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12 August 2025

Welcome: Tim Coorens

EMBL-EBI’s newest Research Group Leader is investigating how somatic mutations reveal the hidden histories of human cells.

PEOPLE & PERSPECTIVES

2025

people-perspectivesperspectives

8 January 2025 A female scientist stands beside a screen, talking to a group of people about her research.

New frontiers in childhood cancer research

In our final 12th ‘moment of philanthropy’, we shine a light on how a donation from the Athenaeum Dietrich Götze Stiftung fuels impactful EMBL research that aims to better understand treatment-resistant childhood leukaemia.

CONNECTIONS

2025

connections

8 October 2024 Illustration showing a mitochondrion covered with many ribosomes on the left, and a zoom in to the molecular structure of a ribosome facing a membrane with its smaller subunit on the right.

What we can learn from hungry yeast cells

Scientists at EMBL Heidelberg and University of Virginia revealed a new cellular response to starvation: ribosomes attach to the mitochondrial outer membrane in a very unusual way, via their small subunit. The finding made in yeast might provide insights into how cancer cells survive the harsh…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2024

science-technology

19 June 2024 In the centre: green angular origami-like shapes stacked on top of each other. Small orange rectangles akin to adhesive tape are placed where the green shapes connect with each other. In the background: a circle in the middle and cancer cells on the left and right.

‘Invisible’ protein keeps cancer at bay

EMBL Hamburg scientists and collaborators discovered a new molecular mechanism in which an unstructured protein disables one of the main cancer-promoting proteins by gluing them into an elongated stack. Data from human patient samples support the role of this mechanism in prostate cancer…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2024

science-technology

22 March 2023 Artistic representation that features a long, winding helix joining together a doughnut-figure to a small shaggy ball to indicate the connections long-read sequencing can make about DNA mutations.

The ‘long read’ for cancer

Using Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing, EMBL scientists sequenced a primary childhood brain tumour known as a medulloblastoma, uncovering a novel complex mutation pattern.

2023

science

22 December 2021 Scientific illustrations of MEG3, a very large RNA involved in cell proliferation. IAB and EMBL logos are located in the center of the illustration.

EMBL-IAB collaboration on the rise

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between EMBL and the Institute for Advanced Biosciences (IAB) a year ago has already catalysed new grants for joint research projects related to cancer and infection biology, thereby deepening collaborative activities.

CONNECTIONSLAB MATTERS

2021

connectionslab-matters

24 November 2020 Red loops on a black background are dotted with bright red flecks and pale blue ovals as part of a confocal microscope image of bone marrow cells.

A loopy baseline

Studying cancers means also knowing what healthy cells look like. In this case, mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) from healthy bone marrow are a bit ‘loopy’.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

18 August 2020 Three cells, each looking like a face.

Three little ghosts

Despite their ghostly appearance, these are very real cell nuclei infected with Influenza A virus – the only influenza virus known to cause pandemics.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2020

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

1 April 2020

Understanding brain tumours in children

The causes of 40 percent of all cases of certain medulloblastoma – dangerous brain tumours affecting children – are hereditary. These are the findings of a recent genetic analysis carried out by scientists from EMBL and numerous colleagues around the world.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2020

sciencescience-technology

5 February 2020

Protecting data in the cloud

Cloud computing offers unprecedented opportunities for global-scale research collaborations. It also presents a unique set of challenges in terms of data protection and the ethics of data sharing.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2020

sciencescience-technology

5 February 2020

Cancer mutations occur decades before diagnosis

Researchers at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Francis Crick Institute have analysed the whole genomes of over 2600 tumours from 38 different cancer types to determine the chronology of genomic changes during cancer development.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2020

sciencescience-technology

5 February 2020

Chromothripsis in human cancer

Researchers at Harvard Medical School and EMBL-EBI have carried out the largest analysis across cancer types of the newly discovered mutational phenomenon chromothripsis.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2020

sciencescience-technology

31 December 2019

Tumour takeover

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. It is so deadly because tumours often return after successful cancer treatment. This recurrence is caused by individual dormant cancer cells remaining inside the breast. These cells can develop into active cancer cells…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

