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Why will young people from all districts travel on Friday to the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in Buch and spend UniStem Day working on stem cells? Because they have the opportunity to discuss stem cells with a heart surgeon and a basic researcher andbecause they can visit biotech companies, examine cells in the laboratory, discuss ethics and understand the CRISPR-Cas9 gene scissors.

When a muscle grows or a muscle injury heals, some of the stem cells develop into new muscle cells. A research team at the MDC led by Carmen Birchmeier has now described in the journal Genes and Development how this process is regulated by two proteins produced in an oscillatory manner.

Switching off “safeguard” genes improves cell reprogramming, aiding future regenerative therapies.

Northern White Rhinos ( NWR ) are functionally extinct, as only two females are left on this planet. An international team has now successfully completed three milestones that could bring the species back to life. Their research has been published in Nature Communications.

What are the consequences if a cellular aging-like program is acutely activated in tumor cells? And what role does the stem cell program play in it?

Huntington’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease. It is always fatal. The disease is caused by a defect in the Huntingtin gene. To this day, no therapy will put a stop to the insidious disintegration of brain cells. Fortunately, scientists of the Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie (FMP) in Berlin in collaboration with their peers working at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and at the Charité University Hospital discovered a natural mechanism, which not only suppresses the build-up of pathogenic amyloid fibrils but also disaggregates them.

To save the northern white rhino from extinction an international research team around Thomas Hildebrandt and Sebastian Diecke has chosen an unusual approach. They want to facilitate an in vitro fertilisation by transforming the animals’ skin cells into egg cells.

Even an analog synthesizer has to be tuned. As the cables travel from one jack to the next, the artist’s neurons produce a different note each time. On the boundaries of stem cell technology and creating art in a lab.

In mammalian embryos, crucial tissues are produced from a group of cells that are scarce and only exist for a very short time. Now, researchers have deciphered their molecular signature.

The 3D landscapes of the genome have to change all the time. Otherwise genes would not be expressed properly and physiology would be in disarray. Ana Pombo’s group is mapping this genomic regulation.