Max Planck scientists develop new strategy to play major role in research on human diseasesCells may not have a mouth, but they still need to ingest substances from the external environment. If this process - known as endocytosis - is affected, it can lead to infectious diseases or cardio-vascular diseases, cancer, Huntington?s and diabetes. In cooperation with the Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing (ZIH) at the Dresden University of Technology, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics therefore applied a new strategy to identify and characterize genes involved in endocytosis. For that a combination of high-resolution microscopy and quantitative image analysis enabled the scientists to investigate the effects of a large number of genes. From their findings the scientists also hope to derive significant information about how infections could be prevented and diseases treated in future. (Nature, February 28, 2010, advance online publication)Cell