Future Seminars
Seminar Colour Guide:
| Seminar given by an external postdoc | |
| External Faculty Speaker | Thursday, 13 December 2018, 17:00Genome Browser, CRISPR guides and scRNA-seq - Interactive tools to browse and visualize genomic dataHäussler Maximilian, University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) - Genomics Institute, USAHost: Neurowissenschaftliches KolloquiumBibliothek der Neurologischen Klinik, Theodor-Kutzer-Ufer 1-3, Mannheim |
| EMBL Distinguished Visitor Lecture | Friday, 14 December 2018, 11:00Towards a minimal set of modules for cellular lifePetra Schwille, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, GermanyHost: Rainer PepperkokLarge Operon, EMBL Heidelberg Abstract: In recent decades, biophysics has accumulated an impressive selection of techniques to analyze biological systems with ultimate sensitivity and precision, down to the single molecule level. However, a strictly quantitative application of most of these techniques in living cells or organisms has been challenging, because of the enormous complexity and redundancy of cellular processes. The more physiological a system under study, the harder it is to define a manageable number of relevant control parameters. This renders it necessary to accumulate ever more data and thus, often extends cellular studies to hardly manageable sizes. An alternative approach is to deconstruct the biological phenomenon to its fundamental features, by reconstituting them in a bottom-up approach. Identifying such minimal biological systems, particularly of subcellular structures and modules, has in the past years been very successful, and highly quantitative in vitro experiments with reduced complexity could be performed, e.g., on reconstituted cytoskeleton and membrane systems. As a particularly exciting example for the power of minimal systems, we demonstrated the self-organization of MinCDE, essential proteins of the bacterial cell division machinery, leading to a protein-based pacemaker and spatiotemporal cue for downstream events, such as the positioning of contractile rings. In my talk, I will discuss the perspective of assembling a minimal machinery for cell division. |
| External Faculty Speaker | |
| Science and Society | Thursday, 7 February 2019, 15:00Blurring the germline - From genome editing to transgenerational epigenetic inheritanceTim Lewens, University of Cambridge, United KingdomHost: Halldór StefánssonLarge Operon, EMBL Heidelberg Abstract: Until now, bioethical discussion of germline interventions has focused more or less exclusively on changes to the genome. But sperm, eggs and embryos are made up of more than genes, and there are indications that changes to non-genetic structures in these elements of the germline can also be inherited. It is, therefore, a mistake to treat phrases like germline inheritance and genetic inheritance as simple synonyms. Moreover, additional research on non-genetic inheritance draws attention to a wide variety of means whereby adults can transmit traits to their offspring that bypass the germline altogether. How, then, should bioethical discussion be updated to take account of these forms of non-genetic inheritance? I argue that research on various forms of non-DNA-sequence-based inheritance undermines the notion that there is some special form of ethical concern that falls on germline interventions in general, and on interventions to the nuclear genome within the germline in particular. |
| Science and Society | Wednesday, 3 April 2019, 18:00What if getting old didn t mean getting ill?Linda Partridge, Director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London and founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany, United KingdomHost: Halldór StefánssonPrint Media Academy Abstract: What if getting old didn t mean getting ill?Although we're living longer in most parts of the world, advancing age has been revealed as the major risk factor for serious diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and dementia. Increasing interest is therefore turning to the potential for intervening in the ageing process itself to prevent multiple age-related diseases simultaneously. Ageing does indeed turn out to be a malleable process and, surprisingly, to have much in common between humans and laboratory animals. Recent discoveries have revealed that existing drugs can be repurposed to combat ageing, and that it may well be possible to keep us healthier for longer as we age. |