A study published in Nature Microbiology reveals the great advantage of wastewater monitoring as being rapid, unbiased and cost-effective: the detection of genomic variants of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater offers an early alert and can be based on fewer samples as compared to clinical samples. The bioinformatics tool developed by the group of Niko Beerenwinkel in collaboration with Eawag and EPFL and the group of Tanja Stadler identifies genomic signatures of coronavirus mutations in wastewater.

Congratulations to Barbara Treutlein, head of the Quantitative Developmental Biology Lab at D-BSSE, on being elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). The growing EMBO network promotes excellence in life sciences and shapes their direction in research, fosters the careers of young scientists and strengthens the research communities in Europe and beyond. In 2019, Barbara received the EMBO Young Investigator Award.

One of the main receptors in human cell membranes, so-called G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), co-assemble with the lipid cholesterol to fulfil major tasks in signaling, i.e. transducing information between the cell exterior and the cell interior. Using atomic force microscopy, researchers from the Biophysics group of Daniel Müller in collaboration with colleagues from the US and Finland now report an unexpected temperature dependency of GPCR on the cholesterol analogue.

Mathematician and biostatistician Tanja Stadler receives this year’s Rössler Prize for her scientific achievements. Worth 200,000 Swiss francs, it is ETH Zurich’s most generous research award.

The novel scientific platform DeepSARS, developed by the Systems Immunology group led by Sai Reddy, could support viral testing and tracking for future pandemics while performing both tasks simultaneously. This allows for earlier detection of emerging variants and profiling mutations at the population level, a recent study in BMC Genomics shows.

Registration is now open for the ETH Public Tour to the Quantitative Developmental Biology lab led by Barbara Treutlein, which takes place on 21 June, 6:15PM, at D-BSSE in Basel. The group will report on advances in stem cell research and the use of human organoids in understanding diseases and developing personalised therapies (event in German).

Florian Schmidt from Randall Platt’s lab and Julia Boos from the group of Andreas Hierlemann receive the ETH medal for their excellent doctoral theses on advancing the RNA-based transcriptional recording technology and embryotoxicity tests using microfluidic devices, respectively. David Dreifuss, student at the Department of Mathematics co-supervised by Niko Beerenwinkel, is honoured for his excellent Master’s thesis on SARS-CoV-2 variant monitoring in wastewater. Big congrats!

The May issue of Proceedings of the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is devoted to systems and synthetic biology, the uniting research fields of all groups at the D-BSSE. Guest editors Mustafa Khammash and Jörg Stelling summarise advances and prospects in both fields, and invite leading experts to provide a quantitative and analytical perspective of the state-of-the-art developments.

Tanja Stadler, former head of the Swiss COVID19 Science Task Force and leader of the Computational Evolution group at D-BSSE, responds to questions on the pandemic, the lessons learned, the impact on her own research and the role of the D-BSSE in the pandemic.