Whether ginger bread men, cinnamon star cookies or Christmas flan – many Christmas goodies rely on that final pinch of cocoa to attain perfection. The brown powder’s well-balanced bitterness and full-bodied aroma does the trick. But what concentration of which substances is responsible for those wonderful “hmmm” moments? Food chemist Prof. Thomas Hofmann at the Technische Universität München (TUM) is looking into the answers. His motivation: Good cocoa should not be a product of chance.

Fluorescent molecules – i.e. substances which can be stimulated to emit light – are extremely valuable tools in biological research and medical diagnosis. Fluorescence can be used for instance to analyze the regulation and expression of genes, to locate proteins in cells and tissues, to follow metabolic pathways and to study the location and migration of cells. Of particular importance is the combination of fluorescence imaging with novel techniques that allow tomographic three-dimensional visualization of objects in living organisms. At the Helmholtz Zentrum München – German Research Center for Environmental Health together with the Technische Universität München an own institute is concerned with the development and refinement of such new technologies: the Institute for Biological and Medical Imaging headed by Professor Vasilis Ntziachristos.

Heart disease is among the most common causes of death in our society. An international research team headed by Professor Stefan Engelhardt, newly appointed director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the TU Muenchen (TUM), has now discovered a new approach to preventing or even reversing cardiac damage by regulating the activity of small RNA molecules known as microRNAs. The team’s work has now been published in the online edition of the renowned journal Nature (Nature, Advance Online Publication, November 30, 2008).