All posts by : Karin Janz

From grasping your cup of coffee to cycling through busy traffic, everyday actions require precise and well-coordinated movements. Yet human movement is inherently variable. Because of neuromotor noise, we can never reproduce a movement exactly the same way twice (Faisal et al., 2008). Under certain conditions — such as fatigue or motor disorders — this movement variance increases substantially.

In our research, we investigate the functional mechanisms and strategies that allow humans to handle movement variance. To experimentally test these mechanisms, we developed a virtual reality (VR) throwing task. This experimental setup enables us to assess participants’ strategies while systematically manipulating movement variance. In practical terms, we can simulate conditions of increased motor variance (i.e., making participants‘ throws less precise) and systematically observe how they adapt their movement strategies.

Funding from the Berne University Research Foundation enabled us to purchase a new head-mounted display, controllers, and base stations for motion tracking, which are in use for our current series of VR experiments (see pictures).

Dr. Stephan Zahno

Institute of Sport Science
Movement Science Department

http://www.ispw.unibe.ch

Research on nutrient absorption, intestinal development, and immune function often depends on animal experimentation, making the ethical implications of animal sacrifice a significant concern, especially in those scenarios where induced animal suffering is required to mimic a specific pathological or inflammatory status. The development of cell culture models like organoids grown from stem cells in vitro offers an alternative platform for studying the (patho)-physiology of given diseases.

To ensure precision, reproducibility, and data integrity, it is essential to accurately quantify the number of cultivated cells (intestinal epithelial cells and immune cells). Up to now, we have relied on manual cell counting, a time-consuming and error-prone method that lacks digital traceability. This not only impacts efficiency but also introduces variability in results. With the financial support kindly provided by the UniBern Forschungsstiftung we could acquire an automated cell counting system. This instrument significantly streamlines workflows, reduces human error, and ensures consistent, high-quality data. Moreover, by minimizing handling time, the automatic cell counter improves cell viability, which is critical for downstream analyses.

Intestinal tissues from different species (e.g., swine, rabbit, horse) were successfully cultured and challenged with different inflammatory agents at concomitantly different substrate availability. Our research group aims at establishing a multi-species organoid repository, including healthy and diseased/inflamed tissues, particularly derived from different sections of the intestinal tract. Thus, we can study the persistence of inflammatory phenotypes, and the regulatory pathways involved in maintaining homeostasis and in shaping the mucosal immune response to compounds that may (or may not) promote tissue regeneration and health at a single-organoid level. We evaluate how nutrients, bioactive compounds and environmental pollutants are absorbed, metabolized, and transported within tissues. In the long-term, this platform has the potential to advance the development of more precise, species-specific therapies and nutritional interventions.

Dr. Dora Bordoni
Prof. Dr. Josef Gross

Veterinary Physiology, Vetsuisse Faculty

With support from the UniBern Forschungsstiftung, we acquired a luminescence plate reader, enabling the systematic optimisation and application of our human cell-free translation platform. This platform allows rapid, quantitative measurements of translation and has become a core technology in our laboratory.

Using this system, we performed a small-molecule screening that led to the identification of NT-2, a previously uncharacterised Fusarium-derived mycotoxin, as a potent and highly specific inhibitor of human ribosomes. Our study revealed an acute translation inhibition with a ribosome-preservation pathway not previously described for eukaryotic systems¹.

With the funding received from the Berne University Research Foundation, we acquired the gentleMACS™ Octo Dissociator with Heaters (Miltenyi Biotec), a state-of-the-art, high-performance system that combines automated mechanical and enzymatic tissue dissociation. This instrument has significantly enhanced our ability to isolate various cell types and nuclei from complex tissues with high reproducibility and efficiency. It has been instrumental in advancing our cardiac remodeling research and supports the development of innovative therapeutic strategies.

Using the gentleMACS technology, we have optimized dissociation protocols for:

• T cells from spleen, enabling their integration into experimental models of cardiac remodeling
• Cardiomyocytes and non-cardiomyocytes from the heart, crucial for studying atrial and ventricular remodeling and understanding disease mechanisms
• Isolation of intact nuclei, allowing detailed transcriptomic analyses of fibrotic and non-fibrotic cardiac regions for downstream applications

In combination with magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS), we can select and enrich specific cell populations with high purity. These enriched cells and nuclei can then be used for cell culture experiments or directly processed for single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), enabling us to explore transcriptomic profiles at single-cell resolution and gain detailed insights into the cellular mechanisms driving atrial fibrillation, cardiac fibrosis, and remodeling.

The acquisition of this instrument has been crucial for improving sample quality, reducing processing times, and expanding our experimental capabilities, particularly in the context of precision medicine strategies for cardiac remodeling.