My primary expertise is the identification and functional analysis of regulators important for early neural development in Xenopus. In the past we focused mainly on transcription factors and how they add to the formation of the visual system. Recently we extended our research to understand how these DNA-binding transcription factors are regulated on protein level by E3-ubiquitin ligases of the Trim-family e.g. leading to degradation of the transcription factors by the proteasome. Meanwhile, we established more unbiased approaches (enzyme activity or interaction based) using protein chips and label-free proteomics to identify proteins that are modified by E3-ubiquitin ligases of interest.
Thus, we extended our panel of classical amphibian techniques from whole-mount in situ (RNA & immuno), histology, explantation and transplantation of embryonic tissues, stem cell (animal caps), (RNA & morpholino injections; live imaging of larval development), cell culture of mouse and human cell lines incl. gain- and loss-of-function approaches (transfection & Crisp/Cas), imaging, FACS. More specialized methods include: Nanostring (quantification of RNAs without amplification of the probes, protein (co)-ip, protein-arrays (ubiquitination assay on a chip), proteomics of cell cultures and embryos in collaboration with our core-facility (Orbitrap Exploris 480 with FAIMS).
We are constantly looking for highly skilled and motivated MSc students, PhD students and Postdocs who are specifically interested in doing research in the above field. Complete applications including Lebenslauf/CV, certificates, research abstracts / list of publications and the names, phone and E-mail addresses of 1-2 academic referees should be send by E-mail.
