Cells are the fundamental functional units of life. Understanding how molecular processes are regulated to enable their diverse functions and how dysregulation of these processes contributes to human diseases is a major goal of the teams in our focus area of Cell Biology. We employ a variety of techniques such as gene editing, functional genomics, high-throughput methods for gene expression analysis, and light and electron microscopy to interrogate and control the function of individual proteins and to unravel the spatiotemporal regulation of diverse molecular pathways in cells. Our research relies on a wide range of eukaryotic model systems (budding yeast, nematodes, zebrafish, human stem cell-derived cultures and organoids), which enables us to gain mechanistic insights into evolutionarily conserved regulatory pathways to achieve and maintain cellular homeostasis.

Research groups involved: Buchner, Feige, Nedialkova, Westmeyer