MDC Berlin

The Käthe-Beutler-Haus of the BIH is currently being built on the Berlin-Buch campus - the Medizinhistorische Journal now reports on the life of the Jewish paediatrician, researcher and mother.

Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, kills off billions of cells in the human body every day, but without it life would not be possible. A team of researchers led by Professor Klaus Rajewsky, an immunologist at the MDC, has now published a study in the journal Genes & Development that sheds new light on cellular survival strategies.

A three-dimensional computer model enables scientists to quickly determine which genes are active in which cells, and their precise location within an organ. A team led by Nikolaus Rajewsky, Berlin, and Nir Friedman, Jerusalem, has published the new method and their insights gained from this in Nature.

Two scientists from MDC have been named Highly Cited Researchers: Sofia Forslund and Nikolaus Rajewsky.

New insights into preventing herpes infections have been published in Nature Communications. Researchers from the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) at the MDC used single-cell RNA sequencing to better understand the viral infections.

Ana Pombo wants to understand the rules that govern our genome. This quest has led her to discover how important our genetic architecture is for the functioning of life. In the long term, she hopes her research will help understand diseases with complex origin such as autism and epilepsy.

The MDC is committed to maintaining respectful interactions at the research center and is taking decisive action to prevent and address bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment. Since early 2019 an Anti-Harassment Task Force, consisting of a broad cross-section of stakeholders, has been preparing guidelines for this very purpose. The Board of Directors has declared its support for the proposed guidelines.

When the adrenal gland produces too much aldosterone, this often leads to high blood pressure and kidney damage (hyperaldosteronism). It has only recently emerged that several patients harbor a mutation in the gene for the ClC-2 chloride channel. Researchers led by Professor Thomas Jentsch have now been able to show for the first time how the altered channels cause the disease. Their results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.