All lectures are in German and will be held from 14:30–15:30 in the MPI-CBG Auditorium on the dates listed below.

Anyone interested is welcome!

12 October 2010
Vineeth Surendranath
Krankheiten mit Hilfe von Mathematik und Computer verstehen – Die Beispiele HIV und Alzheimer

16 November 2010
Maria Begasse
Über den Einfluss von Temperatur auf die embryonale Entwicklung von Fadenwürmern 

14 December 2010
Dr. Sylke Winkler
Die Sequenzierung des menschlichen Genoms in einer Woche: Geht das überhaupt und wie funktioniert es?

18 January 2011
Britta Schroth-Diez
Licht ins Dunkel - Mikroskopie

15 February 2011
Alba Diz-Muñoz
Zellmigration während der Embryonalentwicklung im Zebrafisch

15 March 2011
Marcus Jahnel
Transkription in neuem Licht – Einzelmolekülexperimente mit RNA-Polymerase

A research team headed by Frank Buchholz, research group leader at the MPI-CBG, now present an esiRNA screen for genes involved in DNA double strand break repair. They report 61 genes that influenced the frequency of DNA repair, and characterize in detail one of the genes that decreased the frequency of DNA double-strand break repair. Moreover, their experiemtns identified KIAA0415 as a novel gene, which is mutated in patients with hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP), which implicates a link between HSP and DNA repair.

This is the first genome-scale survey of genes with roles in DNA repair in mammalian cells. "It provides a dataset that should accelerate the discovery of novel genes with roles in DNA repair and associated medical conditions", says Buchholz. (PLoS Biology, 29 June 2010)

>> read (German) press release

A VIP tour with Prof. Sabine von Schorlemer, Saxon Minister of Science and the Fine Arts, Dirk Hilbert, Deputy Mayor for Economic Affairs of the Dresden City Administration, and other prominent science-related people started at the MPI-CBG: Debojyoti Chakraborty played the sitar, a band with Indian, Polish, and German scientists played a song blending Indian and Western music - this was meant to show that science is an international endeavour: 60% of the MPI-CBG staff come from abroad, 45 nations work under one roof in the institute. The VIP guests could also try some pipetting in a competition vs. pipetting robots in the MPI-CBG Screening Facility.

A big thank-you to everybody who did a tiny bit or heaps of work and helped to offer the public a great night: Many scientists at stations, the building maintenance crew, the org team, the canteen staff with tasty food, and a fantastic kids programme team with the best kids station ever!

Dresden International Congress Center
Ostraufer 2, 01067 Dresden
free admission

During the 3rd International Congress on Stem Cells and Tissue Formation (July 11-14, 2010) in Dresden, Germany, the public is welcome to join a session on stem cells and their potential applications.

We invited prominent scientists based in Dresden to give a résumé of the advances in the field of stem cell research, give insights into the global network of institutions and collaborators, and an account of breakthroughs in basic research and potential clinical applications. Moreover, we want to discuss the ethical and moral implications of stem cells again and review the debates on that topic.

The event is organized by the DFG-Research Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD), the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 655) "Cells into Tissues" and the MPI-CBG.

Prof. Wieland Huttner
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden
Biomedizinische Forschung - Dresdner Standortbetrachtung

Prof. Elly Tanaka
DFG-Research Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden
Einem Regenerationswunder auf der Spur

Ulrich Braun
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Dresden University of Technology
Stammzellen im Spiegel der Ethik-Debatte

Prof. Gerhard Ehninger
University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden
Dresden University of Technology
Brückenschläge - Von der Forschung zur klinischen Anwendung

chair:
Prof. Elisabeth Knust
Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden

Visit our many stations to see spectacular science, live cells, and try some hands-on experiments. Drinks and snacks will be available in the cafeteria.

PROGRAM

18:00-21:00
kids programme
Fische, Zellen, Wassermonster – Kids area with hands-on experiments

Visit our fish facility and see 2,500 tanks with zebrafish. Use a microscope to look at live cells. Join and win the pipetting world championship. See a live sample of an axolotl: this salamander can regrow entire limbs!

19:00
seminar
Different and the same: New findings on "race", populations and disease by sequencing the genome

Prof. Elisabeth Knust

The human genome has been sequenced. The next step will be to understand the function of all approx. 25,000 genes. This questions terms like "race" or "ethnicity", since they do not reflect the genetic diversity of human beings. These terms may even hinder the development of new therapies for various human diseases from a better understanding of genetic variations.

