Topics
RESEARCH TOPICS
African sleeping sickness
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Human trypanosomiasis and its animal form Nagana are a prime examples for the One Health concept
Antigenic variation
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The exchange of surface coats is the phenotypic hallmark of antigenic variation. But in fact, this is just the tip of an iceberg
Host skin infection
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Trypanosomes enter the mammalian host with the bite of a hungry tsetse.
What do they do in the skin?
Parasite motility
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The trypanosome flagellum always beats. Motion is essential for immune escape, tsetse passage - and it is a very complex business
Quorum sensing
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Trypanosomes limit the population size in the host by quorum sensing. What is the trigger?
Surface coat dynamics
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The trypanosome VSG layer is a good model for fundamental studies on protein mobility.
Structure of the cell surface
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The structure of the trypanosome surface coat is much more dynamic and flexible than generally assumed
Trafficking of GPI-proteins
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Lipid-anchoring has implications on the sorting and trafficking of cell surface coat molecules
Tsetse biology and physics
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The tsetse fly provides a self-contained environment for adaptive morphogenesis of trypanosome microswimmers
Nuclear structure and dynamics
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The nuclear envelope provides the central platform for meiotic chromosome pairing and synapsis and is lynchpin for nuclear shaping during sperm formation.
mRNA metabolism
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Various aspects of mRNA metabolism in trypanosomes are related to the regulation of gene expression.
Meiosis
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Molecular cell biology and evolutionary history in metazoans
Adhesion
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Cell Adhesion is more than a handshake between binders. What role does physics play?
Membrane biophysics
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We employ cell models and model cells to shed light on membranes as multitasking organelles at the cellular interface with the outside.
Super-Resolution
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“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen…” (Saint-Exupery), but we try anyways.
Telomere structure & function
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We want to know how telomere-binding complexes influence anti-genic variation, chromosome integrity and recombination events
Histone methylation & replication
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We want to investigate how the histone methyltransferase DOT1A regulates replication initiation in African trypanosomes