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