Research
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Grigory Genikhovich: Evolution of axial patterning mechanisms
I am interested in understanding how molecular mechanisms regulating animal body axes evolved. To find this out, I am using an excellent experimental model, the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. It belongs to Cnidaria, a phylum consisting of morphologically simply organized diploblastic organisms, which occupies a crucial phylogenetic position as a sister group to all Bilateria (triploblastic animals with anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral body axes). more
Grigory ginokhovich -
Thomas Hummel: Development and Evolution of Neural Circuit
All animals rely on selective information from the external world received by highly specialized sensory neurons. Research at the Department of Neurobiology is dedicated to the understanding of the Sensory System development and function using various arthropod model organisms.
Johann Markovitsch , Ameya Kasture, Thomas Hummel -
Florian Raible: Neuronal development, regenerative plasticity and biomaterials
Stem cells are central for both the development of organisms and their ability to replace lost tissues. Our laboratory bristleworms grow by adding new segments at their posterior ends using a stem cell zone. But what happens if the zone is cut off? Almost 60 years ago, pioneering work by Dietrich Hofmann showed using histology that only hours after such amputations, cells adjacent to the wound undergo “re-embryonisation”, exhibiting enlarged nuclei and nucleoli. This suggested a process modern stem cell biology refers to as “dedifferentiation”.
Paul Knabl -
Roger Revilla-i-Domingo: Stem cells, early animal evolution and deep-sea sponge ecology
Our lab is interested in unravelling and understanding the gene regulatory networks that control stem cell functions in sponges. Our work mainly capitalizes on the establishment of a novel sponge regeneration system, which allows us to interrogate stem cell self-renewal and differentiation processes. We are implementing a number of single-cell transcriptomic and genomic techniques, as well as advanced computational methods, to infer gene regulatory interactions. Our research addresses fundamental questions in three main areas:
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Oleg Simakov: Evolution of Metazoan Genome Architecture
We study major transitions in metazoan evolution from the perspective of the underlying genomic changes. Over the past years, we have contributed to the broader sampling of metazoan genomes, revealing ancestral metazoan and bilaterian genomic architectures and their diversification patterns. While we can trace back many gene families to the ancient metazoan ancestor, we also find many of them linked at both micro- (local gene cluster) and macro-syntenic (chromosomal) levels. The functional significance of most of those linkages during development is unknown.
Hannah Schmidbaur -
Kristin Teßmar-Raible: Mechanisms of time and light effects on animals
In order to uncover fundamental principles, such as the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying lunar timing systems, research requires model systems that are well breedable in the lab and amenable to genetic functional tools. As no prominent, reproducible circalunar oscillator phenomenon has so far been uncovered in “conventional” molecular model species (mouse, zebrafish, fruitfly, nematodes), cracking the enigma of moon-controlled rhythms and oscillators requires the establishment of new model species.
Claudia Amort -
Ulrich Technau: Cnidaria and evolution of bilaterian traits
How did the morphological complexity of Bilateria arise and how is this encoded in the genome?
Which developmental mechanisms and genetic pathways have been preserved throughout evolution and which have been changed to account for changes in morphological complexity?
To address these questions, we mainly focus on the development and genetics of cnidarians
Ulrich Technau -
Manuel Zimmer: Neuronal network dynamics and behavior
In the Zimmer lab, we are interested in how neural network dynamics in the brain represent sensory information and perform computations to generate decisions and subsequent behaviors. Moreover, we aim to explain fundamental properties of neuronal circuits, for example the need to sleep. These are key problems in neuroscience, each of which have alone challenged worldwide communities of experts for decades. We, however, propose that a holistic approach should be undertaken to understand these functions in their full context.
Manuel Zimmer