Pharmaceutical industry

Worldwide, an estimated 100,000 animal species produce toxins. Some serve to protect against predators, others to hunt prey. What many poisons have in common is that they can have the opposite effect in small doses: Important antihypertensives, anticoagulants and pain killers are based on animal toxins, and a toxin of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis is making waves as a biological insecticide. Unlike snakes or spiders, little is known about the toxins of predatory flies.

As people age, so does their genetic material. One of these aging mechanisms is methylation, in which small molecules, so-called methyl groups, are attached to the DNA. These methylations often have a regulatory function and are reversible. However, the overall extent of methylation increases over the course of a lifetime. In the "DrugTarget" project, Fraunhofer researchers have now developed a method for determining a person's age on the basis of methylations.

The German life science company Bayer and the U.S. developer of biopharmaceuticals Arvinas are planning to adapt molecules of the cell's own system and use them to remove foreign or no longer needed proteins in order to protect agricultural plants from pathogens, insect pests and wild herbs. To this end, both companies have now announced the foundation of the joint venture Oerth Bio (pronounced "Earth").

The mother-of-pearl inside a shell is not only beautiful to look at, it has also fascinated materials researchers for decades because of its exceptional toughness. It is considered one of the most resilient materials in the world. “Nacre is the prototypical supermaterial,” the researchers, including scientists from the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), write.

The search for new active ingredients for the production of antibiotics is going strong. A promising source is the sea. Many microorganisms that have the potential to produce antibiotics settle here. With the marine phylum Planctomycetes, an international team of researchers has now identified a new source of active substances. Initial analyses suggest that these microorganisms, which have so far received little attention, are actually able to produce antibiotics.

The bacterium Escherichia coli is one of the favourite organisms of microbiologists and biotechnologists. E. coli is easy to cultivate in the laboratory. It has been well researched and is well suited for the implementation of biotechnological processes. So far, however, the bacterium has used carbohydrates as a source of carbon both in nature and in industrial applications. An international research team led by the Weizman Institute in Israel has now succeeded in converting the diet of E. coli to carbon dioxide from the air.

Astin is a herbal agent to which healing powers are attributed - not least in the fight against cancer. One source of this medicinal substance is Aster tataricus, also known as Tatarinow's aster. This medicinal plant, which is native to the higher altitudes of Asia, is used primarily in traditional Chinese medicine. A research team from the University of Tübingen and the Technical University of Dresden has now succeeded in isolating astins from the plant, cultivating them and producing them in larger quantities using biotechnology.

Tree sap contains important ingredients for food or pharmaceutical industry. Besides minerals and nutrients, it is the microorganisms, especially yeasts, that make the sugar-rich sap interesting for biotechnologists. These yeasts produce important enzymes such as lipases, which digest fat, or plant substances such as the carotenoid astaxanthin. Astaxanthin is extracted from the tree yeast Phaffia rhodozyma, for example, and used as an additive in fish feed, which later gives the salmon its distinctive color.

In order to detect acute infection with the corona virus, thousands of tests based on the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are performed daily. With the help of this molecular copy method, the genetic material of the virus, which consists of the biomolecule ribonucleic acid (RNA), is detected in the swabs. The few virus RNA molecules are first transcribed into DNA and then amplified by the PCR in numerous copy cycles. Only then can the existence of the viral genetic material in the samples be determined. Experts refer to this as real-time RT-PCR.

Scientists have copied many a fine chemical from nature. Phenylglycine is also a substance produced by bacteria. However, there are two mirror-image forms of it - L-phenylglycine and D-phenylglycine. The former is the product of microorganisms, the latter is a medically highly interesting compound, which as yet can only be produced conventionally in a petrochemical process - until now.