Press Release No. 2
Berlin
Dr. Zoltán Ivics New Group Leader at Max Delbrück Center
Field of Expertise: Ancient Invaders of the Genome – Transposons The biologist and geneticist, Dr. Zoltán Ivics, has been made a group leader at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch for a period of 5 years. He started work at this national research laboratory in the northeast of Berlin this summer. Dr. Ivics` field of expertise involves transposable DNA elements, transposons for short, that can be found in the genomes of most (if not all) living organisms, from bacteria to humans. However, they are very rare as far as human disease is concerned, because as Dr. Ivics explained: ”In vertebrates, most of these elements are dead remnants of once active transposons that, after successfully colonizing the genomes of many different species, became inactivated by mutations.”