Some sequences in the genome cause genes to be switched on or off. Until now, each of these gene switches, or so-called enhancers, was thought to have its own place on the DNA. Different enhancers are therefore separated from each other, even if they control the same gene, and switch it on in different parts of the body. A recent study from the University of Bonn and the LMU Munich challenges this idea. The findings are also important because gene switches are thought to play a central role in evolution. The study has been published in the journal Science Advances.

The Hausdorff Center for Mathematics (HCM) at the University of Bonn is letting schoolchildren get their first glimpse of the world of research. It recently began inviting young people with an interest in and gift for mathematics to meet there every Monday afternoon under the expert eye of Regula Krapf and Henning Heller to spend time researching together, focusing on questions of elementary mathematics and mathematics education. The group’s findings are expected to feed into academic publications and show the schoolchildren first-hand how mathematical research works in real life. 

The ATLAS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) reported the first observation of top quarks in collisions between lead ions in a talk held at CERN last week. Members of the research group of Prof. Dr. Matthias Schott from the Physikalisches Institut at the University of Bonn have been contributing to this new study. The observation of top-quark pairs represents a significant step forward in heavy-ion collision physics, paving the way for new measurements of the quark–gluon plasma that is created in these collisions and delivering fresh insights into the nature of the strong force that binds protons, neutrons and other composite particles together. 

Rainforest protection is not only good for biodiversity and the climate – it also noticeably improves the health of humans who live in the corresponding regions. This is the conclusion drawn by a current study by the University of Bonn and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil. In this, the researchers show that measures to combat slash-and-burn techniques significantly reduce the concentration of particulate matter in the air. The number of hospital stays and deaths due to respiratory diseases thus also decreases. The results have been published now in the journal Nature Communications, Earth & Environment.