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The soil is teeming with microorganisms. Researching them is not easy because many of them cannot yet be cultivated in the laboratory. Therefore, researchers often record so-called metagenomes - the entirety of the genes of the microorganisms in a sample. More than 200,000 such metagenomes are available in public databases. But there is a problem: the data sets in them are not subject to a uniform standard, making it difficult to put the data to use.

CRISPR-Cas9 has revolutionized molecular biology. The enzymatic system works like scissors that can cut DNA at a defined location to deactivate genes or insert new gene sequences. To make sure that CRISPR-Cas9 finds the right place to cut, it is combined with a target-specific so-called guide RNA. However, even this guide RNA makes a certain percentage of mistakes in finding the target.

The day on which Germany has consumed its share of the world's available resources has been advancing for years. While the Earth Overshoot Day in 2000 was still on 23 September, this year Germany is already living on credit from 3 May. The day is calculated annually by the Global Footprint Network and illustrates the share of countries in global resources. This year, the cutoff date is, of course, only a forecast and is based on the previous year. Due to the corona pandemic, there is currently a lack of data for a reliable calculation.

The Zuse-Gemeinschaft, an association of private sector research institutions, intends to focus more on applied bioeconomic research. To accomplish this, the industrial research community has now founded the Bioeconomy Cluster, which initially includes 15 of the 75 institutes.

What do Germans think about technology? This is what the TechnikRadar from acatech and the Körber Stiftung has been investigating since 2018. The third issue of the magazine focused on the bioeconomy for the first time.

"The decline of biodiversity and intact ecosystems in Germany is alarming." With these words, Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek summed up a development that the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is counteracting with an initiative for the conservation of species diversity. On the occasion of the International Day of Biological Diversity, the ministry is now providing a further 25 million euros for research projects aimed at protecting biodiversity.

Enzymes are the driving forces behind chemical reactions in living cells. They are therefore also called biocatalysts and are used in biotechnological processes to enable reactions. Scientists at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (WWU) and the University of Pavia have now discovered an enzyme that has a mechanism that is so far unknown in this combination: In addition to its normal function, blue light can trigger another reaction, but this requires the presence of a specific molecule, as the team reports in the technical journal

Data is the central resource for science and business. They are produced in enormous quantities, for example by satellites, sensors and high-throughput technologies in the life sciences. Evaluating, managing, securing and making this data available requires a great effort from the IT infrastructure. Up to now, decentralized solutions have dominated. With the establishment of a National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI), the data stocks of science and research are now to be systematically indexed, sustainably secured and made accessible to the res