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From cell biology to CRISPR gene editing technology – the Life Science Learning Lab at the Berlin-Buch research campus offers both students and teachers the opportunity to immerse themselves in science. This year, “Gläsernes Labor” celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Neuroscientists Gary Lewin and James Poulet at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine have won highly coveted and competitive ERC Advanced Grants to study pain and the neural mechanisms that underlie temperature perception.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) will fund single-cell scientist Simon Haas in its Heisenberg program. Therefore, the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is establishing a Heisenberg professorship in systems hematology. After five years, the BIH will make the professorship permanent.

NOVA University and Max Delbrück Center are jointly establishing the NOVA Institute for Medical Systems Biology (NIMSB). Both institutions have developed a shared vision to push the boundaries of precision medicine. “Insights” spoke to the three project leads in Lisbon and Berlin.

Touch is a fundamental, yet scarcely understood, sense. Now, the team led by Gary Lewin at the Max Delbrück Center has discovered a second ion channel associated with touch perception. Elkin1 could be a target for pain therapy, the team writes in “Science”.

Special receptor cells under the skin enable us to feel pain and touch. But Schwann cells also play a key role in detecting such stimuli, researchers at the Max Delbrück Center report in “Nature Communications.” This discovery opens new avenues for pain therapy.

A new computer program allows scientists to design synthetic DNA segments that indicate, in real time, the state of cells. Reported by the Gargiulo lab in “Nature Communications”, it will be used to screen for anti-cancer or viral infections drugs, or to improve gene and cell-based immunotherapies.

Some hereditary genetic defects cause an exaggerated immune response that can be fatal. Using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool, such defects can be corrected, thus normalizing the immune response, as researchers led by Klaus Rajewsky from the Max Delbrück Center now report in “Science Immunology.”

Melissa Birol of the Max Delbrück Center is looking to understand early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Her focus is on the interplay between the lipid metabolism of nerve cells and the spread of tau protein. The Alzheimer Research Initiative is funding her work with 193,500 euros.

The details of many immune defense mechanisms are still unknown, but a new study sheds light on one such mechanism. Writing in “The EMBO Journal”, researchers led by Oliver Daumke and Misha Kudryashev of the Max Delbrück Center describe exactly how GBP1 proteins render bacteria harmless by encapsulating them.