Research Schartl Group

About Manfred Schartl

Manfred Schartl has studied Chemistry and Biology in Giessen, Germany. After obtaining his doctoral degree in Genetics he worked as scientific assistant in research laboratories in Germany and in the U.S. From 1985 on he was team leader of a research group at the Genetic Center of Max-Planck-Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried. From 1991 until 2019 he has been Head of the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the Biocenter of the University of Wuerzburg. He was vice-chairman of the DFG research center for experimental medicine (Rudolf-Virchow-Zentrum). He was chairman and vice chairman of the Biocenter Wuerzburg between 1996 and 2007. From 2001 until 2020 he has been also Adjunct Professor for Experimental Cancer Research at the Institute for Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Bergen/Norway. From this University he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree in 2004. He received the highly distinguished Prince Hitachi Prize for Comparative Oncology in Japan. Since 2011 he is member of the Leopoldina, The National Academy of Sciences of Germany..

In 2015 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Biology at the National University of Singapore and from 2019 Visiting Professor at the Department of Biology, Texas A&M University in College Station. Since 2020 he is Senior Professor at the Department of Developmental Biochemistry at the Biocenter of the University of Wuerzburg and Scholar in Residence at the Xiphophorus Genetic Stock Center at Texas State University, San Marcos. He is one of the founders of the study program of Biomedicine in Wuerzburg. He is in the Editorial Board of several international journals and acts as reviewer for several national and international funding organizations and scientific journals.

The main research interests of Manfred Schartl are the molecular processes in organismic development and their malfunction in cancerogenesis. The major topic is understanding signal transduction and gene regulation in melanoma, using the Xiphophorus model system. Further research topics are sex determination and reproductive development in fish and evolutionary genomics and genetics in fish.