The early recognition of sepsis remains a key challenge in healthcare. Since 2018, Karsten Borgwardt from D-BSSE and Adrian Egli from the University Hospital Basel have coordinated the Personalised Swiss Sepsis Study, a multidisciplinary consortium that tries to predict the onset of sepsis through machine learning on the vast volume of data from intensive care units and clinical laboratories. The consortium’s research and infrastructure is now described on a one-stop platform.

Cells and other biological systems often react to disturbances and stimuli from their surroundings in a way that they keep up a desirable steady state. This so called robust perfect adaptation is resilient to network and parameter perturbations. In Cell Systems, control theorist Mustafa Khammash elaborates on the constraints that regulating networks need to satisfy in order to achieve robust perfect adaptation in natural and synthetic biological systems.

Is natural always good and artificial always bad? ETH Globe talked to psychologist Angela Bearth and biotechnologist Sven Panke (D-BSSE) about science, scepticism, misunderstandings and how language influences the way we think.

As the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force is re-organising in summer 2021, Tanja Stadler agreed to lead this committee of experts. Tanja, a renowned mathematician specialised in the evolution of viruses and the monitoring of their spread, has been a task force member from the very beginning; since February 2021, she leads the Expert Group for Data and Modelling.

Using genomic sequencing and phylodynamic analysis, a research team led by the University of Basel and ETH Zurich reports on the spread of the novel SARS-​CoV-2 variant 20A.EU1originating from Spain thatgot distributed widely across Europe in summer 2020. The study was now published by Nature.

D-BSSE researchers around Martin Fussenegger have developed a gene switch that can be operated with the green LED light emitted by commercial smartwatches. This revolutionary approach could be used to treat diabetes in the future.

On 1 June, the first public tour took place around the new teaching and research premises for D-BSSE on the Schällemätteli-campus in Basel. The pentagon-shaped building is currently under construction and will have its technical and operational assessment in November 2021. It offers offices, lab and communication spaces for up to 600 researchers, students and staff.

On 1 June, the D-​BSSE eSymposium dedicated to "Predicting clinical phenotypes with machine learning" took place. Backed by the success and international interest in this virtual symposium, we are delighted to share with you the recorded video of this conference. Feel free to share it with your colleagues and stay wired, the next D-​BSSE eSymposium will be announced soon!

The global non-profit partnership CARB-X (Combating Antibiotic- Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator) is supporting the D-BSSE spin-off BioVersys with an award of up to $15.34 Million to further develop pyrrolocytosines, a novel class of broad-spectrum antibiotics targeting specific drug-resistant bacteria.