wild and domestic rabbits.
In a new scientific article, researchers at Uppsala University describe how, using a completely new method, they have synthesised an artificial enzyme that functions in the metabolism of living cells. These enzymes can utilise the cell’s own energy, and thereby enable hydrogen gas to be produced from solar energy.
Star polymers are within the most topologically entangled macromolecules. With a simulation over a hundred times faster than earlier studies, it is demonstrated that the mean square displacement scales with a power law 1/16 in time, instead of the previously assumed zero. It suggests that star polymer motion is the result of two linear relaxations coinciding in time.
Prevailing dogma in biological research holds that the cell’s protein factories, the ribosomes, function the same way in all cells and in all conditions. In an international study with participation from Weill Cornell Medicine and Uppsala University, published today in the journal Cell Reports, the researchers show that this is a truth that seems to not hold true.
How do the large-scale patterns we observe in evolution arise? A new paper in the journal Evolution by researchers at Uppsala University and University of Leeds argues that many of them are a type of statistical artefact caused by our unavoidably recent viewpoint looking back into the past.
Should researchers inform research participants, if they discover genetic disease risks in the participants? The value of complex genetic risk information for individuals is uncertain. In a PhD thesis from Uppsala University, Jennifer Viberg Johansson suggests that this uncertainty needs to be acknowledged by both geneticists and ethicists.
Why do some people comfortably walk between skyscrapers on a high-wire or raft the Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel whereas others freeze on the mere thought of climbing off escalators in a shopping mall? In a new study, scientists have found that a certain type of cells in the hippocampus play a key role.
In a new study, researchers at Uppsala University now demonstrate that one night of sleep loss has a tissue-specific impact on the regulation of gene expression and metabolism in humans. This may explain how shift work and chronic sleep loss impairs our metabolism and adversely affects our body composition. The study is published in the scientific journal Science Advances.
A new study by researchers at Uppsala University, published in the journal Science Advances, uses satellite nighttime light data to reveal how flood protection shapes the average distance of settlements from rivers.