Press releases

Handaxes from the period of the first human migration out of Africa, eggshells of extinct ostriches, and a unique collection of rock engravings. An international team led by the Institute of Archaeology of the CAS in Prague has successfully completed its third excavation season in Oman. Thanks to the unique findings, the researchers will be contributing, among other things, to the reconstruction of the climate and history of the world’s largest sand desert.

For the sixth year in a row, the HiLASE and ELI Beamlines laser centres are offering twelve selected students the opportunity to experience working with real scientific teams in state-of-the-art laboratories during the final round of the Talent Academy project. And right now, high school students can start signing up for the first online round for this year’s “Talentovka“. Some of them will meet as finalists in the centres in Dolní Břežany in September. Registration will be open until June 23, 2023 at the www.talentovka.cz website.

Scientists from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague have deciphered the structure of the protein methyltransferase from the monkeypox virus. It is with the help of this protein that the virus escapes human immunity and causes the monkeypox disease. Based on this discovery, they have prepared substances that can block the function of methyltransferase. The results of this research may constitute the first step towards creating a completely new group of antivirals. This applies not only to monkeypox, but also to diseases caused by other viruses, including COVID-19 induced by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

Proteins do not usually form from junk DNA – but if they do and they take hold, they become part of the cell’s protein make-up. They are called de novo proteins because they are practically created out of nothing, anew, and not much is known about them. In a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers from BIOCEV and their German colleagues described a large set of these proteins, helping unravel the otherwise hard-to-decipher properties of the mystery proteins.

A recent study led by researchers from the University of Antwerp, the Institute of Vertebrate Biology (IVB) of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro screened 1225 rodents and shrews in Tanzania for mammarenavirus RNA, revealing mammarenaviruses might be even more specific than usually thought. The researchers associate taxa below the species level rather than rodent species with certain mammarenaviruses. Host genetic structure may thus be crucial to understand in which rodent reservoirs in which geographic regions we can expect to find them.

Research in languages other than English is critically important for biodiversity conservation and is shockingly under-utilised internationally, according to an international research team.

An international team of scientists led by Tomáš Pluskal from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) has introduced a new generation of software enabling scientists to analyse large volumes of data from mass spectrometry, a technique that separates chemicals by their weights. The open-source project MZmine provides a new window into the chemical space that surrounds us and lives within. The latest advances in MZmine 3 are now published in a Nature Biotechnology paper.

An international team of parasitologists and medicinal chemists from the BIOCEV Centre has developed and successfully tested a substance against a deadly parasite. Naegleria fowleri attacks the human brain and despite all modern treatments, 97% of cases end fatally. The new substance has been shown to cure the infection in mice. Along with it, scientists have discovered other anti-parasitic agents that could be used against malaria or sleeping sickness in the future.

Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB Prague) and Gilead Sciences announced today that the Gilead Sciences Research Centre (GSRC) at IOCB Prague has been extended to address areas of high unmet medical need. Gilead will provide financial support and collaborate on several projects at IOCB across virology, inflammation, and oncology.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket - this old saying is also followed by cuckoos. This was discovered by a team of scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Biology of the CAS, the Faculty of Science of the University of South Bohemia, and the University of Essex. The results of more than 15 years of research showed that when multiple cuckoo eggs were found in a great reed warbler nest, they always came from different females.