ScienceIt takes four to reprogramme adult cellsInterview with Konrad Hochedlinger Massachusetts General Hospital, Center for Regenerative Medicine, and Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Boston, MA, USA In June, three laboratories reported a major breakthrough in the stem cell field: they generated embryonic stem cells using a novel approach that avoids the ethical, medical and logistic problems associated with the “classical Dolly technique” of nuclear transfer. B.I.F. fellow Konrad Hochedlinger, who heads one of the three laboratories, comments on the findings and their implications for therapy. Citation: (2007) It takes four to reprogramme adult cells. Interview with B.I.F. fellow Konrad Hochedlinger. B.I.F. FUTURA 22(2), 76-79 Copyright: © Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allows the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author or copyright holder and source are credited.  Download PDF of the article (112 KB)
Reviews
Polar expeditions. Cell polarity and asymmetric cell division in the fruit fly DrosophilaAndreas Wodarz DFG Research Centre for Molecular Physiology of the Brain (CMPB), University Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany Asymmetric distribution of substances and structures within cells is often essential for the physiological function of a cell (e.g. neurons) or of tissue. It is also crucial to asymmetric cell division, one function of which is to generate neural progenitors and stem cells from the same mother cell. In this review, Wodarz highlights common genes and pathways between flies and man and discusses the multitude of processes in which cell polarity plays an important role. Citation: Wodarz, A (2007) Polar expeditions. Cell polarity and asymmetric cell division in the fruit fly Drosophila. B.I.F. FUTURA 22(2), 71-75 Copyright: © Andreas Wodarz. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allows the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author or copyright holder and source are credited. Download PDF of the article (232 KB)
Research Articles of B.I.F. Fellows (Results)In these final accounts, B.I.F. scholarship holders present a brief summary of the research results and publications of their PhD project. Cytokinesis furrow positioning in Caenorhabditis elegansHenrik Bringmann The HRD ligase – coupling ER-quality control and protein degradationRobert Gauss Characterization of the human ARL4 and ARL8 families of GTPasesIrmgard Hofmann Cerebral representation of hand speed as revealed by magneto-encephalographyKarim Jerbi Hedgehog-dependent cell movements require gap junctional communicationFrank JostenThe Tcf2-dependent transcriptional network in polycystic kidney diseaseAndreas Reimann Embedding the nuclear pore complex into the nuclear envelopeFabrizia Stavru Download Research Articles (2,5 MB)© These are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”, which permits free, irrevocable and universal right on access to these contributions and allows the work to be used, reproduced, or disseminated in digital form, provided the original author or copyright holder and source are credited.
New Projects
The Board of Trustees of the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds meets 3 times annually to decide upon the allocation of PhD scholarships. On February 23 - 24, 2007, they discussed 50 applications – preselected from the original 177 applications sent to the Foundation. Once again, the limited resources available meant that a considerable number of convincing applications had to be turned down. The following 16 projects and scholarship holders were selected.
Genetic dissection of optokinetic circuitry in the zebrafish visual system
Aristides Arrenberg
Department of Physiology, Program in Neuroscience, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco, CA, USA
Regulation of axon guidance by microRNAs in neuronal growth cones
Alessia Deglincerti
Department of Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Cornell University, New York, NY, USA
Rationalization of the molecular mechanism of human lysozyme systemic amyloidosis
Anne Dhulesia
Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
Single-particle cryo-EM of the protein-conducting channel in the membrane environment
Jens Frauenfeld
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Gene Center, Ludwig-Maximilians University (LMU) of Munich, Munich, Germany
Role of Toll receptors in olfactory targeting in Drosophila melanogaster
Martin Häsemeyer
Department of Neurobiology, Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), Vienna, Austria
Regulation of cohesion establishment at the replication fork
Natalie Hiller
Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Martinsried, Germany
Molecular mechanisms of TH17 cell differentiation and fuction
Anneli Jäger
Center for Neurologic Diseases, Brigham and Women´s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Anatomical origins and molecular regulation of progenitor cells in the embryonic and adult pancreas
Daniel Kopinke
Department of Human Genetics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Imaging of synaptic release from hypothalamic output neurons that regulate food intake
Moritz Paehler
Department of Mouse Genetics and Metabolism, Institute for Genetics, and Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Neurophysiology, Institute of Zoology and Physiology, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Neuronal polarity: molecular dissection of centrosome-regulated axon outhgrowth
Giulia Pollarolo
Department of Molecular and Developmental Biology, Flanders Institute of Biotechnology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
Linking cholesterol sensing at the surface with its synthesis in the ER
Herbert Polzhofer
Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
The functional interplay between Hsp110 proteins and Hsp70 chaperones
Heike-Julia Rampelt
Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH), University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
New insights into the survival strategies of the malaria parasite Plasmodium
Annika Rennenberg
Department of Molecular Parasitology, Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany
The role of myosin chaperone Unc-45b in muscle stress response
Urmas Roostalu
Institute for Toxicology and Genetics, Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany
Biochemical and biophysical approaches towards a molecular definition of heterochromatin
Szabolcs Soeroes
Research Group Chromatin Biochemistry, Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany
Investigating synaptic specificity in C. elegans
Hannah Teichmann
Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
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Pictogram of the consensus binding sequence of hepatocyte nuclear factor 1b (Tcf2) and TCF1. Mutations in Tcf2 are the most common genetic cause of chronic renal failure in humans. For further details, see the article by Andreas Reimann.
Copyright: © Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds
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