21 May 2019

From fruit flies to cancer treatment

This image – resembling a network of rivers and canals – actually shows the tracheal tip cell of a fruit fly. Fruit flies are heavily used in research and they are a common model organism in developmental biology. Researchers at EMBL use the larvae of fruit flies to study tracheal cell…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2019

picture-of-the-weekscience-technology

25 September 2013

Without a trace

Migrating cells, it seems, cover their tracks not for fear of being followed, but to keep moving forward. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have now shown that cells in a zebrafish embryo determine which direction they move in by effectively…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2013

sciencescience-technology

11 August 2013

From fireman to arsonist

Like a fireman who becomes an arsonist, a protein that prevents cells becoming cancerous can also cause tumours, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, have discovered. The finding, published today in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, stems…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2013

sciencescience-technology

19 January 2012 Artist's impression of a chromosome exploding

Rigged to explode?

An inherited mutation in a gene known as the guardian of the genome is likely the link between exploding chromosomes and some particularly aggressive types of cancer, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) and the University…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2012

sciencescience-technology

12 January 2012

Evolution by ‘copy-paste’

A team of geneticists and computational biologists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Cancer Research UK reveal how an ancient mechanism is involved in gene control and continues to drive genome…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2012

sciencescience-technology

13 September 2009 In normal skin (left), the stem cells at the base, shown in green, differentiate into skin cells, shown in red. In mice whose skin has neither C/EBPα nor C/EBPβ (middle), this differentiation is blocked: green-labeled stem cells appear in upper layers of skin, and there are no differentiated skin cells (no red staining). This also happens at the initial stages of basal cell carcinomas. In skin where C/EBPα is present but has lost its capacity to interact with E2F, a molecule that regulates the cell cycle (right), skin cells start differentiating abnormally, before they have properly exited the stem cell ‘program’ (yellow/orange). This is similar to what is observed in the initial stages of squamous cell carcinomas, a more aggressive and invasive skin tumour.

How stem cells make skin

Stem cells have a unique ability: when they divide, they can either give rise to more stem cells, or to a variety of specialised cell types. In both mice and humans, a layer of cells at the base of the skin contains stem cells that can develop into the specialised cells in the layers above.…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2009

sciencescience-technology

8 April 2008

An unexpected way to cause leukaemia

Leukaemia – cancer of blood or bone marrow – is caused by mutations that allow defective blood cells to accumulate and displace healthy blood. To devise effective therapies it is crucial to know which mutations cause leukaemia and which cell type gives rise to leukaemic cells. Researchers from…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2008

sciencescience-technology

21 October 2007

Scientists uncover how hormones achieve their effects

New insights into the cellular signal chain through which pheromones stimulate mating in yeast have been gained by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL]. Similar signal chains are found in humans, where they are involved in many important processes such as the…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2007

sciencescience-technology

12 February 2007

A signal that protects the liver from hepatitis and cancer

Liver cancer is one of the deadliest cancers worldwide; every year sees more than 400,000 new cases, and most of the victims die in less than one year. Despite extensive research, the underlying molecular mechanisms of the disease are poorly understood. A new study by researchers from the Mouse…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2007

sciencescience-technology

3 September 2006

Lost in the labyrinth

Blood cells have limited lifespans, which means that they must be continually replaced by calling up reserves and turning these into the blood cell types needed by the body. Claus Nerlov and his colleagues at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) unit in Monterotondo, Italy, in…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2006

sciencescience-technology

25 August 2006

A switch between life and death

Cells in an embryo divide at an amazing rate to build a whole body, but this growth needs to be controlled. Otherwise the result may be defects in embryonic development or cancer in adults. Controlling growth requires that some cells divide while others die; their fates are determined by signals…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2006

sciencescience-technology

4 September 2005

A new link between stem cells and tumors

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the Institute of Biomedical Research of the Parc Científic de Barcelona (IRB-PCB) have now added key evidence to claims that some types of cancer originate with defects in stem cells. The study, reported this week in…

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

2005

sciencescience-technology

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