2019

Nerve cells communicate with one another via signaling molecules. The rule is: the more of these molecules, the stronger the signal. Drugs and diseases influence these processes and can weaken or strengthen the signal. Together with colleagues of Einstein BIH Visiting Fellow Thomas Südhof from Stanford University, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2013 and is supported by Stiftung Charité, Charité researchers have now been able to explain how these communication “modulators” work. They have published their results in the scientific journal Cell.

Jens Kremkow, ECN-Member will have his project in visual perception brought to fruition at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle; its results will be accessible to all interested scientists. The project is part of a new endeavor called OpenScope – a project spanning various institutions that was begun in 2018 and modeled after shared astronomy observatories that became the seat of major findings about the physical universe.

Dysfunctions in the maternal immune system that occur during pregnancy could possibly lead to impaired brain development in the unborn child. This is suggested by studies by the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, which are based on laboratory experiments and additional findings in humans.

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For his research on memory, Dr. rer. nat. Nicolas Schuck, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, will receive a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The grant is endowed with approximately 1.5 million euros.

The activation of mTor complex 1 in the cell is central to many vital processes in the body such as cell growth and metabolism. Overactivity of this signalling pathway can result in diseases such as in diabetic insulin resistance and cancer. A team led by the scientist Volker Haucke (Leibniz – Forschungsinstitut für Molekulare Pharmakologie and Freie Universität Berlin) has now discovered how inactivation of a certain lipid kinase promotes mTor complex 1 activity, and may therefore constitute a new point of attack for the treatment of diabetes and cancer. The results have just been published in the renowned journal Nature Cell Biology.

Major award for Berlin: The Berlin University Alliance has won funding as a group in the Universities of Excellence funding line of the German federal and state governments’ Excellence Strategy. The German Council of Science and Humanities announced the decision on July 19, 2019, in Bonn. The four Berlin partners – Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin – submitted a joint proposal entitled Crossing Boundaries toward an Integrated Research Environment and in a highly competitive process were able to convince the reviewers of its feasibility.

With the Langen Nacht der Wissenschaften (Long Night of the Sciences) and Soapbox Science we can look back to great events happening in the last two weeks.

Upcoming Saturday June 22, the next Soapbox Science Berlin event will take place at Alexanderplatz
In this novel public outreach platform that promotes women scientists and transforms public spaces into arenas for learning and scientific debate, twelve female researchers will step onto their soapboxes to give talks to the public.

We’d like to invite you to one of the smartest nights of the year – the Long Night of the Sciences (LNDW).

On June 15^th, from 5pm until midnight, over sixty scientific institutions across Berlin and Potsdam-Telegrafenberg are opening their doors to the public, offering more than 100 hands-on venues with the motto marvel at, touch and understand.

In the context of this year’s day of the biosciences, the University of Regensburg confers the honoris causa to Prof. Dr. Peter Hegemann for his outstanding work on photoreceptors and their implications in Optogenetics.

Topics range from resilience in religion and spirituality to adaptive polymer gels and cytomegalovirus / Approximately €18 million for first funding period

The American Academy of Arts & Sciences awards the Rumford Prize to Peter Hegemann, Ernst Bamberg, Ed Boyden, Karl Deisseroth, Gero Miesenböck and Georg Nagel for the invention and refinement of optogenetics. The Rumford Prize was presented during the Academy’s Annual Awards Ceremony on April 11, 2019, at the Academy’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is one of the oldest scientific prizes in the United States founded in 1796.

How can we improve the identification and prompt diagnosis of genetic diseases? A new Research Unit at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin will set out to identify and reliably interpret important non-coding sections of our genomes in the hope of finding the diagnosis for unsolved diseases. The researchers’ objective is to develop software capable of analyzing whole-genome data in the clinical setting. The Research Unit, which is being funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), will receive approximately €3.5 million over a period of three years.

Study by Research Team at Freie Universität Led by Biology Professor Stephan Sigrist on Conditions for Improving Memory Formation in Aging Humans

In the first call for proposals in 2018, all five institutions have now approved 29 research projects in the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and the STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The Berlin partners and the University of Oxford are funding the projects with 450,000 euros.

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Neurasmus Consortium Merit-Based scholarship.