Welcome to the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn

The University of Bonn is expanding its start-up consulting services in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and the life sciences. With the new “U-Bo-LIFE-AI” Start-up Center.NRW, it will be enhancing entrepreneurial expertise and access to networks of investors and established companies in a systematic way. The University will be receiving roughly €1 million over the next three years from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and NRW’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Action and Energy to set up “U-Bo-LIFE-AI” and develop it further.

A new AI-based method reconstructs spatial information about where immune cells were originally located in an organ, even after these cells have been removed from the tissue and analyzed individually. To accomplish this, Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn use the transcriptome, i.e., the entirety of all messenger RNA transcripts produced by genes within a cell at a given time. The work has now been published in the journal Advanced Science and introduces the new MERLIN algorithm.

The powerhouse of the cells – known as mitochondria – appear to be able to influence the number of lipid droplets in the cell. A mechanism that is actually intended for a completely different purpose plays a central role in this. This is shown by a recent study by the University of Bonn and University Hospital Bonn and the University of Freiburg. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Cell Biology.

The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) can cause certain types of cancer or autoimmune diseases, but how the body controls this common viral infection is largely unknown. Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn have now identified genetic and non-genetic factors that help the body fight EBV. To do this, they evaluated genome sequencing data, which is actually intended for characterizing the human genome, in a new way. Using the new technique, they were able to estimate the amount of EBV in the blood and find correlations in large health data sets – for example, an increased viral load in people with HIV infections, but also in smokers. There were also indications of new genes that play key roles in EBV immunity. Their findings have now been published in the renowned journal Nature.