Genetics & Genomics

Internationally renowned for pioneering achievements and geared to inter-institutional cooperation: 22 research groups at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology in the Max Delbrück Center (MDC-BIMSB) explore how genes regulate life. It is now celebrating its 15th birthday.

Bartter syndrome type 3 is the result of several structural variants in the genome. By using long-read sequencing, Janine Altmüller and her team from the Max Delbrück Center, the BIH and University Hospital Cologne mapped out the rare disease in unprecedented detail. They have now reported their findings in “Genome Medicine.”

Science has something exploratory about it, says Norbert Hübner. You never know exactly where you are heading. Despite this, cartographic works are the focus of his interest: the researcher creates atlases of the human heart. And amongst other things, he uses them to understand heart conditions better.

With a grant of 600,000 euros, the Einstein Foundation Berlin is funding the preliminary module for an Einstein Center for Early Disease Interception. Ten Berlin institutions – including the Max Delbrück Center – are looking to develop, integrate and apply the technologies needed for precision medicine more quickly.

Using single-cell technologies, Maike Sander and colleagues have observed a shift in the relative abundance of the two subtypes of pancreatic beta cells as type 2 diabetes unfolds. This knowledge could be leveraged to find novel drugs, they report in “Nature Genetics.”

British and German scientists created the most comprehensive cell atlas of the human heart. As reported in the journal “Nature”, it is the first to include the cells from which the heartbeat originates. Among other things, this data will provide a reference for studies on cardiac arrhythmias.

An international research team, including Achim Leutz of the Max Delbrück Center, has discovered that a specific protein controls the conversion of immune cells. If it were possible to intervene in this process, the development of cancer could be prevented.

Biochemist and physician Leif S. Ludwig of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) and the Max Delbrück Center has been named a recipient of the 2023 Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, as the German Research Foundation (DFG) announced on June 27th.

A new tool can identify cells that are actively responding to a SARS-CoV-2 infection. As reported in "Science Advances" by the Gargiulo lab, it can be used to screen for effective COVID-19 therapies and can be tailored to study other viruses as well.

Genome Architecture Mapping captures complex, multi-way interactions in the genome. This is different than the workhorse technique of 3D genomics, which sees mostly two-way contacts, finds a new study by a team led by Ana Pombo from the Max Delbrück Center, published in “Nature Methods”.