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  • New knowledge about retrovirus-host coevolution

    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.

  • Artificial enzymes convert solar energy into hydrogen gas

    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.

  • ​World speed record for polymer simulations

    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.

  • New study shows cells produce specialised protein factories under stress

    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.

  • Well established theories on patterns in evolution might be wrong

    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.

  • Genetic risk: Should researchers let people know?

    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.

  • Bravery cells found in the hippocampus

    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.

  • How sleep loss may contribute to adverse weight gain

    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.

  • Working memory might be more flexible than previously thought

    Breaking with the long-held idea that working memory has fixed limits, a new study by researchers at Uppsala University and New York University suggests that these limits adapt themselves to the task that one is performing. The results are presented in the scientific journal eLife.

  • Magnetic antiparticles offer new horizons for information technologies

    Nanosized magnetic particles called skyrmions are considered highly promising candidates for new data storage and information technologies. Now, physicists have revealed new behaviour involving the antiparticle equivalent of skyrmions in a ferromagnetic material. The results are published in Nature Electronics.

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