Markus Moeller

The lipocalin protein family is a structurally conserved group of proteins with a variety of biological functions defined by their ability to bind small molecule ligands and interact with partner proteins. One member of this family is siderocalin, a protein found in mammals. Its role is discussed in inflammatory processes, iron trafficking, protection against bacterial infections and oxidative stress, cell migration, induction of apoptosis, and cancer. Though it seems to be involved in numerous essential pathways, the exact mechanisms are often not fully understood...

Background: Thyroid hormones regulate cardiac functions mainly through direct actions in the heart and by binding to the thyroid hormone receptor (TR) isoforms α1 and β. While the role of the most abundantly expressed isoform, TRα1, is widely studied and well characterized, the role of TRβ in regulating heart functions is still poorly understood, primarily due to the accompanying elevation of circulating thyroid hormone in TRβ knockout mice (TRβ-KO). However, their hyperthyroidism is ameliorated at thermoneutrality, which allows studying the role of TRβ without this confounding factor...

The accurate positioning of the femoral tunnel is crucial for the success of anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction. Malpositioning of the tunnel is believed to be one of the most important reasons for graft failure. While use of anatomic landmarks and industry-supplied aiming devices aid the surgeon in placing the drill pin in the correct position, fluoroscopic imaging is an additional tool used intraoperatively to verify pin placement. While interpretation of fluoroscopic imaging is frequently based on eyeball measurement, a more accurate analysis of a lateral image uses the quadrant method by Bernard-Hertel...

Extraintestinal manifestations, e.g. of the skin, joints or liver, are frequently found in Crohn's disease. We report about a 26-year-old female patient with longstanding Crohn's disease, who was admitted to our hospital with suspicion of an acute attack with suggestive symptoms and increased significantly inflammatory parameters. Shortly before, symptomatic COVID-19 disease (SARS-CoV-2 variant omicron) had been made. Comprehensive endoscopic and imaging diagnostics ruled out active Crohn's disease. However, inflammatory thickening of the aortic arch was seen, and a diagnosis of Takayasu arteritis (type II b) was made...

BACKGROUND: Good data quality is essential when rare disease registries are used as a data source for pharmacovigilance studies. This study investigated data quality of the Swiss cystic fibrosis (CF) registry in the frame of a European Cystic Fibrosis Society Patient Registry (ECFSPR) project aiming to implement measures to increase data reliability for registry-based research. METHODS: All 20 pediatric and adult Swiss CF centers participated in a data quality audit between 2018 and 2020, and in a re-audit in 2022...

BACKGROUND: In 2020, school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic forced students all over the world to promptly alter their learning routines from in-person to distance learning. However, so far, only a limited number of studies from a few countries investigated whether school closures affected students' performance within intelligent tutoring system-such as intelligent tutoring systems. METHOD: In this study, we investigated the effect of school closures in Austria by evaluating data (n = 168 students) derived from an intelligent tutoring system for learning mathematics, which students used before and during the first period of school closures...

A growing number of studies seek to evaluate the impact of school closures during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While most studies reported severe learning losses in students, some studies found positive effects of school closures on academic performance. However, it is still unclear which factors contribute to the differential effects observed in these studies. In this article, we examine the impact of assignment strategies for problem sets on the academic performance of students (n ≈ 16,000 from grades 4-10 who calculated ≈ 170,000 problem sets) in an online learning environment for mathematics, during the first and second period of pandemic-related school closures in Germany...

Spaceflight and its associated stressors, such as microgravity, radiation exposure, confinement, circadian derailment and disruptive workloads represent an unprecedented type of exposome that is entirely novel from an evolutionary stand point. Within this perspective, we aimed to review the effects of prolonged spaceflight on immune-neuroendocrine systems, brain and brain-gut axis, cardiovascular system and musculoskeletal apparatus, highlighting in particular the similarities with an accelerated aging process...

Previous studies have demonstrated that environmental and temporal factors may affect the incidence of acute type A aortic dissection (ATAAD). Here, we aimed to investigate the hypothesis that national holidays and weekends influence the incidence of surgery for ATAAD. For the period 1st of January 2005 until 31st of December 2019, we investigated a hypothesised effect of (country-specific) national holidays and weekends on the frequency of 2995 surgical repairs for ATAAD at 10 Nordic cities included in the Nordic Consortium for Acute Type A Aortic Dissection (NORCAAD) collaboration...

Membrane proteins are currently investigated after detergent extraction from native cellular membranes and reconstitution into artificial liposomes or nanodiscs, thereby removing them from their physiological environment. However, to truly understand the biophysical properties of membrane proteins in a physiological environment, they must be investigated within living cells. Here, we used a spin-labeled nanobody to interrogate the conformational cycle of the ABC transporter MsbA by double electron-electron resonance...

