News

New lab in Aarhus: The Novo Nordisk Foundation funds MDC scientist Thomas Willnow to the tune of €7 million.

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.

Some 27 young researchers have been selected for the prestigious EMBO Young Investigators Programme. Among this year’s awardees is Philipp Junker, a systems biologist at the MDC’s Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology.

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.

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.

The equivalent of almost 28 times around the equator – this was the distance covered by participants in the cycling competition “Wer radelt am meisten?” (Who cycles the most?). Berlin’s senator for sport announced the winners at a ceremony on Wednesday at the Olympiastadion. The Buch campus took first place in the category “Best Company.”

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.

A German-Swiss team around Professor Oliver Daumke from the MDC has investigated how a protein of the dynamin family deforms the inner mitochondrial membrane. The results, which also shed light on a hereditary disease of the optic nerve, have been published in Nature.

Cancer researcher and conceptual artist Anton Henssen opens his first solo exhibition in Berlin on June 6. In the Alte Münze, the children's oncologe presents works in which he deals with circular DNA.

An international team of researchers are seeking to explore the heart at a depth that was previously impossible. They have now received a grant of nearly four million US dollars from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative – as one of the 38 Seed Networks working on the Human Cell Atlas. MDC researcher Norbert Hübner is co-coordinator of the project.