Professor Nikolaus Rajewsky of the MDC Honored with Leibniz Prize
The 43-year-old scientist is the youngest of the eleven prizewinners, who come from different disciplines. The prize is endowed with 2.5 million euros. The German Research Foundation (DFG) awards this prize to exceptional scientists and academics for outstanding achievement in their respective fields of research.
According to the selection jury, Nikolaus Rajewsky “has set new standards in systems biology and enriched the life sciences as a whole. With great creativity and productivity, his work combines physics and mathematics with systems biology, which examines the regulatory processes in whole cells or organisms across the genome or proteome.”
Nikolaus Rajewsky is Professor of Systems Biology at the MDC and the Charité and Scientific Head of the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) of the MDC. Systems biology combines molecular biology, biochemistry, mathematics and physics in order to quantitatively capture and predict complex processes of life. His research activities focus mainly on microRNAs, a group of genes discovered only a few years ago. As he has demonstrated experimentally and with the aid of bioinformatics, microRNAs play an important role in the regulation of genes, including those that play a crucial role in the development of diseases. This has profoundly changed the understanding of how genes are regulated and opens up an immense field of research to develop novel therapy approaches.
In addition, Nikolaus Rajewsky and his group have also made important methodological and technological advances. Together with his colleague Marc Friedländer, he developed a computer-based method with which microRNA molecules can be identified. In an innovative research collaboration at the MDC, Professor Rajewsky and Professor Matthias Selbach demonstrated how microRNAs regulate the activity of genes and thus can steer the production of thousands of proteins. Another accomplishment, achieved in his laboratory in Berlin in collaboration with developmental biologists of New York University, was to develop a method with which large numbers of nematodes (C. elegans), an important model organism in biology, can be studied during various stages of embryonic development.
Furthermore, together with researchers in the U.S. and Canada, Nikolaus Rajewsky compiled a catalogue of microRNAs of planarian flatworms, and there also identified microRNAs which could play a role in the regeneration and function of stem cells. Freshwater planarian flatworms possess the capacity to regenerate into completely new, viable individuals from any cut-off body part. This regeneration is mediated by totipotent adult stem cells. Consequently, planarian flatworms are the object of intense research in the Rajewsky lab.
Nikolaus Rajewsky studied mathematics and physics at the University of Cologne, Germany from 1988 – 1993, where he earned his PhD in theoretical physics in 1997. In the fall of 1998, he went to the USA as a post-doctoral fellow, first at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and, from 1999 – 2002, at Rockefeller University in New York, where he later became Research Assistant Professor and, in 2003, Assistant Professor at New York University.
Three Leibniz Prizewinners at the MDC
Nikolaus Rajewsky has already received numerous awards for his work, among these in 2010 the Science Prize of the Governing Mayor of Berlin. Also in 2010 he was elected to be a member of the European Organization for Molecular Biology (EMBO). Altogether, three Leibniz prizewinners are currently conducting research at the MDC. They include Professor Carmen Birchmeier (2002) and Professor Thomas Jentsch (1995) of the MDC/Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP).
The Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) was founded in 2008 by the MDC with pilot funding of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Senate of Berlin on Campus Berlin-Buch. The BIMSB collaborates closely with other research institutions, in particular with Humboldt University Berlin and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and in the U.S. with New York University (NYU) and Rockefeller University. In addition, through the initiative of Professor Rajewsky, the BIMSB offers a joint PhD program with NYU and the MDC.
In 2015 the BIMSB will move into a new building on the north campus of Humboldt University. The new building, which is being financed by the Senate of Berlin with approximately 30 million euros, will provide 5 500 m² of space for around 300 employees. The annual operating costs amounting to approximately 20 million euros is shared by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (90 percent) and by the Berlin Senate (10 percent).
Professor Nikolaus Rajewsky (Photographer: David Ausserhofer/Copyright: MDC)
Contact
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