news 2021

From abdominal pain after eating certain foods to experimental hearing implants: in this overview, we present the most-read news items about research at KU Leuven in 2021. KU Leuven develops very potent antiviral against dengue 6 October Researchers have developed an inhibitor of the dengue virus. The antiviral molecule is effective against all known dengue variants and could be used for therapeutic and prevention purposes.

VUB biologists find missing link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning Biologists from VUB and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have demonstrated for the first time that it is not the local biodiversity in a specific place that is essential for maintaining a properly functioning ecosystem, but the biodiversity of the entire region.

A new study led by VUB biologist Thomas Merckx shows that because of the warmer urban environment in which they live, butterflies and moths display a longer flight season than those in the surrounding countryside. The experiments he and colleagues conducted demonstrate for the first time that urban populations are evolutionarily adapted to start their overwintering state later in the year.

Brussels and other cities as a living lab of ecological change and evolutionary adaptation The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has a new research specialisation in biology.

It's estimated that half of the adult population worldwide snores, with or without dangerous interruptions of breathing and related health risks such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, fatigue and concentration problems.

Coconut trees grow slowly and are difficult to clone. Scientists at KU Leuven and the Alliance multiplied seedlings faster and conserved coconut genetic resources for the long term. Coconut trees grow slowly and are difficult to clone. Scientists at KU Leuven and the Alliance have developed a method to multiply seedlings faster and conserve coconut genetic resources for the long term.

Guidelines published , to ensure quality and reproducibility of predictive methods An international group of scientists, including the ELIXIR Machine Learning Focus Group , developed a set of guidelines for better reporting standards for AI methods aiming to classify biomedical data. Examples of such methods are machine learning predictors that try to identify, based on genetic and other data, whether someone suffers from a particular rare disease or predictive methods that aim to identify the drug to which a cancer patient would respond best.

The regions that form the reading network in the brain mainly develop in the first two years of primary school. After that, the growth of these brain regions stabilises. This has been shown by a year-long study conducted by KU Leuven. Neurobiological differences in dyslexia are already present at pre-school age  The regions that form the reading network in the brain mainly develop in the first two years of primary school.

KU Leuven researchers expose some surprising similarities with animals that are 600 million years of evolution removed from us. Although octopuses have been wandering a different evolutionary path for around 600 million years, the formation of their brain cells shows some surprising similarities with that of humans.

IN BRIEF: University of Louvain (UCLouvain) scientists have identified destructured segments, still unexplored to date , in proteins necessary for the life of bacteria The result? These segments, shaped like soft spaghetti , are essential for the life of bacteria This discovery, published in the prestigious scientific , contributes to the search for new antibiotic treatments ARTICLE: Bacteria are increasingly resistant , especially to antibiotics, which is a major global health problem.

Mangrove forests were once dominant in the tropics, but they have disappeared at alarming rates around the world. Little is known, however, about the impact of this deforestation on the functional diversity and resilience of resident fauna. A team including Farid Dahdouh-Guebas of VUB's Ecology & Biodiversity Research Unit Researchers addressed this question and found that mangroves have among the lowest faunal diversity of any of the planet's ecosystems, making them especially vulnerable to environmental change.

In brief: A research team from University of Louvain (UCLouvain) has discovered a new bacterium in the human intestine.

An interdisciplinary team led by KU Leuven and Stanford has identified 76 overlapping genetic locations that shape both our face and our brain. What the researchers didn't find is evidence that this genetic overlap also predicts someone's behavioural-cognitive traits or risk of conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

Biologists give first insight into distribution of ecologically important mangroves in the West Indian Ocean Mangrove forests are of great ecological and socio-economic importance. They have a permanent place on the international climate agenda because of their extensive carbon storage. Researchers from the Department of Biology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel have now studied the genetic structure and diversity of mangrove forests in the Western Indian Ocean, a region where these aspects have been less studied until now.

Creating stem cells that can give rise to any cell type in the early embryo and its supporting structures, including the placenta: some call it 'the holy grail' of stem cell research. An international team of researchers offer new criteria to determine whether a mouse stem cell line has this much-wanted ability, known as totipotency.