The Theory of Event Coding (TEC) has influenced research on action and perception across the past two decades. It integrates several seminal empirical phenomena and it has continued to stimulate novel experimental approaches on the representational foundations of action control and perceptual experience. Yet, many of the most notable results surrounding TEC originate from an era of psychological research that relied on rather small sample sizes as judged by today's standards. This state hampers future research aiming to build on previous phenomena...

BACKGROUND: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic schools all over the world were closed and thereby students had to be instructed from distance. Consequently, the use of online learning environments for online distance learning increased massively. However, the perseverance of using online learning environments during and after school closures remains to be investigated. METHOD: We examined German students' (n ≈ 300,000 students; ≈ 18 million computed problem sets) engagement in an online learning environment for mathematics by means of survival analysis...

As coral reef communities change and reorganise in response to increasing disturbances, there is a growing need for understanding species regimes and their contribution to ecosystem processes. Using a case study on coral reefs at the epicentre of tropical marine biodiversity (North Sulawesi, Indonesia), we explored how application of different biodiversity approaches (i.e., use of major taxonomic categories, high taxonomic resolution categories and trait-based approaches) affects the detection of distinct fish and benthic communities...

We present the first investigation of excited state dynamics by resonant Auger-Meitner spectroscopy (also known as resonant Auger spectroscopy) using the nucleobase thymine as an example. Thymine is photoexcited in the UV and probed with X-ray photon energies at and below the oxygen K-edge. After initial photoexcitation to a ππ* excited state, thymine is known to undergo internal conversion to an nπ* excited state with a strong resonance at the oxygen K-edge, red-shifted from the ground state π* resonances of thymine (see our previous study Wolf, et al...

Genomic profiling is a suitable tool for variety authentication and has applications in both operational quality and regulatory raw material control. It can be used to differentiate species or varieties and to identify admixtures as well as field contaminants. To establish a molecular profile, reliable and very accurate sequence data are required. Due to the influence of the pollinator plant, nuclear genome-based authentication is in most cases not suitable for a direct application on the fruit. Sequences must be used which come exclusively from the localized mother plant...

Targeted protein degradation (TPD) and proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs) have arisen as powerful therapeutic modalities for degrading specific proteins in a proteasome-dependent manner. However, a major limitation of TPD is the lack of E3 ligase recruiters. Recently, we discovered the natural product nimbolide as a covalent recruiter for the E3 ligase RNF114. Here, we show the broader utility of nimbolide as an E3 ligase recruiter for TPD applications. We demonstrate that a PROTAC linking nimbolide to the kinase and BCR-ABL fusion oncogene inhibitor dasatinib, BT1, selectively degrades BCR-ABL over c-ABL in leukemia cancer cells, compared to previously reported cereblon or VHL-recruiting BCR-ABL degraders that show opposite selectivity or, in some cases, inactivity...

Obesity and relative leucocyte telomere length (RTL) are both linked to accelerated aging and premature mortality. We examined if nuchal subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) thickness, a surrogate marker of central trunk-weighted obesity, is an independent predictor of RTL that provides information beyond BMI, metabolic and inflammatory markers. RTL and nuchal SAT thickness were determined in 362 participants of the STYJOBS/EDECTA study (STYrian Juvenile Obesity Study, Early DEteCTion of atherosclerosis), which included overweight individuals and matched eutrophic controls...

PURPOSE: This article reports on the long-term impact of radiotherapy adapted to stage, histology, and previous resection in a large cohort of patients with intestinal lymphoma (iL) treated with definitive or adjuvant curative-intent radiation therapy (RT) ± chemotherapy (CHOP, MCP, or COP). PATIENTS AND METHODS: In two consecutive prospective study designs, 134 patients with indolent (stage IE-IIE) or aggressive (stage IE-IVE) iL were referred to 61 radiotherapeutic institutions between 1992 and 2003...

The cellular origins of glomerulosclerosis involve activation of parietal epithelial cells (PECs) and progressive podocyte depletion. While mammalian target of rapamycin-mediated (mTOR-mediated) podocyte hypertrophy is recognized as an important signaling pathway in the context of glomerular disease, the role of podocyte hypertrophy as a compensatory mechanism preventing PEC activation and glomerulosclerosis remains poorly understood. In this study, we show that glomerular mTOR and PEC activation-related genes were both upregulated and intercorrelated in biopsies from patients with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and diabetic nephropathy, suggesting both compensatory and pathological roles...

Background Overweight and obese individuals have a reduced life expectancy due to cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes, stroke and cancer. Systemic inflammation and premature telomere shortening have been discussed as potential mechanisms linking these conditions. We investigated the relation of subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) distribution to leukocyte relative telomere length (RTL). Methods We measured RTL in 375 participants of the observational STYJOBS/EDECTA cohort (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00482924) using a qPCR based method...