20:00
seminar/discussion
Weiß ist bunt - International Researchers at the MPI-CBG

Xicotencatl Gracida, Ilya Levental, Felipe Mora-Bermúdez

They all wear white labcoats, but they are a most colourful mix from 45 different nations: More than 60% of our institute's staff are non-German. How did they come to Dresden? What is great here, what needs to be improved? Researchers from all over the world will tell you their stories. Come and get to know them!

18:00-1:00, hourly
presentation
Die Sendung mit der Maus

Visit the Transgenic Core Facility and see DNA fragments being injected in a blastocyst. How can you knock-out a gene? What are embryonic stem cells?

18:00-23:00, hourly
presentation
Tiny Things XXL - Electron Microscopy

Get a guided tour through the Electron Microscopy Facility and learn how samples are prepared. 

18:00-1:00
presentation
Miracle Healer from Mexico – The Axolotl

See live samples of axolotls. Experts will answer any question you may have on these salamanders with a huge potential to regenerate. Why can they and why can't we? 

from 18:00
Hot Lab Jazz

Our international jazz band will give you da blooz! Standards, Swing, Latin Jazz, Blues –  It's groovy and it will rock you!

www.wissenschaftsnacht-dresden.de

Sabine Sütterlin is a free lance science writer and is going to observe researchers in their labs for several months. She will report on this field study in her blog komplett komplex. Sabine is hosted at the the three Dresden Max Planck Institutes where researchers work on complex systems, molecular processes in the cell, and on the chemical physics of solids.

Enjoy reading the blog! We are looking forward to comments, questions, and discussions.

In order to initiate new or intensify existing good contacts with journalists, the MPI-CBG together with the other two Dresden Max Planck Institutes launched a Journalist in Residence Fellowship in 2008. This fellowship offers a journalist the opportunity to stay in the three Dresden MPI’s for three months, so that they have time to get to know the topics we work on, get a feeling of the atmosphere in the institutes and be inspired to find good and interesting stories or people that will be the basis for interesting reports with fascinating protagonists in the future.

Kai Simons is "without doubt one the internationally most recognized Finnish researchers", say the University of Eastern Finland and add: "His impressive scientific work includes nearly 300 publications, most of which have been published in the highest ranking scientific journals. Professor Simons has been a major influence in the science policy field in Europe and globally. He has been the editor of a number of significant scientific journals. He is member of seven scientific academies, such as the American Academy of Art and Science. He has been awarded numerous prizes such as the Federation of European Biochemical Societies Anniversary Prize, the Anders Jahre Prize, the Runeberg Prize, the Academia Leopoldina Schleiden Medal and the Matti Äyräpää Prize. He is an Honorary Doctor of the University of Oulu and the University of Leuven and has been invited as an honorary lecturer in international conferences. He is also the chairman of the European Life Scientist Organization."

Congratulations, Kai!

DRESDEN-concept is a key element of TU Dresden's application for becoming an elite university in Germany's Excellence Initiative of the Federal and State Governments. DRESDEN-concept is a research alliance of TU Dresden with 14 partners from the major four research institutions in Germany: Fraunhofer, Helmholtz (represented by Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf), Max-Planck and Leibniz. A number of museums and libraries joined the alliance.

A team of Dresden researchers of the MPI-CBG in collaboration with Carl Zeiss MicroImaging GmbH, Germany developed a novel algorithm that uses small fluorescent beads in the rigid mounting medium as fiduciary markers to achieve fast, precise and completely sample independent registration of multi-view microscopic acquisitions. They provide the method as a fully open-source plugin for Fiji bringing this new solution instantly into the hands of thousands of biologists world-wide. The software libraries behind the plugin contain implementations of many advanced image analysis algorithms that together form a generic platform for matching of partially overlapping point-clouds that can be adapted to other applications.

The open source approach, together with detailed documentation of the principles  and usage of the plugin and the distribution through a widely adopted platform for biological image analysis constitutes a novel paradigm for transferring advances in computer vision to cutting edge biological applications. The Dresden team hopes that other researchers will follow the lead. The algorithm was published in Nature Methods.

Figure legend:
Visualization of the bead-based registration on 8-view SPIM acquisition of the C. elegans worm (left) and 3d rendering of the posterior tip of Drosophila larva reconstructed from 8-view SPIM acquisition (right).

All lectures are in German and will be held from 14:30–15:30 in the MPI-CBG Auditorium on the dates listed below.

Anyone interested is welcome!

18 May 2010
Michaela Wilsch-Bräuninger
Verborgene Welten - EM

22 June 2010
Kristin Franke
Was hat Rheuma mit Sauerstoffmangel zu tun?

31 August 2010
Janet Chusainow
HIV und AIDS: wo wir heute stehen