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From mammalian cells to microbes, cells need to quickly respond to changes in nutrient availability. Since cellular metabolism is one of the first layers of response to nutrient starvation, the Weis and Sauer groups joined efforts to characterize the immediate metabolic response after glucose starvation in yeast cells. In their recent “PNAS” paper, they demonstrate that β-oxidation and bulk autophagy act in parallel to ensure energy maintenance.  

A Nature Reviews Microbiology article highlights the work of Tara Oceans — a multi-disciplinary project studying ocean microbial life. In the review, Prof. Sunagawa, together with other members of the project, discusses how insights and data from the past 10 years of work has advanced our understanding of the ocean ecosystem at planetary scale.

Cytomegalovirus infection induces a CD8 T cell response with large numbers of specific cells accumulating in peripheral tissues, a process termed ‘memory inflation’. A recent ‘Nature Communications’ paper by the Oxenius group (IMB) shows that Tcf1⁺ CD8 T cells are critical in maintaining the inflationary T cell pool.

As the shutdown began and the lights went out in the ETH labs a new consortium crystalized around the idea of developing a vaccine. With special permission from the ETH Executive Board to continue wet-lab research the project quickly got moving and testing of the first vaccine candidates is now underway.