Researchers discover a new family of key mitochondrial proteins for the function and viability of the brain Blog Post

A team headed by Eduardo Soriano at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) –based in the Barcelona Science Park– has published a study in Nature Communications describing a new family of six genes whose function regulates the movement and position of mitochondria in neurons. Many neurological conditions, including Parkinson’s and various types of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, are caused by alterations of genes that control mitochondrial transport, a process that provides the energy required for cell function.

Discovering novel cellular roles of Aurora A Blog Post

A team headed by ICREA researcher Patrick Aloy at IRB Barcelona has developed, in collaboration with Center for Genomic RegulationRG, a computational strategy to identify new molecules regulated through phosphorylation by Aurora A. This work has been published in EMBO reports, a prestigious journal that forms part of the Nature Publishing Group ()

New Light Technique Developed to Observe Real-Time Cellular Activity on a Nanometric Scale Blog Post

In any biological process, multiple interactions occurring at the molecular level make it impossible to observe live cells in real time, because light microscopes cannot focus light at scales of less than 350 nanometres. New breakthroughs in nanophotonics, however, will shortly enable us to visualise molecular processes at an optical resolution of ten nanometres, according to researcher María García-Parajo, head of the at the Catalonia Institute for Bioengineering (IBEC), located at the PCB. This and other insights appear in an article entitled “Optical antennas focus in on biology”, published in the online edition of the journal Nature Photonics. (doi:10.1038/nphoton.2008.37).